Volume 10 (2017): Issue 1 (June 2017)

This is a multiple case study that investigates the motivations and ambitions of politicians who run for elections. It uses a mixed research design that applies inductive reasoning in the collection and analysis of data from six communities of rural Armenia. Data-collection instruments include in-depth interviews, focus groups, field observations and community survey. Whereas the study considers various theories of motivation and ambition, the conclusive evidence shows that the attractiveness of office at the local-government level in smaller rural communities is not driven by financial considerations and is rather compelled by the desire to make a difference motivated primarily by personal interest in and dedication to bringing positive change in the quality of life in one’s own community. The study also shows that motivators oft en stem from several other factors, including one’s deep-rooted connection with the community, lineage, length of term in office, record of community satisfaction, resultant personal power built over the years in service and the need to be acclaimed by one’s own community. A derivative closely linked to the priority of building the personal reputation of an incumbent mayor is the resultant power of decision-making. These conclusions can be explained using the model offered by Besley and Ghatak (2005) where politicians view public service as a personal mission. This study connects personal drive to sense of community and ancestral presence. The study also explains why mission accomplishment is more attractive than personal profit-making and how the sense of community and ownership are linked to personal drive.

Many countries have carried out extensive amalgamation-related territorial reforms at the level of local self-government and created relatively large municipalities. The Czech Republic is one of the few remaining European countries with a fragmented territorial structure. There is a lot of discussion in the country about the need for amalgamation, but this discussion is mainly based on political arguments rather than on empirical evidence about the feasibility of amalgamation and its potential to improve local government performance. This paper analyses economies of scale on the local level as a factor that should be reflected in debates about the pros and cons of amalgamation in the Czech Republic. To add to the existing knowledge about the reality of economies of scale on the municipal level in the Czech Republic, we processed the municipal costs of three selected areas on a representative sample of municipalities in the South Moravian Region. The analysis showed that economies of scale can be identified for collecting local fees and for pre-school and elementary education, but not for local administration. Our results suggest that the existence of too small municipalities in the Czech Republic results in inefficiencies and should be addressed.

The role that a strong civil society plays in socio-economic development is a subject of major scholarly attention today. Many benefits from having a strong civil society are reported in the literature. There is, however, no generally accepted view regarding how capacity-building efforts can help to develop a strong civil society, especially in the Central and Eastern European countries.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand the causal mechanisms existing between capacity-building efforts, a strengthened civil society and socioeconomic development. This case study suggests that a Hungarian local government did appear to strengthen associational activities in its community. Using process tracing, the research identifies specific factors that lead this village to take these uncommon steps, and it assesses the implications for civic life.

The focus of this article is on the coordination of civil-service training in a decentralized civil-service system. The Estonian case is studied. The article investigates network-based coordination, analyzes the power sources of the central coordinator and discusses the opportunities and limitations of creating coherence through network-type cooperation. The article concludes that the key power sources for the central coordinator are financial, human and technical resources paired with knowledge, leadership and commitment. The case study shows that, in a decentralized civil service system, a common understanding on training and development can be fostered by intense collaboration through networks.

Interdisciplinary definitions of corruption perceive corrupt actions as contrary to legal and ethical standards affecting the public interest, perpetrated by a person in public office. The main goal of the study is to identify the factors of corrupt acts in the public sector stemming from the economic, political, cultural and social environments in the Slovak Republic. Through the Delphi method we verify the relevance of economic, political and cultural-social factors of corrupt acts in the public sector defined in the theoretical framework of this issue. The Delphi method was used under the following conditions: the anonymity of experts, feedback control and statistical determination of a consensus of experts. Expert evaluation of the factors underlying corrupt behaviour in the public sector enabled us not only to detect the overall relevance of the factors, but also to identify areas where corruption in the public sector is most widespread, according to experts. We can state that the most problematic areas include the judiciary and the police.

This study tests whether decentralized leadership influences the efficiency of running selected cultural institutions, specifically museums in the Czech Republic. For the analysis, data from 2015 from 187 museums spread around the whole Czech Republic are used. The method for the evaluation of efficiency is data envelope analysis, and for identifying the influence of decentralized leadership, a regression analysis is used. Museums established by municipalities reach higher efficiency than museums established by regions and central government. The causes may be found in the ability to better estimate the local demand as well as in the rational behavior of municipalities that prefer a cost-minimization strategy. The benefits of decentralization cannot be seen only in the field of finance but also in reinforcing local traditions, trust and the effects of social capital that is generated by a strong regional cultural identity.

Management by objectives (known also as performance management) has been perceived as a promising steering method in the public sector since the beginning of the 1990s (Smith 1993, 1995; Kravchuk and Schack 1996; Ballantine et al. 1998; Ferreira and Otley 2009Verbeeten 2008). However, working out operative goals of public organizations seem to be a challenge because major objectives formulated by politicians are oft en unclear and difficult to measure (Rombach 1991; Lundquist 1992; Gray and Jenkins 1995; Lapsley 1999). It is known that public organizations’ services like school, health care, welfare care, collective transportation, infrastructure and cultural services are usually unprofitable. The Transportation Service for the Disabled in the Municipality of Gothenburg is an exception. It fulfilled most objectives and achieved a profit of 7,890,000 SEK for 2013, while the planned one was scheduled at 5,000,000 SEK. Maybe performance management used as the steering model caused that result but the criticism targeting management by objectives suggests that this method hardly can explain such a positive result. Brorström et al. (2005) and Grönlund and Modell (2006) argue that in Sweden management by objectives is usually used in combination with other control models. The purpose of this study is to describe and explain why the Transportation Service for the Disabled succeeded in 2013 and to provide practitioners nationally and internationally with some pragmatic ideas how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. We ask three sub-questions: How were the operative goals created within the Transportation Service for the Disabled? How were the operative goals followed up? What can be learned from this case study? The research is based on the analysis of state regulations, internal policy documents, reports and interviews with key respondents. The study shows that the performance management systems (PMS) in combination with a new organizational culture based on SMART solutions, mutual cooperation among staff, with local politicians and other stakeholders resulted in the increase of efficiency and even partly effectiveness. However, these findings deserve further research if there are other public administrations that succeeded because of using PMS and friendly organizational culture.

Civil-service reforms in Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) in the last decade have focused on various tools that would decrease politicization and increase the professionalization of civil service, in other words introducing a merit system in the civil service. At the same time, there was a need to attract professionals from practice into the civil service to design and implement other necessary sectoral reforms. Different countries have undertaken different trajectories of reforms. To some extent, Slovakia responded to these challenges and introduced HR reforms in civil service in order to streamline the recruitment and motivate young qualified candidates, reduce high turnover and create senior civil service, such as the “fast stream system” and “nominated civil service”. However, these had only limited success. The creation of functioning human-resource management system and approaches is undoubtedly the main area of failure in civil-service reform, not only in Slovakia but in most CEE countries. This paper seeks to understand these reforms from a historical institutionalist perspective, emphasizing the influence of institutional (communist) legacies on current empirical patterns.

Although knowledge management has become the subject of an enormous quantity of articles and books in recent times, certain more problematic aspects of it remain neglected. Firstly, literature addressing knowledge management concentrates almost exclusively on business organizations and fails to provide details or recommendations adequate to effective application within the sphere of public administration. This holds especially true for Czech academic literature. Secondly, despite a reasonable number of articles on knowledge management in scientific journals, information about perceptions of knowledge-management activities, procedures and tools within organizations lacks detail. The purpose of this article is to investigate and summarize the activities, procedures and tools in use for dealing with knowledge within Czech self-governments and to discuss the main empirical findings. Although the quantitative survey herein does not provide fully representative data, it is still in a position to indicate that knowledge management in Czech public administration tends to be underdeveloped as well as undervalued.