| Abstract [eng] |
Cultural services can contribute to the development of an active civil society. Non-governmental organizations are seen as those who feel the pulse of the society and can respond to the different needs of society members. On the other hand, it is questioned whether NGOs have sufficient capacity to provide services, highlighting the challenges of accountability and strategic planning. The approach to NGOs as a service provider is relatively new in the world – the provision of services was entrusted only to state institutions, and later, for the sake of efficiency, actors from the private sector were involved. Today, service delivery is seen as a joint activity enriched by actors from different sectors. In the strategic documents established in Lithuania, the desire to include cultural NGOs in the provision of services is repeated, but in practice, a limited increase in the diversity of cultural service providers is observed. This study "Increasing the diversity of cultural service providers in Lithuania by including NGOs: challenges and opportunities" aimed to answer the question of what factors could explain this discrepancy. In order to answer the research question, the following tasks were foreseen: first, based on the works of academics about the opportunities and obstacles of intersectoral cooperation, to construct a theoretical basis for the research and to formulate hypotheses. Second, to construct a research instrument that enables testing the proposed hypotheses. Third, to analyze legal documents and other information relevant to the study, to conduct semi-structured interviews and content analysis of interview texts. Finally, to assess what factors hinder the increase of the diversity of cultural service providers in Lithuania. During the research, the possible influence of 6 independent variables was tested: legal regulation of the phenomenon of NGO provision of cultural services, the perception of the benefits of the NGO phenomenon of cultural services provision by municipal representatives, the attitude of municipal representatives towards the abilities of NGOs to provide cultural services, financial and human capacities of NGOs and NGO networking. The conducted research revealed that, in Lithuania, the limited increase in the diversity of cultural service providers can be associated with the insufficient awareness of the benefits of the NGO phenomenon of public service provision by municipal representatives. In the case of Vilnius, on the contrary, it was observed that the representatives of the municipality see the value of the services provided by NGOs and trust the abilities of NGOs to provide services, in practice they seek to create conditions for NGOs to compete for the opportunity to provide cultural services. In the case of the Vilnius city municipality, two hypotheses related to two mutually influencing factors - the financial and human capacities of NGOs - gained an equally strong explanatory power. In future research, it is recommended to study the situation in other Lithuanian municipalities, in order to better understand the limited increase in the diversity of cultural services in Lithuania. It would also be useful to assess the links between other forms of cultural service provision and the limited increase in the diversity of cultural service providers. Both Lithuanian and global academic literature lacks research that analyzes the challenges and opportunities of increasing the diversity of cultural service providers, including NGOs. The research aimed to comprehensively evaluate both the legal environment of the state and the factors related to the public sector and the non-governmental sector. The conducted research contributes to the academic debate, which raises questions about the capacity of NGOs to provide services to the public, as well as to research examining the tension between NGOs' social mission and economic efficiency and the compatibility of these aspects. |
