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The Image of Local Public Administrations in Transylvania Among Citizens: An Empirical Study

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Development, Growth and Finance of Organizations from an Eastern European Context

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Abstract

For many years, excessive bureaucracy and widespread corruption have been the major scourges of the public administration system. The reform in public administration created the need to rethink the entire public administration system, the services provided to citizens and the manner in which citizens are approached and dealt with. The major challenge lies not only in providing citizens with full access to various public services (waste management, street lighting, public security, education, health care, culture, etc.) but mostly in building a lasting relationship based on mutual trust and sympathy along with a reconsideration of the way in which the citizen is perceived by the civil servants. At the beginning of the new millennium, civil servants are expected to be kind and helpful to citizens, eager to help them solve their problems quickly and effectively.

Due to the European integration and to the need to make the entire decisional process more transparent at local and central levels, several aspects are becoming imperative in what concerns the public administration bodies, such as the necessity to make a good impression on citizens, to raise their interest, to grow awareness, to develop a mutually advantageous relationship and practically to gain people’s trust. Developing a positive image is all the more important as, regularly, by voting, people can sanction the behaviour of the public administration representatives. This is why, by facilitating the free and unimpeded access of citizens to various public services and by supporting them any time they need it, the public administrators lay the foundations for a long-term relationship with the former.

Aware of all problems and difficulties faced by public administrations in Romania, the authors of the present research attempt to identify the major aspects that public authorities and institutions must take into account when drawing up their general strategy for approaching the citizens. Based on the empirical research conducted in various types of localities in Transylvania, the authors pinpoint a number of pressing problems of the system and attempt to come up with workable solutions. The research actually bears great scientific relevance, demonstrated mostly by the scarcity of similar studies in this field, as well as managerial and practical relevance useful to decision makers within local public administrations in rethinking the entire public system and mostly in building a lasting relationship with the citizens.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0312.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Dan-Cristian Dabija PhD, Ciprian-Marcel Pop PhD & Raluca Băbuţ PhD

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  1. Dan-Cristian Dabija PhD
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  2. Ciprian-Marcel Pop PhD
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  3. Raluca Băbuţ PhD
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Correspondence to Dan-Cristian Dabija PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Griffiths School of Management, Emanuel University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania

    Sebastian Vaduva

  2. Griffiths School of Management, Emanuel University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania

    Ioan S. Fotea

  3. College of Business Administration, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio, USA

    Andrew R. Thomas

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Dabija, DC., Pop, CM., Băbuţ, R. (2017). The Image of Local Public Administrations in Transylvania Among Citizens: An Empirical Study. In: Vaduva, S., Fotea, I., Thomas, A. (eds) Development, Growth and Finance of Organizations from an Eastern European Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54454-0_2

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