International Journal of Public Sector Management

Controlling overhead in public sector organizations

G.J. Van Helden Mark Huijben
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G.J. Van Helden Mark Huijben , (2014),"Controlling overhead in public sector organizations", International
Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 27 Iss 6 pp. 475 - 485
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Public sector
Controlling overhead in public organizations
sector organizations
G.J. Van Helden
Department of Accounting, University of Groningen, Groningen,
The Netherlands, and
475
Mark Huijben Received 13 July 2013
Berenschot, Utrecht, The Netherlands Revised 14 January 2014
Accepted 16 January 2014

Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore various mechanisms for controlling overhead,
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as informed by a framework based on transaction-cost-economics (TCE).

Design/methodology/approach Development of framework for controlling overhead and field
study about Dutch public sector organizations for exploring and enriching this framework.
Findings Central steering with a provider-user interface was often seen as the most desirable
control mechanism. Although central steering without such interface was used in about half of the
overhead functions, their users argued that the priorities of these functions were insufficiently in line
with their needs. There was little support for internal market control, because it would increase the
administrative workload of internal calculations, and it could lead to undesirable differences in overhead
use among the primary services departments. Moreover, line managers are often more focused service
quality than costs.
Research limitations/implications The framework based on TCE formed a suitable starting
point for reflecting on the control of overhead functions, but the empirical findings pointed to revisions
in the case of internal market control concerning resistance to administrative workload and avoidance
of differences in the supply of internal services.
Practical implications Inspiring public sector managers to reflect on the match between overhead
control mechanisms and characteristics of overhead functions.
Originality/value A theoretical underpinning and empirical exploration of a variety of overhead
control mechanisms in the public sector.
Keywords Control systems, The Netherlands, Transaction cost economics, Overhead
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The overhead of public sector organizations is a popular target for cutting resources in
the current era of austerity. However, the underlying claim that reducing overhead will
not be harmful to an organization is contestable. Overhead is defined as the whole of
functions aimed at steering and supporting the organizations primary processes.
It includes the functions management, secretarial support, HRM, IT, finance and control,
communication, legal affairs and facility services (such as security, maintenance,
internal post-delivery and reception desk services). Overhead entails costs, but it also
enables an appropriate and smooth execution of the primary processes and thus can be
beneficial to the organization as a whole. We believe that finding a proper balance
between these benefits and costs needs to underlie the design and organizational
positioning of overhead as well as an appropriate control of overhead. International Journal of Public Sector
Our paper deals with the control of overhead to achieve a better balance between the Management
Vol. 27 No. 6, 2014
costs and benefits of its underlying functions. Our research distinguishes itself from pp. 475-485
existing studies on cost management in a number of ways. On the one hand, there is r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3558
survey research on the adoption of full costing practices in the public sector in several DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-07-2013-0102
 IJPSM countries, such as Scotland, the Netherlands and Portugal ( Jackson and Lapsley, 2003;
27,6 Verbeeten, 2011; Carvalho et al., 2012). This research emphasizes the importance of
costing systems for legitimating the organizations activities towards external
stakeholders. This points to the need for developing ideas on cost control for internal
purposes in general and managing overhead cost in particular, as is core to our
research. On the other hand, this need is reinforced by the lack of research on cost
476 management practices in the public sector aimed at realizing cost savings. Instead,
studies about public sector cost management practices mainly seem to focus on costing
for purposes of pricing and profitability analysis (such as, Ellwood, 1996; Jones and
Mellet, 2007, about health care services in the UK; Arnaboldi and Lapsley, 2004, about
blood transfusion services in the UK; and Groot and Budding, 2004, about municipal
services in the Netherlands).
Our research is specifically focused on applying the ideas formulated in the
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management control literature to the issue of overhead. The management control

literature discusses the appropriateness of diverging forms of control, especially
hierarchical and market-based forms, under different internal and external
circumstances (Ouchi, 1979; Hofstede, 1981; Birnberg et al., 1983; Spekle, 2001).
Owing to the ideas as advocated in new public management (NPM) as regards making
the public sector more efficient, cost control has become a main issue on the agendas of
many public sector organizations, for example, through benchmarking operations
(Llewellin and Northcott, 2005, about the NHS in the UK; Huijben et al., 2014, about
Dutch public sector organizations). How overheads can be controlled and how control
forms can be systematically related to internal and external circumstances have,
however, not yet been intensively examined until now. Our study aims to fill this gap
by developing a framework based on transaction-cost-economics (TCE) for controlling
the overhead of public sector organizations. In addition, we conducted a field study of
public sector organizations in the Netherlands to learn whether the framework was
appropriate or whether it still needed refinement.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 introduces a TCE framework of a variety
of control mechanisms for overhead functions. Section 3 gives a justification of the
methods of data collection in the field study. Section 4 analyses how the organizations
in this study control their overhead functions, and how and why these actual controls
diverge from TCE-based assumptions. Finally, Section 5 proposes a refined framework
for controlling overhead in public sector organizations, and it presents the implications
of our study for control theory and practice.

2. A TCE-based framework for controlling overhead

Overhead is concerned with the delivery of supporting and managerial services to the
organizations primary processes (further labelled as internal services or overhead
functions). The delivery of these supporting and managerial services can be regarded
as a transaction between two parties, i.e. the supplier and the users. Choosing the
appropriate type of control for such a transaction may depend upon the characteristics
of this transaction. Because TCE, as originally developed by Williamson (1985),
is particularly aimed at finding suitable governance or control types for transactions with
varying characteristics, we have taken TCE for developing a theoretical framework
for the control of overhead. Our framework builds on earlier work by Bouma and
Van Helden (1995) and Vosselman (2002) on the control of supporting services, as well
as on more fundamental work by Ouchi (1979) and Spekle (2001)(see Birnberg et al.,
1983 for an overview). TCE assumes that the behaviour of decision makers is rationally
 bounded, partly opportunistic and based on economic reasoning. Bounded rationality Public sector
implies that decision makers base their choice on a limited number of alternatives and organizations
will prefer the alternative with the lowest costs.
We will first introduce mechanisms for controlling the overhead of organizations and
subsequently relate them to TCE-originated transaction characteristics. We distinguish
three mechanisms:
(1) Central steering: top management decides about the volume and quality of the 477
internal services, which are mainly based on input control. The internal users
cannot influence the supply of these services, as they are mandatory for them.
(2) Central steering with a provider-user interface: the decisions of top management
about the budget regarding the volume and quality of the internal services are
based on consultations between the providers and users of these services.
Internal supply and use of these services are often mandatory.
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(3) Internal market or outsourcing: the providers and users of the internal services
negotiate about the tariff per service unit and the users receive a bill for their
actual consumption. The internal users are allowed to consider the supply of
these services by an external provider, and the internal providers are allowed to
offer their services to outside-demanders. An alternative option is outsourcing the
services in question[1].
TCE distinguishes three transaction characteristics: uncertainty, asset specificity and
frequency. Because the frequency of transactions concerning overhead functions is by
definition high, we can disregard frequency as a determining characteristic for the control
of overhead. This means a focus on the two remaining transaction characteristics.
Uncertainty refers to the extent to which the parties involved in a transaction have
knowledge of the consequences of this transaction, especially in terms of the numbers of
services to be delivered, their quality, and their costs. Asset specificity concerns the degree
to which assets (required for the delivery of services) will lose value when they are used
for other than the current purpose. Put differently, it regards the extent to which the
service is standard or tailor-made. In order to simplify our analysis we will make
a distinction between two values for each of these two transaction characteristics,
i.e. a low and a high value, resulting in four value combinations. Table I presents
for each value combination of the TCE-based transaction characteristics the most
appropriate control mechanism, including the types of overhead services to which
this mechanism applies and related examples.
The upper-left cell refers to standard internal services with low uncertainty. A low
level of uncertainty implies that the desirable quantity and quality of the services can
be easily specified in advance. If an organization provides these services itself, control
through an internal market is appropriate (Mechanism 3). The existence of an external
market forms a safeguard against opportunistic behaviour of both the provider and
user of internal services. Outsourcing is also an option here, which case refers to arms
length output control (Spekle, 2001). Cleaning and standardized administrative
services refer to examples of these types of transactions.
The upper-right cell refers to tailor-made or customized internal services with low
uncertainty. This may hold for many overhead services. Specific administrative
services, where specificity relates to the requirements set by the primary functions,
are illustrative in this respect. Other examples are HRM support and external
communication, but also many secretarial services that require knowledge about
 IJPSM Transaction Asset specificity
27,6 characteristic Low High

Uncertainty
Low Mechanism 3: internal market or Mechanism 2: central steering with
outsourcing a provider-user interface
478 Applies to standard services which are Applies to tailor-made services which
easy to plan in terms of their nature are easy to plan in terms of their nature
and scope and scope
Examples: cleaning, security, catering/ Examples: financial planning and control,
canteen, salary administration, internal HRM advice, ICT policy, internal and
post-assortment external communication, many secretarial
tasks (related to organization-specific
systems), documental information
provision
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High Mechanism 3: internal market combined Mechanism 1: central steering

with outsourcing and external supply
option
Applies to standard services which are Applies to tailor-made services which are
Table I. not easy to plan in terms of their nature not easy to plan in terms of their nature
A TCE-based framework and scope and scope
for controlling overhead Examples: rooms for meetings, repro Example: management, strategy
services service, technical department development

organization-specific systems. The most suitable control mechanism is central steering

combined with an interface between the internal providers and internal users of the
overhead services (Mechanism 2). The specificity of these services requires that
the internal users and providers have to be safeguarded against mutual opportunistic
behaviour. Central steering can prevent an insufficient supply of these services, while an
interface between the internal suppliers and the users of supporting services promotes
the alignment of the interests of these two parties. Internal market control would
insufficiently safeguard the primary functions of the organization against opportunistic
behaviour of the supplier of the supporting services.
The lower-left cell concerns standard internal services with high uncertainty.
To avoid the risk of excess capacity, outsourcing these services would be a sensible
choice. Internal supply would, however, also be an option, but it may offer the internal
supplier an incentive to deliver its services to also external demanders (Mechanism 3).
In this way the supplying organization could protect itself from possible losses due to
excess capacity. An example concerns the supply of facilities for meetings, such as an
events centre to be used by both internal and external parties.
The lower-right cell regards tailor-made internal services with high uncertainty.
Strategic planning or management activities are obvious examples. In this case an
internal market will not function properly. Here a centralized control, mainly based on
inputs, is probably the most suitable (Mechanism 1)[2]. This is because top management
is not willing to accept the risk that the primary functions may under-utilize the
supporting services, while the primary functions will be hesitant to bear the risk of an
excess supply of these activities. In general, these services mainly serve organization-wide
goals rather than the goals of the individual primary functions[3].
In our view a TCE-based framework can contribute to an understanding of a proper
match between the characteristics of the internal services and the way in which these
 services, and their costs, are controlled. In terms of contingency theory, a fit between Public sector
context (i.e. the TCE characteristics asset specificity and uncertainty) and control organizations
(i.e. mechanisms for controlling overhead functions) is cost-effective, while a lack of fit
is cost-ineffective.
Before presenting the field study results of three Dutch public sector organizations
in Section 4, we will first describe the methods of data collection in our research.
479
3. Methods of data collection
The field research concerns three public sector organizations in the Netherlands, with
each three to four different overhead functions, resulting in a total of ten overhead
functions. These organizations are a supervising body, a youth welfare institution and
an advisory organization for educational services. These organizations were selected
due to their diverging level of overhead costs in comparison with the averages of their
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public sector branch (i.e. as a result of an overhead benchmarking operation; Huijben

et al., 2014).
Two stages in the field research were distinguished, i.e. an orientation stage and an
analysis stage. The first stage aimed to examine the organizations overhead and to select
more specific overhead functions to be analysed in the second stage. This selection was
mainly based on the inability of the organization to give convincing arguments for
a relatively high or low level of overhead costs in comparison with other organizations
in the same public sector branch. For some functions more particular arguments were
given, for example when users of these functions were dissatisfied with the quality of the
services provided.
During the second stage control mechanisms of the selected overhead functions
were the subject for the further analysis. We examined how the organizations actually
controlled their overhead and we subsequently inquired whether and for what reasons
they were inclined to change their control mechanisms, offering them the following
three options, as developed in Section 2: the level of the overhead costs is centrally
determined and the underlying services are compulsory for internal users; the overhead is
budgeted in consultation with the suppliers and users of these services; and internal
market or outsourcing.
During both stages providers and users of overhead functions have been interviewed.
The number of interviewees in each of the three organizations varied between six
and eight.
The findings of the field study were used for examining the support for the
TCE-based framework for controlling overhead, and for giving pointers for enriching
this framework.

4. Empirical findings about overhead control

Table II provides an overview of the control mechanisms of all overhead functions in
the three organizations. For each overhead function a distinction is made between the
currently used control mechanism, the desirable control mechanism and the control
mechanism as predicted by our TCE-based framework.
Table II shows that the current overhead mechanism of four from ten overhead
functions corresponds with the TCE-predicted control mechanism, while the other six
overhead functions point to differences in this respect. A closer look at these differences
indicates that especially internal market control (Mechanism 3) does not receive much
support in practice, neither in the current nor the in desirable control mechanisms.
Several reasons were given for this disapproval. It would require internal calculations,
 IJPSM Overhead Current control Desirable control TCE-predicted control
27,6 Organization functions mechanism mechanism mechanism

CWC (Child Accommodation Central steering Central steering with Internal market (3)
Welfare) with interface (2) interface (2)
Quality Central steering Central steering with Central steering with
management with interface (2) interface (2) interface (2)
480 and planning
and control
Personnel affairs Central steering Central steering with Central steering with
with interface (2) interface (2) interface (2)
ICT Central steering Central steering with Central steering with
with interface (2) interface (2) interface (2) and partly
internal market (3)
SI Accommodation Central steering Central steering with Internal market (3)
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(Supervision) with interface (2) interface (2)

Planning and Central steering (1) Central steering with Central steering with
control interface (2) interface (2)
ICT Central steering (1) Central steering with Central steering with
interface (2) interface (2) and partly
internal market (3)
CESP Management Central steering (1) Central steering (1) in Central steering (1)
(Educational combination with a
Table II. services) minor interface (2)
Confronting the TCE- Knowledge Central steering Central steering with Central steering with
based framework of management with interface (2) interface (2) interface (2)
control mechanisms for ICT Central steering (1) Central steering with Central steering with
overhead services with the interface (2) interface (2) and partly
field study results Internal market (3)

thereby increasing the administrative workload. It could also lead to undesirable

differences among the primary services departments, as was illustrated by their
managers who wanted the same access to ICT-gadgets like smart phones as
their colleagues (Keeping up with the Joneses). Moreover, this mechanism would only
be cost-efficient if these managers were actually held accountable for the costs. However,
this was hardly observable, because the managers were in particular responsible for other
organizational objectives, such as good supervision and short running times. A manager
of SI, for example, indicated: We mostly recruit top banking and insurance professionals.
They are used to a high salary, a big office and lots of luxury. We are thinking in
billions here. Overhead is not a main issue. A specific argument for central control with
a user-provider interface was given by the department managers of CWC. They found it
valuable that their overhead was clearly visible, as it was located at the central office.
Moreover, a regular benchmarking of the various overhead functions gave them sufficient
confidence that as regards the supporting services no resources were wasted.
An informative illustration for a lack of alignment between the providers and users
of overhead function came from SI. This organization started about a hundred ICT
projects without a clear decision procedure. As a consequence, most of these initiatives
were either never finished or resulted in systems that did not meet the expectations.
This outcome frustrated not only the users but also the hard working ICT department.
In addition, it led to high costs, i.e. 23 per cent higher than those incurred by
comparable organizations.
 Overall, in all three organizations Mechanism 2 (central steering with a provider-user Public sector
interface) was seen as the most desirable by the interviewed providers and users of organizations
overhead functions. Although Mechanism 1 (central steering) was currently used in about
half of the functions, it led to complaints on the side of the users of these functions because
the priorities set for these functions were insufficiently in line with the user needs.
In our field study one finding stands out, which relates to similar results in the
broader literature about public sector control: creating an internal market within 481
a public sector organization is problematic. This difficulty concerns the tension
between two conflicting positions of the provider and the user of the internal
services, characterized by the coexistence of autonomy and dependence in the same
organization. As Kastberg and Siverbo (2008) argue, the implicit autonomy logic of
an internal market is often difficult to combine with the interests of the public sector
organization as a whole, particularly as regards preventing unused capacity of the
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providers of internal services and avoiding differences in the consumption of these

services by the various users.
The presented results in Table II show that TCE apparently lacks certain elements
which do play a role in practice. The final section will give some pointers for enriching
this framework given the results of the field study.

5. An enriched framework for controlling overhead

Our TCE-based framework, as introduced in Section 2, is archetypical in several
respects. First, because we only discussed extreme values of the transaction
characteristics asset specificity and uncertainty. Second, because goals other than
the ones discussed here (economizing on transaction costs) have been disregarded.
And third, because technical limitations can be a hindrance in considering certain
control mechanisms. We will reflect on each of these limitations and subsequently
provide a revised theoretical framework.
The limitation that we only have included two values of the transaction characteristics
may have simplified our classification of control mechanisms. This is why a distinction
between three values of the main characteristic i.e. asset specificity split up in a low,
moderate and high value could potentially enrich our framework. Uncertainty is often
high and especially influential in the case of high asset specificity.
The second issue in enriching the TCE-based framework relates to the assumption
of TCE that decision makers are aimed at achieving economic efficiency. Several authors
have argued that organizations functioning in a political context are faced with multiple
and often conflicting goals, which moderate the significance of purely economic objectives
(Hofstede, 1981; Bogt, 2003). Although these more political goals are probably more
important for the primary than for the supporting functions in the public sector
organizations, there may also be supporting functions to which objectives other than
economic ones are predominant. Specific strategic reasons can underlie an organizations
preference for centralized control to guarantee the quantity and quality of certain
internal services, because these services are regarded as crucial for a risk-free
delivery of the primary functions. One of the organizations, i.e. a supervisory body,
for instance, needs highly accurate financial information, because it is on the basis of
this knowledge that far-reaching decisions about other organizations have to be
taken. Furthermore, it sometimes happens that there is no pressure, neither from
clients nor from funding bodies, which enables organizations to disregard economic
arguments for certain choices, particularly in connection with the scope and quality
of supporting services.
 IJPSM The third issue in enriching the framework in Table I relates to the administrative
27,6 boundaries of particular control types. Quasi-market output controls, for example,
require accurate administrative systems for calculating the full costs of the internal
services. If these systems are not available or relatively expensive to install, action
controls may replace the output controls.
The inclusion of the enrichments explained above has resulted in the revised
482 theoretical framework as shown in Table III.
Our study contributes to the general literature on control in two respects.
First, hierarchical and market-based control forms are well-known in this field (see, e.g.
Ouchi, 1979; Spekle, 2001). Until now, however, these forms have strictly been applied
to the core processes of organizations or organizational units, whereas our study has
extended these types to overhead functions. In addition, our study challenges the NPM
ideas about market-based controls in a public sector context, because our empirical
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investigations point to a preference for a hierarchical overhead control, in the sense of

central steering with a provider-user interface. This is because TCE implicitly assumes
that managers in public sector organizations feel responsibility for the costs of
their department, including the attributed overhead costs, while in practice other
organizational objectives, such as the quality of the services delivered, are often
considered much more important. As a result, an internal market of overhead functions
does not seem to function properly here.
This has consequences for the service users, taxpayers and governmental funding
bodies. Without external pressure, there is no incentive for economizing on overhead
costs. However, this pressure on overhead, which is mainly financial, must be
organized. This can be realized by central steering, with an interface between the
providers and users of overhead functions. Additionally, given the lack of an external
market, the benchmarking of overhead functions can help organize this financial

Asset specificity
Low (standard services) Moderate High (tailor-made services)

Mechanism 3: internal market Mechanism 2: central steering Mechanism 1: central steering

or outsourcing
Applies to standard services
Examples: cleaning, security,
catering/canteen, salary
administration, internal
post-assortment, standardized
ICT services
When cost-efficient behaviour
is relatively important
Table III.
Contingencies with respect
to the control variety
of overhead Other considerations
with provider-user interface
Applies to partly tailor-made Applies to highly specific services
services
Examples: financial planning Examples: top management,
and control, HRM advice, ICT strategic policy making
policy, internal and external
communication, a many
secretarial work (related to
organization-specific systems),
documental information
provision
Second best option for When uniformity of internal
Mechanism 3 when: service delivery is required often in
Adequate administrative combination with high uncertainty
systems for cost calculation
are lacking
Cost-efficient behaviour is
relatively less important
 pressure (see Huijben et al., 2014). If this financial pressure is not organized properly, Public sector
the overhead costs will face the risk of becoming higher than strictly necessary, organizations
resulting in bureaucratic organizations, for example, housed in luxurious buildings,
with an excessive range of management and staff functions.
In realizing overhead control we advocate a step-by-step procedure. First, three
preliminary steps are important:
(1) to define overhead, and more specifically, the overhead functions which can be 483
distinguished;
(2) to benchmark the costs of these overhead functions relative to those of other
organizations in the same sector; and
(3) to undertake a cost-benefit analysis: are the deviations in the benchmark
justified by the value of the overhead functions?
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As a next step, top management, preferably after consulting the de-central managers,
should decide for each overhead function which control mechanism is appropriate.
Internal market control is an adequate control mechanism for standard services
(such as cleaning, security, administration), but only under the following conditions:
. managers should be held accountable for the costs;
. adequate administrative systems should be available for cost calculation; and
. top management should allow the service levels of the supporting functions to
differ per primary service department.
This control mechanism could, for example, lead to different levels of ICT support
among primary service departments. The above indicated conditions will guarantee
the responsibility and accountability of the de-central managers for the overhead
functions they use, in terms of quantity, quality and costs. Disadvantages of this
approach relate to the lack of uniformity in the internal service levels among departments
and a poor central grip on the amount of overhead used by the organization
as a whole. A lack of central grip implies the risk of an over consumption of
overhead functions:
. Central steering combined with a provider-user interface is appropriate for
tailor-made services (such as financial planning and control, HRM advice, ICT
policy). Our study points to various reasons for centralizing the overhead decision
making, i.e. to relieve de-central managers from having to worry intensively about
overhead so that they can concentrate on their core tasks, to avoid that the service
levels of the supporting services differ among the primary services departments, or
because top management has a clear corporate interest in steering the overhead
centrally, due to, for example, accountability regulations. If the latter argument is
very strong, even central steering without a provider-user interface is thinkable.
The preference for a provider-user interface to an internal market indicates that the
users and providers of supporting services have confidence in fair discussions about
the volume, quality and costs of these supporting activities. Favouring a more
business-like internal market, on the other hand, a choice which will increase
autonomy, has a price: the providers will face the risk of not fully occupying their
capacity while the users may need to compete with external clients for the services
supplied, which can lead to price increases.
 IJPSM As becomes clear from this step-by-step procedure, accounting people merely play
27,6 a facilitating role, that is, they can help in finding suitable allocation bases for overhead
costs, or show the advantages and disadvantages of different control forms. In any
case, our study shows that both the top and lower level managers should have a serious
interest in engaging themselves in overhead. In other words, they should not leave this
issue to the accounting people in their organization. An appropriate control of overhead
484 contributes to cost awareness in public sector organizations and can ultimately lead to
lower full costs of these services, which is beneficial to society at large.
Notes
1. Other variations of this mechanism can be observed in practice, for example, allocation of
overhead costs to primary services departments without discretion of these departments to
decide about the volume and quality of these services.
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2. Input control can be combined with more relational governance forms or clan control
(Ouchi, 1979) or trust-based mechanisms (Kamminga and Van der Meer-Kooistra, 2007).
3. In the case of high uncertainty in combination with moderate or high levels of asset
specificity, organizations may face the problem of not being able to specify in advance the
performance indicators that are good proxies for organizational success. Spekle (2001)
introduces two quite advanced control types under these circumstances. First, exploratory
control, through which the organization learns in the course of time how organizational
success can be measured, and second, boundary control, by which organizations disregard
performance indicators as proxies for success and only identify the boundaries within which
they have to operate. For simplicity reasons we will not further develop these possible
control types for monitoring overhead functions.

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Further reading
Budding, T. and Groot, T. (2004), The influence of new public management practices on product
costing and service pricing decisions in Dutch municipalities, Financial Accountability &
Management, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 421-444.

About the authors

Dr G.J. Van Helden is a Professor Emeritus of Management Accounting at the University of
Groningen, the Netherlands and his research is dedicated to accounting innovations in the public
sector. Dr G.J. Van Helden is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: g.j.van.helden@rug.nl
Dr Mark Huijben works as a Consultant in the Netherlands, and did his PhD Research at the
University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

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