Entrepreneurial and Innovative Practices in Public Institutions

This volume discusses the importance of adopting entrepreneurial and innovation practices in the public sector, as mechanisms for detecting, dealing with and including citizens' social needs, with a reflection on positive determination of their quality of life. It focuses on critical reflection and rethinking the articulation between the dimensions of transformation - entrepreneurship and innovation - of New Public Management (NPM). In this way the book contributes to deepening knowledge about the implications of this change in the organizational paradigm of the public sector for citizens' quality of life, which is treated multi-dimensionally here, including citizens' well-being, purchasing power, happiness, trust, safety, experience and satisfaction.

The volume constitutes a reference guide for decision makers, managers and policy makers engaged in the public sector who want to differentiate their performance by fostering entrepreneurial and innovative practices in the scope of public administration that can enhance citizens' quality of life. This volume is also a reference guide for scholars, policy makers and practitioners interested on public innovation.

João Leitão is Assistant Professor at UBI, lecturing on entrepreneurship and economics for undergraduate and graduate economics, engineering, communication sciences, marketing and management students since October 1, 1999. He is associate researcher of the CEG-IST, University of Lisbon. He is co-author of fourteen books on benchmarking, human capital, clusters, cooperation networks, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, firm growth, innovation and competitiveness. He won the Best Paper Award of the Interdisciplinary European Conference in Entrepreneurial Research - IECER 2012. His work has been published in several indexed journals, such as, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Service Industries Journal, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, International Review on Public and non-Profit Marketing, International Journal of Business Excellence, International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialization, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, South African Journal of Information Management, International Research Journal of Finance and Economics, Actual Problems of Economics and Revista Portuguesa de Estudos Regionais. He is member of several editorial boards, namely, Journal of Small Business Management, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, Revista Portuguesa e Brasileira de Gestão and Revista Portuguesa de Marketing. His research interests include: entrepreneurship; innovation; market dynamics; and public policies.

Helena Alves is assistant professor at UBI, Portugal. She has a Ph.D. in Management and she has been doing research in the area of public and nonprofit marketing. Her areas of expertise include Customer Satisfaction, Services marketing, Tourism marketing and public and nonprofit marketing having authored and co-authored several articles and book chapters on this topics. Currently she is editor of the International Review on Public and nonprofit marketing. She is member of several editorial boards, namely, the Service Industries Journal, the Journal of Business Excellence, Service Business, Contemporary Research on Organization Management and Administration, Journal of Service Science and Management, Portuguese Marketing Review among others. She has published some articles in The Service Industries Journal, Total Quality Management, International Review on Public and non-Profit Marketing, Management Decision, Journal of Educational Management, and Services Business, among others. She is president for Portugal of the International Association on Public and Nonprofit Marketing.