Page 11 - Proceeding 2015

PROFIROIU Constantin Marius and SORRENTINO Daniela FAMP

BENCHMARKING IN ROMANIAN AND ITALIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: A TOOL FOR SCORING CCASP
OR LEARNING?

Nevertheless, just as many other ingredients of the NPM receipt, the benchmarking tool has been
sometimes mimetically imported from the business world, reproduced in different countries, without
achieving its potential benefits for the public sector (Siverbo and Johansson, 2006). In particular, what
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
emerged from the international experience is that the benchmarking has often been implemented as a
mere scoring system, rather than as a learning opportunity (Kuhlmann and Bogumil, 2015). As a matter

of fact, Tillema (2010) maintains that, according to the informational needs, the benchmarking one may
represent a managerial tool connected to different functionalities, more or less likely to imply
performance improvements, sometimes turning to dysfunctional rather than improving changes.

This leads us to argue that something is missing in the (not immediate) link between the benchmarking
adoption by LPAs and its related benefits. At the same time, the lack of a deeper understanding of the
benchmarking approaches in the public sector prevents from assessing whether and how the

benchmarking private experience could be fruitfully translated into the public sector, ultimately leading to
the expected performance improvements.
30 th – 31 st October 2015 ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” Bucharest understanding the ways in which managerial tools for LGs are conceived, welcomed and implemented.
In this respect, the institutional context, as defined above, is expected to play a fundamental role in

In other words/to sum up, the extent to which the benchmarking can represent a managerial tool
offering potential solutions to LGs to improve their performance –mainly in terms of efficiency and

effectiveness- depends on the way LGs themselves approach it. As long as it works as a scoring
system, dysfunctional rather than beneficial changes are likely to occur. At the contrary, when it is
conceived as a learning opportunity, then this private idea may work for perf improvement. The

prevailing information needs – as expressed by the institutional context- would make the difference in
opting for the former or the latter approach.

4. METHODOLOGY

In order to assess the benchmarking approaches of Romanian and Italian LGs, as connected to their

institutional background, we plan to empirically gather data by means of a survey. Precisely, the
instrument for our data collection is a questionnaire, to send to a large number of municipalities in both
countries. For a matter of comparison, considering the average size of Romanian and Italian

municipalities, we include in our sample those ones with a number of inhabitants higher than 1,000.

The identified respondents might be the municipal managerial bodies. As for Italy, these are the
Secretaries General, who are in charge in a middle position between the political and executive bodies

of the municipalities, being appointed by the Mayor and exercising managerial functions.

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