engleski

ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY GOVERNMENT – PRESENT OR FUTURE?

European Commission fosters the economic and social development of the European Union at the regional and urban level to which it intends considerable funding in the present and upcoming EU budget, and devise different urban initiatives. The capability of the city governments to exploit these opportunities depends on numerous issues in each EU member state. For instance, the Republic of Croatia does not prescribe legal obligation, nor does it directly encourage monitoring users' satisfaction, and/or the city performances. Furthermore, it has a low level of decentralization and independence, and a high level of urban fragmentation, so the enhancement of competence, efficiency, and efficacy of the Croatian city government, strongly rely on endogenous resources and understanding the necessity to improve local public services procurement. The concept of entrepreneurial orientation which has been already proven in the business sector and promoted for a few decades by new public management doctrine may be a way to accomplish these goals. The purpose of this paper is to empirically prove that the entrepreneurial orientation of the local public sector can facilitate the process of meeting the needs of public service users, in an innovative, proactive and (acceptable) risk-taking manner. These three components represent the salient dimensions of the entrepreneurial orientation construct used in this research. A survey of mayors and professionals in city governments in Croatia proved that a medium level of entrepreneurial orientation exists. The results of a correlation and regression analysis revealed that there is a statistically significant and positive link between more entrepreneurially oriented city governments and their organisational performances, and public services users' satisfaction. Furthermore, cluster analysis demonstrated that there is a significant difference between city government levels of entrepreneurial orientation and accompanied city performances. The research results indicate that Croatian city governments are not sufficiently capable of finding innovative solutions to local public services procurement issues, as well as for future urban challenges.

City governments, Entrepreneurial orientation, New public management, Multivariate analysis, Performances

nije evidentirano