The Utilization of Benchmarking for Strategic and Project Management of Municipalities in the Czech Republic
Michal Placek, Milan Pucek, Alexandra Šimcíková

Abstract
In the public sector there is a significant aversion to strategic management (we defined it in our research as an everyday effort to reach long term and measurable goals) and particularly to benchmarking (structured comparison in order to find good practices) as well. The main aim of this article is to introduce the result of two studies focused on Czech cities:1) The benchmarking of project management and management of drawing of EU funds for municipal development,2) The benchmarking of integrated approaches to city development and it´s utilization by strategic management. The results are as follows: 1) the utilization of benchmarking was approved 2) several recommendations for cities were established, which were, in particular cases, implemented into practice 3) possible weak strategic orientation is very often connected with lack of interest of the responsible political representation in strategic management.

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