Cooperation In Delivery Research Articles

Municipal Solid Waste Management in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia

Abstract Contracting waste management services is one of the most commonly used approaches to the delivery of this service and this topic is clearly in the focus of frequent academic research. The goal of this article is to examine trends in the area of solid waste collection and disposal on the municipal level for the Czech Republic and Slovakia in terms of developments over the past 20 years with a focus on the share of inter-municipal cooperation in the delivery of this service. In contrast to Western European countries, which are undergoing re-municipalization, the data obtained for Slovakia and the Czech Republic over 20 years show that the municipal solid waste management service is dominated by contracting, which has increased over the examined period. This fact is apparently a reflection of the high rate of fragmentation in municipal structures and the low willingness among municipalities to cooperate. The data obtained also indicate that using external suppliers seems to bring marginal savings that could certainly be substantially larger; potential increases in efficiency via contracting are unequivocally limited by the low quality of contract management. Regarding our core question, we found that the proportion of inter-municipal cooperation between service delivery modes did not significantly increase during the investigated period. The experts interviewed almost uniformly agreed on three critical limits related to the issue of inter-municipal cooperation in MSW management delivery – transaction costs of different types, non-existent regular comparisons of best solutions, and limited motivation to select optimal service delivery modes.

SMEs’ Internationalization Strategy in Export Creative Industry: Case Study from Kendang Djembe Creators at Blitar, East Java, Indonesia

This study aims to: (a) describe the internationalization strategy of SMEs in the export-oriented creative industry of Kendang Djembe, Blitar, (b) identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threaths of the internationalization process of the export-oriented creative industries of SMEs, especially in the Kendang Djembe industry in Blitar, East Java. Indonesia. The approach used in this study is a SWOT analysis with an internal-external matrix (IFAS & EFAS) to 4 SMEs, which are 10 key informants of exportir Kendang Djembe in Blitar. The results show that Kendang Djembe Creative Industry SMEs in Blitar have good strengths and opportunities in improving their international processes. Based on internal and external factors, these SMEs are in a growth position (in caution condition). Thus, the suitable internationalization strategy to be developed are the SO, ST, WO and WT strategy, that are: adding online marketing networks (or other collectors), diversifying products beyond the main product, optimizing the role of associations related to product delivery cooperation, improving technology skills through training or independently learning and lobbying the government regarding the ease of export policies conditions.

Assessing the economic and environmental benefits of horizontal cooperation in delivery: Performance and scenario analysis

Assessing the economic and environmental benefits of horizontal cooperation in delivery: Performance and scenario analysis

Localising Welfare-to-Work? Territorial Flexibility and the New Deal for Young People

The move towards workfare and active labour-market policies is often alleged to be closely associated with the decentralisation and localisation of welfare delivery and agencies. In the United Kingdom, the New Deal for the young unemployed was designed to introduce local flexibility and discretion in delivery to mainstream labour-market policy. We use case studies of five local areas to examine the extent to which the programme has actually been decentralised and benefited from ‘local flexibility’. We categorise the arguments for policy decentralisation under four main rationales—improved policy learning and adaptation, stronger partnership building, more innovation, and greater resource targeting—and examine the achievements and limitations of the programme under each. We argue that, although the contractualism of the New Deal has allowed a certain degree of local discretion and cooperation in delivery, there have been strong standardised bureaucratic and financial constraints on the real extent of territorial flexibility. Although the limited decentralisation achieved has yielded some of the predicted benefits, the centralised nature of labour-market policy in the United Kingdom is proving resistant to change and, paradoxically, the programme is producing uneven results across the country. To conclude, we consider whether more local flexibility would be sufficient to improve the performance of the programme.