Organisational Management Peculiarities of the Public Sector Referring to Sports as a Public Sector Example

Abstract

The article analyzes organisational management peculiarities of the public sector organizations, paying a special attention to sports as a public sector. The development of Lithuanian, as well as of the other postSoviet countries has caused sport system to go through the immense multimeaningful change. Structural changes inside the system, inside and outside judicial environment, the expansion of the market relations are an everyday success guarantee for every sport organisation. Dynamic development of sports requires timely and qualified decisions in a constantly changing environment of opportunities. The top sport manager plays an ideological role in the post-Soviet system. Top manager plays a crucial role in the modern sports world by putting his/her knowledge and capabilities to have the organisational goals met by striving for quality and meeting the needs of the members and market. The quest for higher performance by public organizations is a central and recurring theme in government policies and academic research (Boyne, Farrell, Law, Powell, Walker, 2003; Pollitt, Bouckaert, 2000). For complex and permanent modernization of public sector, a complex strategy of modernization is required (vision, mission, provisions, and concepts of modernization) (Skietrys, Raipa, Bartkus, 2008). An effective strategy formation capability is a complex organizational resource – a dynamic capability that should lead to superior performance (Slater, Olson, Hult, 2006). Although the notion of strategy has its origins in the military arena, strategic planning in recent years has been primarily focused on private sector organizations and much of the theory assumes that those in executive control of an organization have the freedom to determine its direction. Strategic planning is a means to an end, a method used to position an organization, through prioritizing its use of resources according to identified goals, in an effort to guide its direction and development over a period of time (Wilkinson, Monkhouse, 1994). Research on the general topic of organizational performance in the public sector is limited in quantity and quality (Boyne, 2003), so it is hardly surprising that the reversal of organizational decline has received little serious academic attention. Interest in the subject has come largely from practitioners rather than researchers (Borins, 1998; Moore, 1995). It is important to stress at the outset that public and private management are significantly different in several respects. For example, public organizations are generally more bureaucratic, public managers have less discretion over organizational missions and personnel, and the staff in public organizations is less likely to be motivated by financial incentives (Nutt, Backoff, 1993).