Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to examine the performance in terms of efficiency of six Polish municipalities associated in Local Action Group (LAG) “Polcentrum” with the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method

Marcin Walczak () and Edyta Marcinkiewicz ()
Additional contact information
Marcin Walczak: Lodz University of Technology, Poland
Edyta Marcinkiewicz: Lodz University of Technology, Poland

Problemy Zarzadzania, 2022, vol. 20, issue 96, 236-251

Abstract: Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to examine the performance in terms of efficiency of six Polish municipalities associated in Local Action Group (LAG) “Polcentrum” with the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Design/methodology/approach: Despite the specific character of their activities, municipalities are subject to the same assessment in terms of effectiveness and efficiency as private for-profit organizations. However, there are some differences between public and private sector entities with this respect. Helpful in such an issue can be DEA, which is a method especially suitable for the assessment of the efficiency of non-profit organizations, including local government units. Findings: Our analysis allows for concluding that the studied municipalities perform in fact quite uniformly in terms of their efficiency. Therefore, such results are in favor of the statement that due to close cooperation the units may become more homogeneous in terms of performance. Research limitations/implications: The employed DEA method does not allow for concluding whether this unification is associated with improvement in all the units. What needs to be strongly emphasized is that DEA calculates the “relative” efficiency, so it can show how well a given unit is doing when compared to other peer units, but not compared to a “theoretical maximum”. Originality/value: What distinguishes this study is that the administrative units under investigation are very closely related in terms of geographic location, but also in terms of extensive cooperation in LAG. On this basis, we pose a research question of whether such a close relationship translates into a similarity in terms of their performance.

Keywords: DEA; local government unit; efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://press.wz.uw.edu.pl/ems/vol20/iss2/12 (application/pdf)
http://pz.wz.uw.edu.pl/en (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sgm:pzwzuw:v:20:i:96:y:2022:p:236-251

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Problemy Zarzadzania from University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().