Government Organisations and their Customers in The Netherlands: Strategy, Tactics and Operations

A growing awareness of the positive and activating effects that customer orientation can have on competitive advantage has been noted in the public sector organisations in the Netherlands. Customer orientation not only plays a role on the operational level, it also affects the strategic level. The questions of the role that society expects from government, which government intervention is needed, and what kind of and personnel does government need to be able to execute those tasks in the future in a customer‐oriented manner, are addressed. It is concluded that customer orientation in government organisations is a useful and necessary concept, but that pursuing this requires taking into account the typical nature of these organisations; the characteristics could prove to be bottlenecks in realising the goals of customer orientation.