| Abstract |
This article focuses on managerial aspects of zoological gardens (ZOOs), using the data from ZOO Jihlava, middle sized ZOO in terms of the Czech ZOO market. ZOOs in the Czech Republic have undergone considerable quantitative and qualitative changes in the last two decades. Still, their management is frequently far from optimal, which may result in weak strategies, undeveloped standardized processes or ambiguous performance indicators. Although the majority of Czech ZOOs are non-profit organizations, substantially dependent on external funding, they urgently need to arrange gradually increasing part of their budget from other than public resources. Consequently, also these institutions are forced to search for profitable activities and report financial performance to multiple stakeholders. From the managerial viewpoint, ZOO is vaguely structured organization with multivariate nonlinear performance function, combining both qualitative and quantitative aspects, i.e. money and utility. Such complexity, emphasized with unique mission and inherent structural variability, makes the generally nontrivial task of ZOO management also risky. Managers must tackle, with limited resources, serious challenges, such as maintaining a satisfactory balance between running the ZOO as a tourism business or recreational, educational and research institution, generating sufficient finance and funding to cover demands of the animal collection or attaining cultural status on the basis of their conservation work. To improve and help to solve this difficult situation we propose a viable perspective to the ZOO stakeholders by designing a dynamic model of particular zoological garden. This research was realized in the following steps: (i) Literature review on contemporary ZOO management, (ii) Analysis of ZOO performance factors and design of appropriate generic performance architecture using strategic mapping and causal loop diagramming and (iii) Design of typical scenarios and their computational modelling in system dynamics language. We found that availability of interactive planning tool helps ZOO managers to design their basic performance cycles, including fundraising, development of necessary capacities and skills, and service provision accountable and sustainable. Thus they can, for example, plan required capacities in time, estimate the right time for professional training or efficiently maintain portfolio of services. Such approach represents not only an innovative viewpoint to the planning and decision making support in this area, but serves also a transparent communication platform, conveniently extending the existing possibilities of managerial tools in ZOOs. |