Švaikauskienė, Simona

The purpose of this paper is to explore internal management, advocacy and partnerships of interest groups with the aim of representing their interests in public policy formation with a view to developing a stakeholder typology. This qualitative study involves eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews with representatives from stakeholder organisations acting in Lithuania’s higher education sector. The developed typology, which includes the analysed factors of capacity (organisational capacity, learning capacity, partnership capacity and advocacy capacity), comprises a description of three levels (strong, medium and weak). The suggested typology is a tool that could be used by public institutions to assess the capacity of stakeholders.

Piliečių ir interesų grupių įtrauktis tampa demokratinio valdymo atskaitos tašku, kai gausiu piliečių dalyvavimu sukuriama individualizuota vertė, leidžianti piliečiui pasijusti viešojo valdymo rezultatų savininku. Produktyviai įtraukčiai realizuoti dalyvių institucionalizavimas yra būtina įtraukties sąlyga, kurią realizuoja interesų grupės. Monografijoje unikaliais tyrimais (interesų grupių kiekybinė apklausa, atvejų analize, kokybiniais interviu bei darbo grupių valstybės institucijose socialinių tinklų analize) tiriamos interesų grupių kolektyvinio veikimo praktikos ir valstybės institucijose suteikiamos įtraukties prieigos. Knygoje pasiūlomas interesų grupių pajėgumų modelis, grindžiamas penkiomis pajėgumų rūšimis: vidinio valdymo, operacinių ir analitinių, advokacijos, partnerystės ir gebėjimų spręsti visuomenės problemas. Interesų grupės tampa pasiruošusios dalyvauti viešųjų sprendimų procesuose, kai sukaupia tam tikrus ribinius pajėgumus, nuo kurių priklauso interesų grupės įgalinimas, tapatybės tolydumas, darnūs kolektyviniai veiksmai.

Findings. The obtained results showed that investigated associations are rather democratic organizations according to their internal management and decision making practice. However some of the investigated associations should put more effort in education and training activities of the members. After the analysis of the conducted interviews it is obvious that a sufficient amount of the data is collected. Indicators of the participation maturity have been analyzed and verified. Research limitations/implications: The analysis is based on the data collected from four associations of the higher education sector. However the information about the principles of the inner practice could be more reliable if more representatives of the associations would be interviewed. Practical implications: The participation maturity indicators are tested and could be used for creating and estimating the representation maturity index which might be used by the official bodies of the government selecting reliable associations which might be included in the public policy formation processes. Originality/value: The originality of the paper is that the participation maturity indicators are used for analysis of the associations.