1,720,993 research outputs found
Debate: The practical relevance of public sector accounting research; time to take a stand—A response to van Helden
Full text linkContrasting and explaining purposeful and legitimizing uses of performance information: a mayor’s perspective
Full text linkThis study looks at purposeful and legitimizing types of performance information use in local governments. Drawing on a survey of Austrian mayors who are at the politico-administrative apex of local government, the paper shows that purposeful and legitimizing uses of performance information coexist, but they appear to be negatively associated. In exploring the contextual and organizational conditions under which legitimizing uses prevail over purposeful ones, the analysis shows that oversight (coercive) and political (normative) pressures, hierarchical culture, and low-performance information availability foster the dominance of the legitimizing use type over the purposeful one
Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?
No full textThe recent economic and fiscal crisis provides an opportunity for learning lessons of general and practical relevance about how governments face shocks affecting their financial conditions. This article draws on the resilience concept to investigate the organizational capacities that are deployed and/or built by local governments (LGs) to respond to such shocks, looking at their combinations and interactions with environmental conditions. The article presents the results of a multiple-case analysis of 12 European LGs across Austria, Italy and England. The analysis allows us to highlight and operationalize different patterns of financial resilience, that is, self-regulation, constrained or reactive adaptation, contented or powerless fatalism, that are the result of the interaction and development over time of different internal and external dimensions
Risk Management in the Public Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Central Government Settings in France, Germany, and Italy
Full text linkIn recent years, public organizations have come under increasing pressure to implement comprehensive risk management (RM) systems that are based on international frameworks and standards. However, little is known about whether different countries have addressed this issue in their regulatory strategies and how they have done so. To address this gap, this study conducts a cross-country analysis and introduces and applies an analytical framework to compare the different RM approaches adopted by the central governments of France, Germany, and Italy. This comparison sheds light on the regulatory landscape in the three largest countries in the European Union and reveals the diverse RM frameworks with varying focuses, drivers, designs, and levels of integration. Although each country has unique nuances in its approaches, commonality is the primary perception of risk as a threat. This stance, although understandable in the context of financial risks, calls for a shift toward viewing risk as an opportunity, thus promoting a balanced approach that goes beyond mere compliance
Digitalization, accounting and accountability. A literature review and reflections on future research in public services
Full text linkThis study discusses the current state of the art and future directions of research on digitalization, accountability and accounting in public services. Through a systematic literature review, we investigate 232 articles published between 1998 and the first quarter of 2020. These studies are analysed looking at the implications of the increasing digitalization of the public realm for the i) production of data, ii) consumption of data, and iii) their subsequent effects. Based upon this analysis we identify the following emerging critical digital accountability issues and related future research avenues: the potential for dialogic and horizontal, multi-centric accountability; the blurring of accountability roles and boundaries; the increasing relevance of translation processes and translators’ roles - and the need to ensure accountability in such translations; the need to pay stronger attention to social equity and inclusivity implications of digitalization
A Global View of the Research-Practice Gap in a Public Sector Context
No full textThis book considers how the practical and public policy relevance of research might be increased, and academics and practitioners can better engage to define research agendas and deliver findings relevant to accounting and accountability in the public services. To do so, an international comparative analysis of the research-practice gap in public sector accounting has been undertaken. This involved academic perspectives from over twenty countries, and practitioner perspectives from leading international professional accounting bodies actively involved in the public services arena. It was found that research is valued for informing practice, but engaging at a high level of policy engagement has been primarily by a small group of experienced researchers. For other researchers the impact accomplished may not always be valued highly in the academic community relative to other, more scholarly, activities. The book therefore looks at how engagement and impact between academics and practitioners can be increased
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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