Decision-making in public and nonprofit management – international contributions.

Decision-making is the choice of an action from several existing alternatives, taking into account overarching goals. It always depends on individual goals and conditions. Goals can be financial and material goals. Prerequisites are mainly material requirements and legal restrictions. Decision-making processes have been intensively studied in the practice and theory of business management.

In terms of public and non-profit management, the situation is much more complicated: content objectives are predominant. As a rule, the goal is cost recovery rather than profitability. Stakeholders replace shareholders. The decision-making therefore seeks to reconcile interests.
The content-related goals and public tasks of a public or nonprofit administration are determined by topic-related and spatial decisions. These are multi-dimensional and should not be biased.

Based on several scientific contributions, this book contains a number of different articles and approaches to decision-making in public management, which were presented, discussed and collected by international experts at the 16th international symposium 2019 in Mannheim/Speyer (Germany).