Abstract
The Administrative Dimension of Participation Culture in Local Service Supply: The Case of Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality
With the acceleration of the globalization process, the transformations occurred in the
administration approach. This situation revealed the necessity to use the administrative
dimension of the participation phenomenon more effectively and to implement various
participation mechanisms in this direction. This has changed the nature of the relationship
between the public service beneficiary and the service provider. With this case has passed
to a period that predicting for both the public and practitioners to actively participate
in the process of making administrative decisions and policy-making. As the incentive
of participation in the operates of public services started to be among the primary
objectives, local governments, which are qualified as the most suitable environments
for administrative participation, have become important units in terms of establishing a
culture of participation and ensuring its continuity. The aim of the study is to tackle the
concept of participation culture with its administrative, in other words, bureaucratic and
organizational dimensions. And to analyze both the perspectives on the participation of
the employees, who providing services work under the umbrella of the municipality at
the local level and how the culture of intra-organizational participation is shaped on the
basis of solidarity, cooperation and participation in parallel with the new administrative
approaches. In the study, method of field research was used as method. Balıkesir
Metropolitan Municipality was preferred as a field of application and a questionnaire
consisting of 5 demographic questions and 20 proposals was applied to 260 employees
working under the umbrella of the municipality. As a result of the research, it was
observed that the perspectives of the employees towards participation are positive and
there are some deficiencies, but their level of participation in the organization is open for
improvement. Accordingly, in the study, it was determined what could be done to solve the
problems by drawing attention to possible deficiencies regarding the internal functioning
of the organization, and suggestions were developed in order to establish a more effective
and democratic metropolitan tradition.
Keywords
Participation, Administrative Participation, Culture, Culture of Participation, Local Governments.
