Strategic behaviour of institutional providers in mental handicapped care in The Netherlands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an inventory of the strategic responses of institutional providers of mental handicapped care to the strengthening of consumer choice through a personal care budget (PCB) Design/methodology/approach – Semi structured interviews were conducted among 26 providers covering 52 per cent of the total market volume of about 100,000 clients annually. Findings – A representative number of providers was included; on average a percentage below the national average of PCB users was found to be served. Of the 26 providers, 16 indicated adaption to their strategy in response to expected consumer empowerment. The actual deployment of this response in the organisations seemed not to be very thorough or explicit. Surprisingly, as a growing part of PCB‐clients choose alternative providers, no concerns were raised concerning the possible emergence of new service providers. Originality/value – Although the market share of PCB users is growing fast and existing providers do not seem to absorb this accordingly, a lack of market analysis and strategic behaviour of the traditional providers in response to this development was found. Based on this research growth of market shares of disruptive service providers can very well be anticipated.