Th e New Public Management movement regards citizens as customers and, accordingly, focuses on the quality of services provided by public-sector organizations. Since this approach negatively aff ected democratic values, there has been a shift of the focus from consumer satisfaction and quality of services to quality of governance. Th e latter implies the improvement of the relationship between government and citizens as active members of the community. Over the last twenty years, participatory budgeting (PB) has become a popular form of co-production intended to improve the quality of local governance. Th e aim of the article is to provide a comparative analysis of the use and role of PB in Croatia, Poland and Slovakia and to identify the models of PB used in selected countries. In order to compare the case studies of municipalities in selected countries, a qualitative analysis has been used and the classifi cation of PB models applied. Most analyzed local units use the "Porto Alegre adapted for Europe" model, but the "Consultation on public fi nances", "Representation of Organized Interest" and "Proximity participation" models are also represented. Th e main fi ndings are that PB indeed enables better allocation of public sources according to citizens' needs (various public services were delivered following the trend of social innovation and co-creation), but the problem lies in the low amount assigned for PB from public budgets and the relatively low interest of citizens to participate in the PB processes. PB might also bring certain risks linked with its implementation, e.g. misuse of the idea for political reasons or additional costs of projects delivered in the PB process.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has enabled the creation of tools to organize, transmit, store and act on information in digital form in new ways (Atkinson -McKay, 2007). Combined with the reforms of government and public administration in the spirit of New Public Management, many innovations are driven by ICT in the public sector. In this paper we focus on several ICT driven innovations from the perspective of eprocurement in the conditions in Slovakia. E-procurement carries out a number of stages of the procurement process, including search, sourcing, negotiation, ordering, receipt and post-purchase review. Thus it contributes to a more transparent and competitive environment in which government has to operate. We confront these theoretical presumptions in the analysis of selected cases of e-procurement use in Slovakia.
Ensuring the financial stability of non-profit organizations through financial decision in the structure of financial resources is influenced by many objective and subjective factors. However, a necessary presumption of financial stability is to reduce their dependence on one source of funding or in other words, the independence can be achieved by diversifying of the funding sources. And it is the diversification of financial sources and their acquisition through self-financing that we consider as an appropriate way to achieve financial balance and thus long-term existential security of nonprofit organizations. This scientific paper presents the partial results of a research of the current state of self-financing and diversification of financial resources of private non-profit organizations in the Slovak Republic. We analysed the primary data by the relevant scientific methods and procedures (selected mathematical-statistical methods, analysed in SPSS -Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). With the analysis we acquired a knowledge which allows us to formulate several solutions and recommendations for theory and practice. By presenting these conclusions we fulfil a scientific goal of the paper, which is to present partial results of research of current state of funding of private non-profit organizations and interpret the obtained outputs in an economic and social context.
The goal of the article is to find the answer whether it is possible to propose a model for fixing the best debt levels in the capital structure of non-profit organisations. Capital structure is an indicator that corroborates the level of financial risk. Non-profit organisations are an essential part of the general social policy. When considering the efficiency of non-profit entities from a donor perspective, it is important to take into account the way management uses the resources of a non-profit organisation as well as efficiency of that management activity. Non-profit organisation efficiency should be considered in the context of risk. One of the most important ways to increase probability to face financial distress is too high debt to equity relation. The paper illustrates the relationship between debt and equity in 1,560 Polish non-profit entities. The model which can fix optimal capital structure for a non-profit organisation in its current environment was delivered. The proposal of the paper includes a model which helps to find the optimal level of debt for non-profit organisation environmental conditions. The novelty of the model is based on the full costs of debt financing non-profit entities in the context of donor expectations, which in the Polish social and economic environment means that costs indirectly linked with the realisation of the main aim of the social entity cannot be higher than 10 % of the collected money sources. An additional point of our findings is that in comparison with the current state, Polish non-profit organisations need to improve their way of fixing capital structure.
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