Persistent public management reform: an egregore of liberal authoritarianism?

This paper explores how we may better understand public administration and public sector management reform. We often interpret our world through stories and this allows us to mentally map where we have been and where we are going to. The paper explores developments in understanding public awareness and that of policy-makers and its impact on policy. It uses the financial crisis and reforms implemented 10 years on to illustrate the points and explore the use of the term ‘egregore’ as a tool for understanding change. A mature free economy requires a strong state to balance deregulation for economic growth with regulation for the public good, necessitating improved policy capacity and good governance. It also needs public administrations staffed with competent, honest officials skilled in the art of statehood. The story of the financial crisis, and how we got there, conveys how to avoid future dangers.     

Problems of Ethics in Public Sector Management

This article draws attention to some of the effects of new public management on questions of ethics. It does not argue that there was some past golden period when all was right in the context of public sector management but that it is important to consider how moral standards were appreciated and applied in official work in a previous period, how difficulties arose, what they were and how they were resolved. In the contemporary context it is important to understand what difficulties are currently arising, to ensure that the ethical dimensions of public sector work today are appreciated, and to suggest that new approaches should be considered if previous provisions are no longer adequate or practicable.     

From New Public Management to New Public Governance? Hybridization and Implications for Public Sector Consumerism

This paper examines how variations in the notion of public sector consumerism become embedded in diverse governance practices. To this end, we extend the literature on public governance logics with insights from research on public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector management reforms. Through a comparative, multi‐level analysis we trace the development of two governance logics largely corresponding to the distinction between New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) in Swedish transport infrastructure policy. In contrast to research predicting or prescribing a relatively radical shift between such governance logics we show how they partly co‐evolved along two reform paths entailing notable variations in the degree of hybridization and the embedding of consumerist notions in emerging governance practices. In doing so, we draw attention to how the hybridization of governance logics is contingent on the alignment of diverse interests and differences in the process through which such logics are brought together. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research into public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector management reforms.     

Institutionalising multiple accountability logics in public services: Insights from Australia

This paper reports on a field study of how a range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational forces shape the evolving rhetoric and practice of multiple accountabilities in public services. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective, we carried out a qualitative field study in the Australian Commonwealth Public Service involving semi-structured interviews, two focus group discussions, and the examination of internal accounting, management reports, and government archival records. The findings suggest that emphasis on conventional instrumental mechanisms and reporting tools, such as budgeting and accrual-based reporting, support managerial (instrumental) accountability through compliance logics. We conclude that an emphasis on public (relational) accountability through public dialogue is central to the public sector accountability debate, and that more attention needs to be paid to the question of how to balance the dual logics (instrumental and relational) in public services. The findings provide practical insights for public sector managers, policymakers and governments responsible for designing and implementing reforms, accounting tools, and accountability practices.     

How can the public trust charities? The role of performance accountability reporting

Charities rely on public trust to exist. However, that trust has diminished, with a perceived lack of accountability seen as a key reason. This study draws on case studies of two New Zealand charities to examine their performance accountability reporting practices and potential implications for public trust. The findings surface the day‐to‐day agency of charity actors in shifting performance accountability practices towards modes of disclosure that are relevant and accessible to the public. This paper contributes to the literature by extending understandings of how charities produce accountability information that can enhance public trust and, thus, support their mission achievement.     

Integrating human resource accounting into the public policy process: An illustration

Traditionally, public policy formulation has been accomplished through political compromise. In recent years, growing public pressure for austerity and accountability in the use of public resources has made the analytical approach to policy formulation and evaluation increasingly important. This exploratory study illustrates how the human resource accounting model can contribute to an objective and systematic evaluation of a complex public policy issue. The study considers the attrition of commissioned officers from the U.S. Army as a loss of human resources and examines the relative investment in human resources from two primary sources of commissioning. This type of systematic analysis provides valuable information for the policy maker in making logical decisions on human resource development.     

A critique of the influence of globalization and convergence of accounting standards in Fiji

The globalization of the world's economies has inevitably brought with it moves to establish a single set of financial reporting standards. Prima facie, the formulation and promulgation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) is concealed behind reified icons of ‘relevance’. This paper adds a new dimension to the international accounting debate by discussing themes of regulation, public and private interests, from a critical perspective. Specifically, this paper examines the reasons for the willingness to accept IFRSs in Fiji. A critical conception of ‘relevance’ and ‘accountability’ is developed to demonstrate how the needs of private interests’ are met in adopting the IFRSs. This paper demonstrates that in this process of convergence, the influence of these private interests – multinational enterprises and large international accounting firms – can lead to a transfer of economic resources in their favour, wherein the public interests are usually ignored. The paper offers suggestions on how public interest might be best served within the current financial reporting system and how, in principle, the needs to report both globally and locally can be reconciled.     

Public Sector Downsizing: An Introduction

Authorities throughout the developing world are turning to downsizingin an effort to reduce budget deficits and address the inefficienciesengendered by state-led development strategies. Because large-scaleinvoluntary dismissals are often politically difficult, a voluntaryapproach to reductions in public sector employment is increasinglypopular among developing-country governments, multilateral organizations,and donor countries. This article (and, more generally, theresearch project on Public Sector Retrenchment) attempts tosketch a protocol for public sector downsizing that takes intoaccount the costs and benefits for the workers and the economy. After reviewing the international experience with downsizing,the article addresses five questions: how to identify the redundantworkers, how to predict their losses from separation, how todesign compensation and assistance packages, how to assess thefinancial and economic returns to downsizing, and how to dealwith downsizing in one-company towns. Based on the answers tothese questions, a decision tree is proposed.     

The economics of misreporting and the role of public scrutiny

This paper examines how the ex ante level of public scrutiny influences a manager's subsequent decision to misreport. The conventional wisdom is that high levels of public scrutiny facilitate monitoring, suggesting a negative relation between scrutiny and misreporting. However, public scrutiny also increases the weight that investors place on earnings in valuing the firm. This in turn increases the benefit of misreporting, suggesting a positive relation. We formalize these two countervailing forces–“monitoring” and “valuation”–in the context of a parsimonious model of misreporting. We show that the combination of these two forces leads to a unimodal relation. Specifically, as the level of public scrutiny increases, misreporting first increases, reaches a peak, and then decreases. We find evidence of such a relation across multiple empirical measures of misreporting, multiple measures of public scrutiny, and multiple research designs.     

Consumerism and control: evidence from Swedish central government agencies

This article examines whether the control practices associated with public sector consumerism, such as devolved performance management and accountability, enhance organizations' responsiveness to customer needs and preferences. The research highlighted the need for trade-offs between resource allocation and customer needs and how this affects rationing of services. This is a serious dilemma as the public sector comes under the dual pressures of the consumerist movement and a tightening funding situation.     

Fulfilling its promise? Strategic public procurement and the impact of equality considerations on employers’ behaviour in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Public administration is an important force influencing equality in today’s society. Like budgetary choices, public procurement has increasingly gained attention as a means to promote equality. Yet, there are important gaps in knowledge, especially regarding how equality requirements in public procurement affect company behaviour. This paper sheds first light on the impact strategic public procurement has on employers’ behaviour. Based on empirical research, this paper highlights that companies perceive a limited prevalence of equality stipulations in Scottish public procurement practices and raises doubts about the impact of public procurement practices to create a successful business case for equality.     

Coping with austerity: innovation via collaboration or retreat to the known?

This paper explores new approaches to the management of public sector austerity through collaborative innovation. Practitioner-based insider research offers an insight into how collaborative innovation can work in the public sector, what undermines it and what impact the active management of a turbulent environment can make to outcomes. A flexible action framework—modelling collaborative innovation—offers a practical means of understanding and supporting effective innovation through collaboration.     

Overlapping tax revenue,soft budget,and rent seeking

This paper investigates how the soft-budget constraint with grants from the central government to local governments tends to internalize the vertical externality of local public investment by stimulating local expenditure when both the central and local governments impose taxes on the same economic activities financed by public investment. The model incorporates the local governments’ rent-seeking activities in a multi-government setting. The soft-budget constraint is welfare deteriorating because it stimulates rent-seeking activities, although a soft-budget game may attain the first-best level of public investment.     

Budget repair or budget spectacle? The passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10

Strategic planning processes use budgets to implement control and accountability. However, budgets can also be used to generate support for strategic decisions, for example by creating a political spectacle. A political spectacle is a problem engineered to have a specific political impact. This paper investigates politicians’ use of a state budget as a political manoeuvre to defend strategic decisions regarding public employee unions in Wisconsin. The analysis shows how the 2011 state budget in Wisconsin was used to create a political spectacle to generate support for eliminating collective bargaining for public workers, especially public (state) school teachers.     

Going-Public and the Influence of Disclosure Environments

This paper analyzes how differences in disclosure environments affect the firms choice between private and public capital. Disclosure requirements prescribe to what extent the firm has to release private information that may lead to the firm incurring proprietary costs. We examine which firm types go public in equilibrium, and how the equilibrium outcomes change with changes in the disclosure environments. Our findings show that in a partial financing equilibrium, should such an equilibrium exist, good firms finance privately. This result is robust to changes in the disclosure environment.JEL Classification: G32, M49     

Models of mandate in public audit: An examination of Australian jurisdictions

This paper examines, compares and contrasts three competing models of the performance audit mandate in public audit in Australia, namely the traditional organizational model, the public functions model and the follow the money model. The paper discusses the application of those models in Australian jurisdictions and raises legal issues pertinent to their effectiveness and scope and considers how they enhance accountability for the expenditure of public funds.     

税负归宿问题研究趋势与展望

从西方财政学的视角来看,要确定某项税收的归宿到底有多少,是一个非常复杂和困难的问题,也正因为如此,在西方财政学及公共经济学领域,税负归宿理论的研究一直吸引着众多学者为之付出不懈的努力,本文对西方各大学派的税负归宿（Incidence Tax）思想进行了梳理和总结。在此基础上,对我国近年来的税负归宿理论思想进行分析,通过国内外对比研究,揭示国内研究的局限性,并在此基础上提出研究展望。     

Global trends in the treatment of local public entities in distress: A principled approach

This article presents the findings of a global study on the treatment of local public entities in distress conducted in 20 jurisdictions across the world. It sets out to detail and analyses how different national insolvency law systems treat local public entities in distress. The main purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for a harmonised and principled treatment of these entities. The key priority of the recommendations proposed in the study is to ensure the continuity of essential public services without necessarily deviating from the established insolvency principles of collectivity and equality of treatment among creditors.     

Performance measurement systems in public service networks. The what,who, and how of control

This study explores the concept of a network Performance Measurement System (PMS) and how it helps in terms of what is being controlled in the network, which exerts control and how this control is achieved. In analyzing PMSs, the distinction was made between their hierarchical and their socializing components. An exploratory case study was carried out on a public service network in charge of a local public transport. Findings from the case study are used to reach a preliminary conceptualization whereby network PMSs are systems consisting of three main building blocks activated on demand by three main network actors and where there is coexistence and blending between hierarchical and socializing practices.     

The contracting out of legal services within the public sector

From 1979, successive Conservative governments were determined to introduce private sector management approaches into the delivery of public services. This article reviews the managerial and structural changes since 1979 and proposes an initial typology through which to interpret them. The article concludes by raising issues concerning how far these changes have reflected or diluted the Government's policy objectives and how far the changes have been to the benefit of the various stakeholders involved in the provision of public services.