engleski

Valorization of Management Innovations in Croatian Local Government

Non-technological innovation as a research area are under-represented in relation to technological innovation. The dominant technological aspect of innovation has been facing some criticism because it does not fully consider innovation in services and ignores many important non-technological elements of innovative organizational activities. Non- technological innovation are related to organizational restructuring, human resources and ways of management. Moreover, they are often found to be causally related to technological innovations. The concept of management innovation, as a distinct type of non-technological innovation is still in its infant phase in research formulation and confirmation, and that especially refers to the context of research in the public sector. Generally, management innovations as a special type of non-technological innovations represent creating and implementation of new management practices, processes, structures or techniques. The purpose and objectives of this paper are to define the initial concepts in the study of management innovations in the public sector taking into account the specificities of public organizations and existing studies that have dealt with this special kind of innovation in the public sector. In the wake of the previous research, typology of management innovations was proposed, which was empirically tested in the context of local government, whose role was recently further emphasized by actual public administration reforms aimed at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, and often through implementation of new methods and management concepts. Research results based on the conducted factor analysis shows that the variables structural and procedural management innovations are evaluated as reliable and appropriate measuring instrument of management innovations. These results imply that it is meaningful to further carry out research in the field of management innovations along the lines of the resulting typology, and which may result in valuable findings, considering that it is useful to observe management innovations as a factor and a precondition for easier and more successful implementation of changes, which are inevitable in Croatian local government and what can result in greater rationalization, efficiency and ultimately higher quality of services.

Typology of innovations ; Management innovation ; Public sector ; Local government

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