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Copyright of Revista del CLAD Reforma y Democracia is the property of Centro Latinoamericano de Administracion para el Desarrollo (CLAD) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article describes how the socio-spatial context and institutional factors affect the outcomes produced by greenways. Using the case study approach, it analyses the design and management of two long greenways in Spain: the Girona and Ojos Negros Greenways. Even though the spatial context is relevant, institutional factors have a prominent role in the success of the Greenway. If the greenway is designed and constructed by a single existing stakeholder, it is easier and quicker, but if more stakeholders are involved and there is a specific institution for greenway management, the greenway obtains better long-term outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterraneos is the property of Taller de Estudios Internacionales Mediterraneos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of 3C Empresa is the property of Area de Innovacion y Desarrollo, SL and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper presents an innovative empirical application to assess the efficiency of regional tax offices in Spain. The existing evidence about the performance of those administrative units is still limited; thus, our aim is to contribute to extend this line of research by incorporating three relevant issues into our empirical analysis. First, we consider the number of complaints against tax authority decisions as a quality measure of tax management. Since the evaluated units should aim to minimize the number of complaints, this variable represents an undesirable output; thus, we define a model that is adaptable to the special features of this unconventional output. Second, our empirical analysis covers the period 2005–2014; thus, we can analyze the productivity change across this 10-year period including different phases of the economic cycle. Finally, seeking robustness, we use enhanced versions of the Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index and the Luenberger productivity indicator that allow us to overcome some of the drawbacks suffered by the original approach. The results obtained with both indices are very similar and indicate that during the evaluated period tax offices suffered a slight worsening in terms of productivity, especially during the years previous to the economic crisis (2005–2008). This regression was mainly due to the technical regression experienced by the majority of units during those years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this article is to provide empirical evidence on the energy efficiency measures currently being implemented by primary and secondary schools in Spain, to attempt to identify the characteristics that could explain the different levels of adoption and to propose public policies aimed at the promotion of energy savings. Using the information provided by the Observatorio del Centro Educativo Español (2011), which delivers data for 1 969 public, private and charter Spanish schools, it has been found that the adoption of energy efficiency measures in schools is positively correlated with other indicators representative of the economic management competence of the school, and that levels of adoption of energy efficiency measures are much higher in private institutions. This conclusion of this first study holds after controlling for the influence of other variables related to the adoption of such measures, including the size of the centre, the year in which the last reform was carried out, the geographical area and the average temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista del CLAD Reforma y Democracia is the property of Centro Latinoamericano de Administracion para el Desarrollo (CLAD) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since 2000, urban regeneration programmes in Spain have progressively involved greater integration and complexity. As a result, the management of the regeneration process has taken on greater significance. One of the determining factors has been rehabilitation companies. The paper examines the impact of their characteristics on the implementation of the programmes. A comparison of the 22 companies in operation in the Basque Country of Spain shows that more integrated approaches are considerably greater in those municipalities in which the companies are operating. Supra-municipal organizations are more effective than municipal ones in small-scale poly-nuclear urban systems such as the Basque Country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All European countries face the challenge of protecting a growing number of people in dependency situations as a result of increased life expectancy and ageing rates. Each country's response is determined by its social welfare model. On the basis of the differentiating singularities of Spain and Romania, this article makes a comparative analysis of both social policies of assistance to dependent people between those two countries, as well as the public management of social protection for people in need of long-term support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to our understanding of the autonomy, control and management of public agencies in Spain, based on managers’ perceptions of their financial and operational capacities as well as their mechanisms of accountability. Its findings derive from the opinions of senior officials of Spanish public agencies, gathered through a survey conducted between July and November 2013. The survey is modeled on an international collaborative project (COBRA) that aims to analyze the processes of agencification among public administrations in different countries. The results of this study suggest that managers of Spanish public agencies enjoy a high level of autonomy. The results additionally show that agencies perceived as more autonomous tend to be more accountable towards their respective parent ministries. The study thus conclude that the implementation of the public agency model has not reduced the level of accountability and transparency of public administration in Spain, but, on the contrary, has contributed to encouraging the emergence of a new public manager profile more concerned about the importance of being accountable for its activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain cross-regional policy variation? That is, how can we understand different policy outcomes within similar institutional and organizational settings? Scholars have recently reflected on the new institutionalist explanatory pitfall involved in assuming a causality link between institutional factors and policy outcomes and argue that such link needs to rely on evidence from policy variables. On this line, recent contributions have built a causal model that links types of institutional change to types of actors' roles and strategies, within particular contextual and organizational scenarios that favor or hinder their emergence. This paper pursues this explanatory interest by applying this model to the analysis of how decision-making by two regional governments in Spain has led to different institutional and policy change outcomes in the same policy sector, namely, public management reform in healthcare. This study confirms the explanatory relevance of the model's key variables, but provides evidence of how some of them may be reinterpreted to provide a dynamic explanation of their influence on the process and outcome of institutional and policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen Spain and many other developed countries move more and more into outsourcing public service management on the grounds that production costs are higher in the public sector than in the private. However, there is often no empirical support that this is always the case. This paper shows that the private sector is not always more economical or better managed than the public one and, to the best of our knowledge, such a study had never been made in Spain. It draws on a survey by the Spanish Court of Auditors for a sample of municipalities, which analyzes public services like drinking water supply, street lighting, street cleaning and urban solid waste collection. Only in the case of lighting is private management cheaper and more efficient, although in larger municipal populations the opposite is true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore what performance management tools are implemented in practice in Spanish local governments and whether they have led to an improvement in public management and accountability. We also analyse the usefulness of performance reporting, comparing it with that of accrual financial reporting. The results show that most of the entities that have introduced performance indicators do not use them for decision-making or accountability. After two decades of reforms in financial and management systems, financial directors still consider that budgetary reporting is the most useful, basically because the control of expenditure is still based on the budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the light of the traditional and contemporary analysis of patient satisfaction, our work is oriented toward the construction of a model that ranks the various components of the satisfaction to claim their use in the hospital management. Our model gives special attention to a number of what we call intangible factors that generally have not occupied a major place in the hospital management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies and assesses the planning and management of the food supply and wholesale distribution system in Barcelona, as well as the factors that have allowed for its growth and consolidation as one of the most important wholesale food markets in southern Europe. On the basis of this analysis, the article discusses whether it is possible to adapt this system to other territories. The study involved a documentary review of the entity since its creation until the year the research project was carried out: 1971-2008. That information was supplemented with direct observation of the entity's activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politica y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas (RIPS) is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The search for improvements in the management and quality of public services seems to be a constant in all public administrations, and there is an ever-increasing use of management techniques and models from the business sector. The aim of this paper is to show which management systems are being used by Spanish local governments to improve their management in terms of economy, quality and the environment. Our analysis is based on a questionnaire sent to Spanish local governments about the tools they use and the factors that influence their implementation. The results show that more efforts are necessary to implement performance measurement and total quality management, but they also show some positive aspects, such as the usefulness of performance measurement and its application to decisions in those local governments that have implemented it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism & Management Studies is the property of Escola Superior de Gestao, Hotelaria e Turismo, Universidade do Algarve and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Spain's Public Administrations have come to regard information as an indispensable resource that they need to manage. Since the second half of the 1990s, most of the regional governments have approved different modernization plans which tacitly or explicitly refer to information management in setting out processes of internal administrative reorganization and of information dissemination to their citizens. The present work is structured into two parts. The first reviews the main modernization policy plans put into effect by the La Rioja Regional Government — the Modernization Plan of the Autonomous Government (1995-1999), the Strategic Quality Plan of the La Rioja Government (2000), the Strategic Plan for the Knowledge Society (2000), and the Directive Plan of the La Rioja Foundation for the Knowledge Society. It also mentions some of the normative regulations issued by the Regional Government. The second is centred on a study of the evolutionary process of the set of town councils of La Rioja from 1997 to 2002. This study forms part of a wider study that has analyzed the penetration of the Internet as a tool for the town councils of all of Spain in providing corporative information services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to analyse the process of integration of health care implemented in the public health system (Osakidetza) of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV), and assess whether the steps taken to date have helped or hindered the work of health personnel in times of COVID-19. Based on a case study, an assessment is made of the way in which certain tools of the integration process have been applied, if they have worked well and if they have led to better management of the pandemic.For the purpose of this study, a qualitative methodology is chosen consisting of a case study and in-depth interviews with health personnel at the front line of the integration process and the fight against COVID-19.This study makes two fundamental contributions. First, it analyses the health integration process in recent years in the public health system of the Basque Country. Second, it gathers the perceptions of different agents related to the Basque Health System of the way in which the tools of the integration process implemented in recent years have worked during the pandemic, detailing the positive and negative perceptions in this regard.Our conclusions offer a series of strategic recommendations linked to comprehensive patient care and the use of tools related to teleconsulting: the unified medical record, electronic prescription, and non-face-to-face care channels.

It is often asserted that public management of healthcare facilities is inefficient. On the basis of that unproven claim, it is argued that privatization schemes are needed. In this article we review the available evidence, in Spain and other countries, on the application of private management mechanisms to publicly funded systems similar to the Spanish national health system. The evidence suggests that private management of healthcare services is not necessarily better than public management, nor vice versa. Ownership-whether public or private-of health care centers does not determine their performance which, on the contrary, depends on other factors, such as the workplace culture or the practice of suitable monitoring by the public payer. Promoting competition among centers (irrespective of the specific legal form of the management arrangements), however, could indeed lead to improvements under some circumstances. Therefore, it is advisable to cease the narrow-minded debate on the superiority of one or other model in order to focus on improving healthcare services management per se. Understanding that good governance affects health policies, the management of health care organizations, and clinical practice is, undoubtedly, an essential requirement but may not necessarily lead to policies that stimulate the solvency of the system., (Copyright © 2013 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)