A popular model for evaluating efficiency is the dependence “resources-costs-results”, whose characteristic feature is the separation of the role of resource security and the costs of increasing efficiency from management.
The following three factors are defined in R. Likert’s model for effective organization:
- internal organizational factors, including the formal structure of the organization, the economic structure and social policy, the professional qualification of the staff;
- intermediate variables, such as human resources, organizational climate, decision-making methods, the level of trust in management, ways to stimulate and motivation for action;
- result variables, such as growth or decline in labor productivity and income, degree of satisfaction of consumer demand, etc.
Social efficiency a result of a complex interaction
In such an approach, efficiency is born as a result of a complex interaction between various factors, among which the dominant position is occupied by human and socio-environmental factors.
The approach according to which efficiency is assessed by the degree of protection of the balanced interests of the state and society deserves attention. The work of the state apparatus can be recognized as effective only if it successfully solves the problem of optimal protection of the interests of the population, social groups and everyone. In this dual task, the most important aspect is the notion of the efficiency of the state apparatus. According to this approach, efficiency is expressed in the expansion of opportunities for active civic life of every citizen, society and the efficiency of the state. It is determined by a well-functioning system of activity of the state bodies, by their ability to legally realize the state interests, to implement the state policy for social and public development.
Another point of view is that which connects the efficiency of state activity with the presence or absence of an optimal paradigm for administrative and political management. It is about opposing the traditional technocratic paradigm for political governance with the new – participatory one.
In general, the authors directly link the efficiency of state activity with the presence in it of bureaucracy that actually serves society. And this is the bureaucracy, which: is under the real control of society; expresses the interests of social progress; it is minimal in its quantitative and qualitative parameters.
This statement is based on the internal contradiction of the bureaucracy between the broad public goals for which it is created and its closely corporate interests, which tend to dominate.
How can social efficiency criteria be defined?
According to some authors, the criteria for the effectiveness of social governance are as follows:
- the degree of conformity of the directions, the content and the results of the activity of the management structures and of those its parameters, which are determined by the functions and the status;
- in the legality of the decisions and actions, corresponding to the management structures and the users (recipients, beneficiaries);
- in the reality of the influence of the management activity on the condition and development of the management objects;
- in the depth of reporting and expression in management decisions and actions on the specific and complex needs, interests and goals of people;
- in the nature and volume of the direct and “feedback” relations with the beneficiaries, or in other words – in the democracy of the activity;
- the degree of authority of the decisions and actions of the management structures;
- the truthfulness and appropriateness of information transmitted to management structures and beneficiaries;
- influence of the management activity in relation to the external environment.
Every action, every social phenomenon or quality, including social efficiency, is characterized by quantitative and qualitative aspects. And although these two sides of the object exist in inseparable unity and interconnection, yet these are different characteristics of the social reality around us. In the scientific literature it is accepted that the qualitative side of the obtained result (effect) is denoted by the term “criterion”, and the quantitative – by the term “efficiency indicator”.
Other studies offer a slightly different interpretation of the term “criterion for social efficiency”, considering it in terms of the relationship between quantitative and qualitative definition of the studied and evaluated object. On the quantitative side, the criterion appears as a method, an instrument, a reference measure for movement to the desired result, and on the qualitative side, as an opportunity to separate “positive sides, forms of this movement in space and time”.
For all the differences in the understanding of the term “criterion” in the indicated approaches, there is a unity of meaning. In addition, their synthesis gives us a new, deeper understanding of the social nature of social efficiency.
Thus, the “efficiency indicator” (quantitative criterion) fixes the objectified and integral, mainly quantified, (for example in terms of the natural volume of social goods and the time interval for their provision) assessment of the achievements of the social system of each rank.
The “efficiency criterion” (the qualitative criterion) is more focused on the study of the internal mechanisms for achieving the given result, including the degree of limitation and the so-called activation of the human factor, as a condition for self-development, effective activity, social cost. of what has been achieved, the degree of its limitation, etc.
This distinction is essential and important for the development of the system for evaluation of social activity.
Whatever the magnitude of the effectiveness of the functioning and developing social system, it is always the result of the actions of all factors of the system in their entirety, presented as an integrative performance. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that no matter how extraordinarily effective the activity of the individual factors in the social system may be, its high efficiency can be ensured only by the corresponding quality of the systemic social interaction. It originates as its irrevocable organic property, serves as a common algorithm and a universal motivational mechanism for the activity of all factors in a given system.
