Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the perceived downward accountability and transparency of two public services – water supply and sewage and local road maintenance – in the Sarajevo Canton in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).Design/Methodology/Approach: An opinion survey[1] on a sample of 250 respondents and four binomial regressions were conducted to measure the factors that affect the perceived downward accountability and transparency of the two public services.Findings: The results of binomial logit regressions indicate that in terms of perceived accountability and transparency of water supply and sewage, significant variables include gender, education, and satisfaction with the price the respondents pay for such service. Significant variables for perceived local road maintenance accountability include satisfaction with regular and winter local road maintenance, while for perceived transparency an additional significant variable is education.Academic contribution to the field: Although publications and literature dealing with the implementation of New Public Management in developed countries are plentiful, this is not the case in transition countries. The paper examines the case of the Sarajevo Canton and contributes to the research of perceived downward accountability and transparency. It may serve as a basis for further studies on public sector management in other local communities or small transition countries.Originality/Value: The paper contributes to the limited empirical literature regarding the perceived accountability and transparency and suggests ways to improve such.
Highlights
The academic interest in and literature that deals with the public sector performance and public sector management has had an exponential growth among researchers worldwide
The theory itself originates from the need to reform the public sector and public administration under Thatcherism that extended into New Public Management (NPM) under plural state (Osborne and McLaughlin, 2005, p.19)
It is known that when economists test and measure the efficiency of provision of public goods and services, two approaches can be implemented (De Borger and Kerstens (1996): single public service efficiency measurement and the measurement of the overall governments’ efficiency from a global perspective. We focus on the former by evaluating the perceived downward accountability and perceived transparency in two public services, water supply and sewage and local road maintenance, both provided as local public services
Summary
The academic interest in and literature that deals with the public sector performance and public sector management has had an exponential growth among researchers worldwide. The theory under the New Public Management (NPM) behind the empirical testing was first introduced by Hood (1991) in the UK and in the rest of the world The theory itself originates from the need to reform the public sector and public administration under Thatcherism that extended into NPM under plural state (Osborne and McLaughlin, 2005, p.19). Based upon the analysis of the availability and contents of a sample of 100 public companies and their web sites, the authors conclude that a significant number of public companies do not have a web site and the websites of those that do are poor in quality of the available data, which implies low levels of both accountability and transparency
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