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The purpose of this paper is to examine asset management in three cities. It is informed by polyphony as a theoretical perspective and draws on the fact‐building process to explore the practice of asset management in these study settings.

A comparative case study approach was adopted to have a broader understanding of the levels of complexity in the study of polyphony in asset management. With this aim, the three Scottish cities were analysed presenting a spectrum of city types.

The paper finds evidence of polyphony. The three cases show different degrees of controversies and achievements, providing a highly variegated picture of the effectiveness in pursuing an asset management policy.

Polyphony recognises the many voices of actors present in organisations. This perspective on asset management is an important, but relatively neglected facet of this aspect of city management. The paper provides an insight in this, showing the potential for the multiple voices of the many different actors within local government, all of whom may have distinct views on asset utilisation.

This study seeks to explore the powerful role(s) of institutionalised performance measurement systems or metrics in smart city governance in a politically and militarily sensitive developing country.

This study extends the application and contribution of a multi-level institutional framework to previous management accounting literature on the potential relationship between performance measurement and smart city governance. The value of utilising a multi-level framework is to broaden and deepen theoretical analyses about this relationship to include the effect of political pressure from the military regime at the macro level on the institutionalisation of a performance measurement system at the micro-organisational level. Taking the New Cairo city council smart electricity networks project (Egypt) as an interpretive qualitative single-case study, data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, direct observations and documentary readings.

Performance measurement systems or metrics, especially in politically and militarily sensitive smart cities, constitutes a process of cascading (macro-micro) institutionalisation that is closely linked to sustainable developments taking place in the wider arena of urban policies. Going a step further, accounting-based performance metrics, arising from political and military pressures towards public-private collaborations, contribute to smart city management and accountability (governance). Institutionalised measurement systems or performance metrics play a powerful accounting role(s) in shaping and reshaping political decisions and military actions in the city council.

Theoretically, this study goes beyond the cascading institutionalisation process by arguing for the powerful role(s) of institutionalised accounting and performance measurement systems in smart city decision-making and governance. Empirically, it enriches previous literature with a case study of a developing Arab Spring country, characterised by an emerging economy, political sensitivity and military engagement, rather than developed and more stable countries that have been thoroughly investigated. It is also among the first politically engaged accounting case studies to highlight public-private collaborations as a recent reform in public sector governance and accountability.

Smart cities boost economic growth around the world by changing to the smart environment, smart economy, smart technologies, smart human capital, smart infrastructure, and smart governance to improve economic growth and better use of limited resources. We justify the development model of the “smart city” concept in Russia within a green economy approach and the managerial relations of innovative smart projects implemented within the public–private partnership (PPP). Our toolkit allows us to assess the effectiveness of management decisions in the implementation of the “smart city” concept and to carry out continuous public–private monitoring of the effectiveness of innovations in implementing smart PPP projects. To this end, we propose and justify a new indicator of the effectiveness of managerial decision-making, taking into account the quality of the information received during the implementation of innovative PPP projects, which allows calculating the degree of utilization of the potential capabilities of a company participating in a PPP.

Based on the perspective of knowledge management, this study aims to discuss how to build cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism in major emergencies and explore the important role of knowledge management in emergency management collaboration.

Based on the theoretical analysis of knowledge management and the typical case study of cross-city emergency management collaborative rescue, this study provides an in-depth analysis of how these cities achieve high emergency management performance through multidimensional and multilevel knowledge collaboration, thus revealing the mechanism of knowledge transfer, integration and sharing in achieving high emergency management performance.

Through analyzing typical cases, this study finds that building a smooth mechanism for multichannel emergency rescue information can promote the diversification of knowledge transfer methods, building a platform-based integration mechanism for emergency rescue information can enhance knowledge integration capabilities and building a linkage mechanism for emergency rescue materials between cities can promote knowledge-sharing level, thereby improving emergency management performance level.

This study has great significance for how to build cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism in the digital era. In the future, the authors need to further discuss the following two aspects in depth: research on the impact of cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism on improving the knowledge management capabilities of government emergency management departments; and research on the impact mechanism of knowledge management capabilities on city resilience.

Through case analysis of cross-city emergency management collaborative rescue for major emergencies in China in recent years, this study proposes three specific strategies for cross-city emergency management (smooth, integration and linkage mechanisms) and reveals that these three strategies are essentially aimed at improving the government’s knowledge management level.

This case highlights the issues and challenges of implementing solid waste management program in Polytechnic University of the Philippines – San Pedro Campus. As a local government-funded educational institution with an enrollment of over a thousand students, management of solid waste has been a concern with lack of manpower as one of the main reasons. The Campus Administration believed that solid waste management requires a collective effort of its stakeholders including the students. These students do not only contribute to the waste generation in the campus, but they can also suffer from the ill effects of poor waste management even in their communities. All of these are hugely attributed to their inadequate awareness about proper waste disposal and lack of initiative to implement changes. From a social marketing perspective, shaping students’ ability to recognize the magnitude of these issues and take corrective measures to solve them will benefit not only the campus but also the community at large.

This paper aims to create a new searchable 3D city model to help managers improve their decision-making.

This paper identifies data management basics and the key elements used in the new model design; it further analyzes five-city models, presents its findings and proposes analytical trends for the new model. It discusses the concepts underlying existing models, explains the benefit brought by the proposed model and demonstrates its robustness.

City systems can be interconnected, thanks to data digitization and the integration of new technologies into different management processes. Although there are several 3D city models available, none of those identified in this research can be queried for several sectors.

This model design can only be successfully realized in the presence of a public mandate. Potential limitations include information security risks and political non-acceptance.

The present work proposes a searchable and high performance model having the distinctive capacity to bring together city systems and perform real-time data analysis in order to extract important information needed to guide the city, and in the context of a global vision.

Cities lying within conflict zones have continually faced hardships of both war aftermath and long-term sustainable reconstruction. Challenges have surpassed the typical question of recovery from post-conflict trauma, preserving urban heritage and iconic elements of the built environment, to face issues of critical decision making, rebuilding effectiveness and funding mechanisms, leading to time-consuming processes that lack adequate consistent long-term management. Some approaches have explored methods of effective long-term city reconstruction management but have not fully developed comprehensive approaches that alleviate the management of such complex processes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors devise an approach for the smart management of post-conflict city reconstruction. The authors focus on evaluation, strategic planning, reconstruction projects and implementation. The authors integrate building information modeling and geographic/geospatial information systems in a platform that allows for real-time analysis, reporting, strategic planning and decision making for managing reconstruction operations and projects among involved stakeholders including government agencies, funding organizations, city managers and public participants.

The approach suggested a smart management system for the reconstruction process of post-conflict cities. Implementing this system was shown to provide a multi-objective solution for post-conflict city reconstruction based on its interlinked modules.

Results may lack generalizability and require testing on several cases to provide rigorous findings for different case studies.

Implications include developing smart management systems for use by city managers and government authorities in post-conflict zones, as well as bottom-up decision making by including participant citizens especially populations in the diaspora.

The approach offers an integrated platform that informs city reconstruction decision makers, allowing for strategic planning tools for efficient planning, monitoring tools for continuous management during and after reconstruction, and effective platforms for communication among all stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to review the present municipal solid wastes (MSWs) management system, from an engineering management (EM) perspective, for the City of Kitwe while proposing a levers-driven sustainable municipal solid waste management (MSWM) model focussing on improving waste management (WM).

The research work involves four stages. First, a comprehensive review of literature is conducted on MSWM. Second, structured interviews are conducted with key experts in solid waste management in the City of Kitwe in order to enhance the knowledge inputs. Third, direct observations and an interview with a WM driver are conducted in order to understand; the collection, disposal and treatment options for MSWs. Lastly, a sustainable model for managing MSWs is proposed

The research findings indicate that the existing MSW system for the city is highly unsustainable and lacks EM methodologies. There are still a number of challenges in the management of MSWs which include: lack of proper collection and storage of MSWs; lack of an engineered landfill; lack of waste recovery and treatment systems; and lack of public education aimed at reducing and separating MSWs.

A correct and detailed database for waste generation, collection, treatment and disposal is needed for the City of Kitwe. The system is necessary for WM resources allocation as well as for planning sustainable WM projects. The proposed model has been developed based on the actual observations, data collection and analysis.

The research identifies a gap in the management of MSWs for the City of Kitwe. This work is original as no similar MSW model has been proposed globally and specific for a developing economy such as Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the intellectual capital (IC) approach and concepts could be fruitfully adapted to study the smart city phenomenon from a managerial point of view.

This study is based on a long-term, in-depth ethnographic exploration of the vast global community, which is created around the smart city movement.

The analysis suggests that, in order to effectively analyse a smart city context through the IC lens, the traditional IC framework needs to be extended for: expected outcomes, which should also include sustainability, resilience and quality of life; categories of key resources, which should also include institutional capital and environmental capital; units of analysis, which should also include territorial systems, such as transportation or waste; and key managerial challenges implied. As a final result, a smart city intellectual capital (SC-IC) framework is proposed.

Most of the cases analysed in this study are European; further studies are advisable to better investigate non-European smart city contexts.

The paper suggests that the knowledge management, project portfolio management and network management approaches are crucial to better support managerial practices in smart city organizations.

The SC-IC framework allows for a clear definition of the smart city organization, as a new knowledge-based, project-oriented, network-shaped type of organization. Therefore, the SC-IC framework provides smart city research with a consistent rooting in management studies. Further, this paper contributes to the fourth stage of IC research.

This study aims to explore the complex, multi-level institutional dynamics of smart city reforms and projects and their potential sustainability pressures on the implementation of a management accounting system in an Egyptian state-owned enterprise (SOE), which has a politically sensitive institutional character.

This study adds to institutional management accounting research using a multi-level perspective of institutional dynamics in the smart city context. Data were collected from an interpretive case study of an Egyptian SOE that was under socio-political sustainability pressures to implement a smart electricity network project in New Minya city.

Smart city projects have formed social and political sustainability pressures, which introduced the enterprise resource planning (ERP) network as a new management accounting system. A new (complex and multi-level) management accounting system was invented to reinvent the sustainable city as an “accounting city” (which appeared rhetorically as a “smart city”). “Smart” being the visibility and measurability of the sustainability performance of the collective body, which calls the city and its connectivity to different institutional levels brought out in a city network project for the ERP-enabled electricity distribution.

This study examines a single case study from a single smart city and identifies the accounting community’s need for multiple and comparative case studies to further analyse the potential impact of smart city reforms and projects on the sustainable implementation of management accounting systems.

City policymakers and managers may benefit from the practical findings of this interpretive field-based case study in planning, implementing and monitoring smart city projects and objectives.

Individual and collective well-being may be enhanced through new management accounting forms of multi-level local governance and increased political, field and organisational sustainability.

This study provides important insights into the sustainability dynamics of management accounting in achieving smart city reforms. The achievement of sustainability management accounting systems has connected to multiple ERP roles at different institutional levels, which resulted in accommodating the socio-political objectives of smart city projects.