The Procedure for Managing Customer Complaints as an Element Improving the Functioning of Administrative Bodies:The Case of the Social Assistance System in Poland

Purpose: The aim of the article is to diagnose the functioning of municipal and poviat organizational units of the social assistance system from the perspective of the system for collecting and managing complaints from clients and beneficiaries using questionnaires. Design/Methodology/Approach: This work is interdisciplinary in nature, and the content contained in the article is embedded in legal sciences and management and quality sciences. The first part of the article analyzes literature sources in relation to complaints as an element affecting administrative bodies and the addressees of complaints. The second part analyzes the complaint management system in the context of measuring results in social welfare units in the context of the concept of New Public Management. Using the method of cooperative research from the action research group, the analysis of data obtained as a result of the research process covering the entire country was discussed. The study was conducted based on the research tool on a selected research sample consisting of managers and employees of 2,573 municipal (OPS) and 328 (PCPR) poviat local government social welfare organizations. As a result of using the Participatory Action Research method, a separate set of shaping indicators was determined for each aggregate, creating indexes, which gives the scale used in the discussed construct a multi-index form. The significance level was 0.05. Findings: The empirical part of the article contains original research obtained among managers and employees who are helpful in the field of social and district assistance to help families in Poland, using one of various cooperative research methods, i.e. Participatory Action Research (PAR). Practical Implications: The conducted research process was nationwide, and the presented conclusions will provide information on the extent to which social welfare organizational units in Poland use the system of collecting complaints from clients in order to carry out activities to improve the implementation of social policy at the level of district and municipal government. Originality/Value: As a result of the analysis of aggregated research results, it should be concluded that the units have systems for collecting and managing complaints from customers and beneficiaries using questionnaires during the implementation of tasks. It should also be noted that all respondents from both OPS and PCPR confirmed the existence of a complaint management system to a similar extent. The obtained results and research analyzes in the context of opinions on the level of existence of systems for collecting and managing customer complaints and their differentiation due to the age and seniority of managers and employees of the organization.