Sborník 2009 díl 2. - Fakulta informatiky a managementu - Univerzita ...

Renata Przygodzka PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF REGIONS
The concept of publicness stems from two concepts. The first one, deriving from the
public choice theory, explains publicness through public goods, while the other, based
on politics theory, derives understanding of publicness from public interest [8, p. 170].
It is defined as an organizational bond with the public sector stemming from, among
other things, the character of tasks, responsibilities or from shaping the society's welfare
[1, p. 337]. In other words, it is a set of characteristics, which differentiate public
organizations from private ones. Publicness understood in this way manifests itself in
four dimensions, meaning the specific relations with the environment, different goals,
structure and values [6, p. 89-96].
The specific relations with the environment consists of greater complexity (the
recipients of public goods and services are differentiated social groups and other
organizations), greater openness towards the influences of the environment, less stable
environment (public organizations operate in specific markets, usually monopolistic or
oligopolistic in nature).
Public organizations also differ from private organizations in terms of the specific band
of goals. They usually are collective in nature, they regard special categories, such as
justice and responsibility as well as often they are imprecise and equivocal, which is the
consequence of both susceptibility to politics and differentiations of the needs of
numerous groups of clients.
The third area of manifestation of publicness is the organizational structure. In public
organizations it has a significantly more formalized nature, which is confirmed by the
strictly specified procedures of the decision-making processes, which lead to low
flexibility of the aforementioned processes and to low tendency towards taking risk.
With regard to the above one may conclude that the characteristic of public
organizations is undoubtedly greater bureaucracy and significantly lower autonomy of
managers, compared to private organizations.
Public organizations are additionally characterized by the specific system of values of
their managers. Studies conducted throughout the years and by various teams have
shown that the hierarchy of public organizations' managers covers, above all, the lower
meaning of material motivation, more frequent public interest acting motivation and -
from the necessity stemming from the specific decision-making process - lower
involvement in the organizational activities.
Aside from the show characteristics stemming from publicness, public organizations
undoubtedly differ from private organizations in terms of the means of financing,
controlling operations and functions. A great majority of public organizations uses
public property in their operations and are financed mainly from public funds. Thus,
they are subjected to different control mechanisms, which is mostly political rather than
market in nature, and thus public organizations to a significantly greater degree are
prone to various conflicts, the basis for which is responsibility towards tax-payers and
public goods' and services' users. It stems from the special conditions of public
organizations' operations, in particular:
− monopolistic position typical for many organizations;
− serving regulatory functions;
− affecting the quality of life by providing public goods and services;
− imposing taxes and obligatory benefits in order to collect funds etc.
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