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PNDL at the Crossroads Between Sociology, Public Management and Public Finance: Towards a Theoretical Approach

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Abstract

This study is about public organisations acting in a complex funding environment. Therefore, we draw on concepts and explanatory models from sociology, public management and public finance. Similar to other social science disciplines, there is also diversity within public administration as a field of study. A recent work on this concludes that nowadays public administration is placed at a crossroads, facing serious challenges between its diverse shades as a ‘vertical’ department in the university hierarchy and a ‘horizontal’ field with various cross-cutting academic organisational structures and boundaries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Organisational structure of the Ministry available at: https://www.mlpda.ro/uploads/articole/attachments/5ecbd73a4df0e817022890.pdf (date of access: June 16, 2020).

  2. 2.

    Further reference on the added value of sociology in the study of public organisations is available in Kelman (2007).

  3. 3.

    There are five levels of analysis included in the review. These are industrial/institutional, organisational, individual cross-level, and superordinate paradigm (Bansal & Gao, 2006, 467).

  4. 4.

    The relationship has been viewed as a contract between the voters as principal and the state (or municipality, county council, Parliament, etc.) as the agent.

  5. 5.

    Volume of the sample N=177 (Heinelt and Magnier, 2018, 162).

  6. 6.

    The key difference between type l (champions of decentralisation) is the small share of locally controlled taxes (Swianiewicz, 2014, 305). Further references on the characteristics of public administration in Romania in the European context in Thijs et al. (2018b).

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Monica Marin, A. (2021). PNDL at the Crossroads Between Sociology, Public Management and Public Finance: Towards a Theoretical Approach. In: Assessing PNDL. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82844-8_4

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