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The literature has revealed auditors' going concern risk disclosures are examined in research as a homogenous risk class. This is despite the various going concern modifications auditors are entitled to give pertaining to this issue. A five‐level risk class is established in this paper derived from Australian Auditing Standard pronouncements to examine the appropriateness of auditors' going concern reporting relating specifically to the likelihood of firm failure.

Time is necessary to reveal the appropriateness of going concern reporting therefore a longitudinal research methodology was adopted. The research focuses on all Australian listed companies within the building industry in 1989 and follows all of the reporting of going concern by auditors and directors through until 2007. The building industry was selected because of its volatility, which increased the possibility of going concern reporting allowing a more in‐depth focus in the research. All auditors' going concern modifications were examined along with all indications of going concern problems identified by directors. To properly investigate the appropriateness of auditors' reporting, all sampled audit reports were examined using Altman's Z‐score model which were matched with a risk class model using the relevant requirements to report in order to determine the appropriateness of the auditors' and directors' opinions.

The level of under reporting of going concern risk by auditors (75 per cent) implies they are more affected by the agency relationship found in literature than directors who are found to have an incidence of underreporting of 57 per cent.

Literature classifies auditors along with directors as part of the agency problem. Altman's Z‐score bankruptcy prediction model is used because of its enduring nature, reliability and ability to be externally calculated to independently compare the going concern reporting performance of auditors and directors as part of the contribution to this research area.

The paper for the first time examines going concern reporting at a multi‐risk level rather than the binomial level used in research previously. The approach is developed in this paper using auditing pronouncements. These risk levels are linked with an independent measure being the Altman Z‐score to determine the appropriateness of auditors' and directors' reporting of going concern issues.

The goal of this chapter is to analyse the decisions of the Croatian Competition Agency in the field of grocery retail mergers in the 2004–2009 period. In particular, various criteria used by the Competition Agency to evaluate grocery retail mergers are identified and discussed.

Using the comparative approach the author attempts to detect the relevant sources for certain solutions embraced by the Competition Agency by examining especially the relevant practice of the European Commission as well as relevant decisions adopted by some competition authorities in EU member states.

The grocery retail market in Croatia has seen a flurry of mergers since 2004 with the largest competitor spreading to various local markets. For the Croatian competition authority this merger wave has perhaps been the biggest challenge since its inception. In the face of growing market concentration, the authority saw fit to shift from initially providing green light to duly notified transactions to subsequently addressing serious competition concerns by ordering a number of remedies. The Croatian competition authority relied extensively on EU acquis when deciding on specific merger cases, especially as regards the relevant market definition.

The value of the chapter is reflected in the fact that this kind of comparative analysis of Croatian merger cases in the field of grocery retail mergers was not available before. It is especially in the light of the accession of Croatia to the EU, as foreseen on 1 July 2013, that this kind of study becomes useful both for domestic but also EU audience.

The International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) is a joint endeavour involving eight countries, and aims to facilitate the sharing of best practices and to provide support and collaboration for leaders of mental health services to develop robust and effective managerial and operational practices. The ultimate aim is to improve services for people who use them. An article from the IIMHL is included in every issue of The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services.This paper describes the key learning outcomes that came from the examination of the experience of eight American community‐based agencies that altered their service practices from an exclusive reliance on group and fixed models of service, to models of service that were exclusively individualised for the entirety of the people they served. It examines the key lessons learned as to what drove this process and what did not, as well as what some of the critical comparative outcomes were. A significant core factor cited repeatedly was values‐based leadership from within the agency concerned and a key result was that individualised services for every person served were very cost competitive in the systems they were in.

The involvement of politicians in the introduction and use of financial management techniques in the public sector deserves more attention. This paper analyses the influence of members of Parliament (MPs) on the development of financial management regulations for Dutch central government executive agencies.

This paper uses desk research and analyses formal evaluation reports, as well as minutes of meetings of Parliament to analyse the influence of MPs on the changes in financial management regulations.

MPs' influence on the change of prescriptions seems to have been small. The authors observe that modifications were most often already formulated in general evaluation reports by the Ministry of Finance, in advance of parliamentary debates. The analysis also reveals that the criteria to be met by the executive agencies became more detailed in the initial years of the agency model and became more global in recent years.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the influence of politicians on financial management regulations.

The paper shows that the influence of MPs on the prescriptions is quite small in daily practice and therefore, their role in the legislative process, as far as financial management techniques are concerned, is limited.

The results show that politicians are both in charge of, as well as subject to NPM-inspired financial management regulations, whereas their influence on the rules is small. The authors advise to further analyse this, as well as to explore how their role can be enlarged.

The interplay between politicians and financial management techniques in general, and the influence of MPs on the legislative process in specific, is an underresearched area. This paper aims to contribute to this literature and shows that the influence of MPs on the development of financial management regulations is limited. Several changes were made in these prescriptions in a period of more than 25 years, whereas discussions in the Parliament hardly played a role in these modifications.

Posits that collaboration in the UK is either recommended as good practice or enshrined within legislation as a necessity. Chronicles that there has been a sustained growth in the number of formal and informal collaborative relationships between state agencies and market, voluntary and community sectors, as well as within and between state agencies themselves. Uses illustrative case study materials drawn from the authors’ research and consultancy experiences, particularly in the areas of inner city community based mental health, urban regeneration, policing, and child and adolescent mental health. Concludes that research has extensively been drawn on to illustrate the dilemmas that regularly arise when attempting to implement this policy objective.

Under the British Government’s current plan, the devolution of authority for civil service pay will be complete in 1996, with all departments and agencies receiving control over the pay of their employees. The process of pay delegation began some years ago with selected Next Steps executive agencies. What lessons does the progress of the Conservative administration’s pay reform programme hold for the future? In examining the success that the government has had so far with delegation of pay to executive agencies, centres on primary research involving a postal survey of executive agencies and in‐depth interviews with several agency human resources directors. Provides an insight into the shape that pay reform is likely to take as further devolution occurs. Reform is unlikely to be either as rapid, coherent or concerted as the government would like. Concludes that while there is little question that change is occurring, its pace has not kept up with the government’s deadlines, and its form is only partially in line with the government’s stated objectives. Identifies several factors explaining the slow progress, most importantly: the internal inconsistencies among the government’s pay reform objectives; the uncertain environment in which many agencies are operating; agencies’ lack of resources; and a failure to take account of the institutional context.

This paper aims to explain why public sector performance reporting that emphasises external accountability may turn out differently from the official stated aims.

Using a comparative case method, two different accountability innovations are examined using framing and overflowing ideas.

The accountability reports became bureaucratic communications between the reporting and central agencies. The reports were transformed because the performance reporting produced a number of overflows and reduced the importance of broad audiences (e.g. citizens). These overflows resulted from the central agency reformers' preoccupation with cost cutting opportunities and the reporting agencies' presumption of the reformers' real purpose. In the resulting interactions, the accountability purpose ended up being mostly reduced to disclosure of traditional input and output measures and some insignificant stories designed to avoid public criticism of the accountability reform but also to hinder others in identifying objects for cost cutting.

To conduct international comparative research is logistically challenging, but provides the best chances of understanding the systemic aspects of accountability reforms that contribute to the reforms' observable and perplexing outcomes. Ideally, it would be interesting to study such reforms over their full lives; however, they may be longer than the researchers' careers.

Accountability purposes are disturbed by classical cost cutting thinking. Thus, despite many ostensibly good ideas of creating transparency for the public, other stronger forces may severely hinder such accountability developments. Concepts of framing and overflowing may be used to better understand the outcomes of accountability innovations; this can be extended beyond the public sector.

Provides useful information on why public sector performance reporting that emphasises external accountability may turn out differently from the official stated aims.

The chapter furnishes empirical evidence about the extent and profiles of autonomy of EU agencies, the modalities whereby they are steered and controlled, and the interactions they have in EU policy networks. It thus provides the bases for a more complete picture of the EU multi-level administration.

The research is a survey-based design. A questionnaire was administered between July 2009 and April 2010 to 30 EU agencies included in the study population. The questionnaire was sent to the executive director of all the agencies included in the study. Questions were closed-ended, either in the form of multiple choices – with one answer or with check-all-that-apply and an option for ‘other’ to be filled – or in scale format. The resulting data set included ratio, interval, ordinal, and nominal scales. The reference model employed for the investigation relies on the analytical model developed within the framework of the research project COST Action IS0651 CRIPO (Comparative Research into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization – see also ‘Acknowledgements’) for the study of public agencies in Europe (Verhoest, Van Thiel, Bouckaert, & Lægreid, 2012).

EU agencies display a rather low level of managerial, especially financial, autonomy; conversely, they enjoy relatively high policy autonomy. As to the way in which multiple ‘parent’ administration steer EU agencies, it emerges a composite picture, in which the crossroads of steering and control by the parent administrations and accountability by the agency lies in the executive director. In terms of interactions within policy networks, EU agencies interact in a significant way with the European Commission, with national-level agencies in the pertinent policy field, and with specific technical bodies where they are part of the configuration of the policy sector, whilst interactions with national ministries as well as with other EU agencies are rare. No single model can capture in full the overall features of EU agencies, although the ‘community level institution’ model seems to capture a number of the profiles of these agencies.

Both the literature on EU multi-level administration and research agendas in public management can benefit from inclusion of – and in-depth empirical knowledge about – EU agencies. The chapter provides important empirical evidence to these purposes.

EU agencies are actors in European public policy-making, albeit to a varied extent depending on the sector. The extent of autonomy and the way in which they are held to account are crucial aspects for an enhanced understanding of their influence on European public policy-making, as is their location in European policy networks.

Research presented in this chapter is the first systematic empirical investigation of EU agencies encompassing networking, steering and control and autonomy of EU agencies, based on primary data.

The City of New York was suddenly and deliberately attacked on September 11, 2001, killing thousands of people and leaving unbelievable destruction. Thirty-eight buildings and structures were destroyed or damaged, including seven buildings in the World Trade Center site completely leveled. Almost five years later, two very large contaminated buildings, Deutsche Bank at 130 Liberty Street and Fiterman Hall of Borough of Manhattan Community College, have yet to be cleaned up and demolished. Some 30 million square feet of commercial space was lost. Transportation was disrupted, including the loss of the World Trade Center PATH station, the 1/9 subway line and portions of Route 9A and Church Street. Cars were not allowed south of Canal Street for a week. For Americans this was a terrorist attack and a crime. It was a time for mourning losses and responding to disaster. There was the shock that something like this could happen. And there was more. The destruction of the WTC also posed competing environmental, economic and social threats.

The purpose of this paper is to examine supervisor perceptions of police integrity situations using the measurement of police integrity instrument. Additional survey questions focused on aspects of integrity of particular relevance within the study agency. The latter concerned that agency's on‐going legal arrangement with the federal government to address alleged sub‐standard patterns and practices of officer/agency performance.

In total, 478 sergeants and lieutenants from the study agency completed the survey instrument. This represented 97 percent of those asked to complete the instrument and approximately 60 percent of first‐line supervisors.

The results paralleled some aspects found in prior research, in particular that respondents cast themselves as having stronger integrity than their peers. Findings also illustrated potential weaknesses in efforts to enhance police integrity in light of federal intervention in the study agency.

The findings represented the first focused effort to replicate the measurement of police integrity instrument among first‐line supervisors. Such personnel were key figures in efforts to modify deficient patterns and practices, making them a prime focus for research consideration.

The skepticisms expressed by some supervisors illustrated issues worthy of consideration in future efforts to enhance integrity in police organizations. First‐line supervisors play key roles in shaping officer conduct, particularly in larger agencies. As such, more consideration needs to be given to the role they play in organizational change efforts.

In addition to informing scholarly understanding through the measurement of police integrity instrument, the findings are of importance in applied efforts to enhance integrity or otherwise modify police organizations.