Search results

This study evaluates the effect of transparency measures on public procurement efficiency, focusing on Thailand’s Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST). This study aims to understand its impact on the country’s public infrastructure procurement practices.

This paper analyses Thailand’s government construction procurement data, focusing on budgetary savings and CoST process participation. Budgetary savings are this study dependent variable, while the main intervention variable is the adoption of the CoST data disclosure standard. This study uses multiple linear regression, fixed-effects model and propensity score matching with the logit model for a comprehensive analysis.

This study shows that using the CoST data disclosure leads to notable budget savings in Thai public construction procurement. With CoST’s introduction, the savings rose by Baht 9.6m, and even with added controls, the savings remained significant at around Baht 3.3m. The savings consistently stay near 5% across different models. The propensity score matching method confirms these results, consistent with factors such as open bidding and agency categorisation.

This study might not capture all benefits, especially non-financial ones. Thailand’s unique context and potential biases in data sources also need consideration.

CoST evidence backs Thailand’s procurement transparency. This study recommends broadening CoST, streamlining online platforms and promoting digital public engagement. Training stakeholders and partnering with state-owned enterprises and local agencies is vital to align with CoST and mitigate risks.

This study shows a clear link between transparency from information disclosure and budget efficiency in public procurement, using data from Thailand. It highlights the potential of transparency measures in developing countries.

Literature about transparency in public-sector organizations has been attracting the attention of scholars for the last two decades. This study reviews the existing literature with the intention of creating a description of the state of the art, categorized by geographical areas, levels of government, topics, and methodologies.

The authors have developed a structured literature review following a rigorous protocol. The initial search was launched on 25 April 2022 on Scopus and Web of Science, resulting in 3,217 articles. After removing duplicates and studies that did not meet all the inclusion criteria specified in the review protocol, the final sample includes 956 articles from 1991 to 2021.

The analyses show a considerable increase in studies since 2005, especially in the last two years, when 30% of the publications have been produced. Most of the studies analyze the national/central level of government. Many authors compare different countries, while other scholars focus on specific countries, overall, the USA and the UK. The local level of government has also been widely studied, especially in the Spanish and Chinese contexts. The most frequently used methodologies are quantitative and empirical techniques, and the most common topics are those associated with accountability.

This study uses a huge sample (956 articles over the period 1991–2021), which has never been used before, to examine the literature on transparency. The structured literature review facilitates the identification of gaps that can be filled by future studies. These include analyzing transparency in specific geographical areas like Africa, Asia, and Latin America, studying transparency at different levels of government, especially at the regional and federal levels, and providing comparative studies and case study collections.

Over the years, public sector reforms in emerging economies have focused on improving national budget systems and financial management practices to promote sustainable development. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, this article examines whether the strength or effectiveness of national budget systems and related financial management practices moderates the impact of fiscal policy measures on economic recovery and resilience.

The article uses bivariate correlations and difference-in-difference analyses to examine the relationship between budget system effectiveness, government stimulus measures and forecasts of economic recovery and resilience. The analysis uses data from the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) program, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The article finds that estimates of economic recovery and resilience are higher in countries with more reliable budget processes and more transparent public finances. Also, the strength or effectiveness of the budget system before the pandemic appears to moderate the impact of government stimulus measures on economic recovery and resilience over a medium-term forecast horizon.

This is a prospective analysis based on economic forecasts from the IMF, which are subject to change in the coming years. In addition, the analysis uses subjective budget system indicators, which present measurement challenges that often influence this area of research. Better comparative data in the future, for example, large administrative datasets, will enable researchers to explore these issues with less estimation bias.

The findings are relevant for policymakers and budget officials in developing countries in Africa who are engaged in plans to improve national budget systems and enhance resilience to crises, such as the COVID-19-induced economic crisis. The findings also have implications for developing countries beyond Africa with similar economic and fiscal conditions.

The findings have implications for economic and budgetary planning for the social sector as well as the efficient delivery of public services in developing countries. Public managers have a critical role to play in adapting national budget systems and financial management reforms within complex and evolving economic circumstances even after the coronavirus pandemic.

The authors use novel and latest data on country responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as medium-term economic forecasts to examine the relationship between national budget systems and post-pandemic economic recovery and resilience in the African context. Previous research has only addressed these issues in the context of industrialized countries, and a limited number of empirical studies examine these relationships. The findings also have significant value for policymakers outside Africa who are facing similar challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic.

This study asks whether external auditors enable the transfer of policies to the United Nations organizations that they audit and, if so, what types of policies are transferred.

The empirical research is based on a content analysis of 512 external auditor recommendations from 28 pre- and post-accrual reports of 14 UN bodies.

We find that external auditors do enable policy transfer and that such involvements may, at times, veer into non-neutral policy spaces.

We did not analyze all UN organizations with accruals-based accounting. We also did not engage in a longer longitudinal study.

Our findings raise new questions about international organization accountability, the technocratic and policy-specific influences of external auditors, and open a debate about whether attempted policy transfers can be neutral.

The world’s largest group of international organizations is affiliated with the UN. External auditors help ensure that member-state monies are appropriately utilized. Our study is the first to compare pre- and post-accrual external auditor recommendations for 14 UN bodies. It is also the first to notate and study the attempted policy transfers from external auditors to the audited UN bodies.

This study aims to map and analyze health-care pricing information research. This work highlights current gap in pricing information research in health care and proposes future research avenues to academia and industry professionals.

A bibliometric method was adopted to analyze extant literature on pricing information asymmetry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in health care to triangulate the findings.

Pricing information is crucial for all stakeholders including health-care consumers, providers and regulators. The popular research areas were the rising health-care cost, cost-saving, outcome-based pricing, price based on service supply and demand, insurance and out-of-pocket spending. Cost–quality perceived linkages, cost–demand correlation in health-care service and cost–price interlinked drivers were the dominant themes in extant literature. The study highlighted that pricing information asymmetry pushed patients from weaker sections into a debt trap due to unplanned out-of-pocket health-care expenses. The study suggests areas of research to minimize this pricing information asymmetry.

The emerging themes in health pricing asymmetry will help key stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and take remedial actions in the health-care domain.

This study is a pioneering effort to summarize extant literature published in the health-care information pricing domain and analyze it from a bibliometric perspective. The study also triangulates the finding with primary data from key stakeholders and highlights emerging research areas.

This study aimed to examine the adoption of consortium blockchain technology to ensure interoperability for the transparency of budgetary control in Ghanaian local government.

This study is based on the design science research (DSR) observational technique for developing a consortium blockchain budgetary control system for Ghana's local government.

The study resulted in the design of a consortium blockchain monitoring and evaluation system to set up a mechanism to monitor various budget projects, processes and transactions for Ghana's local government. The findings also proved Ghana is ideally positioned to gain an advantage from designed artefacts such as ours, given its digital financial service (DFS) policy. In addition, the evaluation of the designed artefact proves there will be a positive impact on budgetary processes by addressing transparency concerns; however, the success of this concern depends on how the local government organisation embraces the artefact.

The study sheds light on budget monitoring and evaluation tied to peer-to-peer (P2P) participation in the public sector via an advanced administrative digitalised networking and communication algorithm (A Distributed Ledger Technology - blockchain). The difference between the designed artefact and the traditional M&E system is argued. The study is limited by the paradoxes and inefficiencies of the integration of blockchain into the Ghanaian local government but, at the same time, presents a high level of certainty and possibility.

The proposed artefact has presented relevance because it is a new solution to existing concerns like trust, transparency, accountability and compliance, thereby improving local government budget administration.

The study has offered unique and new methods, guidelines and designs for tracking various budget projects and processes beyond the conventional technology-driven approach via DSR, exhibiting a unique solution for solving budget transparency, trust, accountability, compliance and data accessibility concerns.

The study investigates the influence of financial transparency on citizens' trust and revenue paying behaviour of citizens of local governments in sub-Saharan Africa. It relies on the theories of stewardship and public choice in explaining the relationship between financial transparency, trust and willingness to pay.

The study applied a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) to survey data of 404 respondents selected from four Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of Ghana to test the hypotheses of the study.

It establishes the fact that financial transparency positively influences trust of citizens in local government and their willingness to pay taxes and levies. The study also found that both financial transparency and trust are low in the local governments of Ghana.

The study emphasises the importance of financial transparency in improving trust and willingness to pay. Thus, local governments are encouraged to seek innovative ways to enhance the quality and access to financial information by the citizens.

While prior studies focus on the measurement and determinant of financial transparency, this study links financial transparency to revenue mobilisation in the local government of sub-Saharan Africa.

The authors study how enabling perceptions (flexibility, reparability and internal and global transparency) of a budgetary control system are formed, and whether enabling perceptions empower lower-level managers and make them form less negative attitudes about red tape in the organization. This study research is warranted because of the lack of knowledge on how perceptual variation in flexibility, repairability and transparency of a control system within an organization, where managers experiencing the same control system design, can be explained.

Survey data with answers from 211 managers from a large local government organization in Sweden is analyzed with structural equation modeling.

The extent to which the budget system is perceived as having enabling qualities (being flexible, reparable and transparent) is explained by the safeness of the individual manager's psychological climate. This climate is characterized by trust and fairness perceptions in upper management. In turn, enabling perceptions positively affect a sense of psychological empowerment and reduces attitudes toward red tape in the organization.

The authors contribute by identifying an important factor explaining individual-level variability in enabling perceptions of control systems within organizations. Compared to previous research that has taken an interest in the organizational-level climate, the authors theorize about and investigate (parts of) the individual-level psychological climate as an explanation of within-system variability.

This paper aims to explore the potential configurations of governance, brand governance and social media strategies leading to effective organizational performance.

A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis including 28 Canadian national sport organizations (NSOs) and six conditions highlighted two sufficient configurations for effective organizational performance, defined as either budget per capita or athlete numbers.

Although no single component of governance, brand governance, or social media strategy is necessary to succeed overall, brand reputation and the strategic use of social media to communicate NSO identity were common to both identified configurations. Accountability was important for effective organizational performance in terms of budget per capita, while transparency was more important for higher athlete numbers. Thus, condition specificity is paramount in non-profit organizations that often have multiple objectives.

This study provides substantial theoretical and managerial implications, including the need to integrate brand governance and social media in non-profit organizations' overall governance activities.

Introduction: Interest and action concerning fiscal accountability have surged around the world in recent years, especially among Sub-Saharan African countries, because decision-making in the region has traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, with the general public having almost no access to knowledge on the management of public funds. Limited fiscal transparency has led to government fiscal crises where citizens have begun to call for better governance and participation in public funds.

Purpose: This study examines the impact of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance in SSA, while the specific objectives include the effect of e-governance on the central government’s primary balance and public external debt stock.

Methodology: The study employs annual data across 43 SSA countries to analyse the study from 2000 to 2018 using the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) method for estimating the models. Overall fiscal performance is generated through principal component analysis (PCA), which involves a linear combination of public external debt stock and central government primary balance.

Findings: The results reveal that there is clear evidence of the effectiveness of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance, even though this is not the same for the public external debt stock in SSA, despite the success recorded in the region’s ICT and telecommunication sectors in recent times. In addition, all other control variables impact fiscal performance except population growth.