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This paper aims to explore the behaviour of city managers in the ongoing context of city leadership in Italy where there are high levels of political, economic and social turbulence.

A survey was administered to 140 Italian city managers, with a response rate of 56%. The main research questions were the following: Who are the Italian city managers? How do they spend their time? Are their actions influenced by political, administrative, management and/or governance-related pressures?

The results depicted Italian city managers as caged leaders. They feel like they are capable of soaring to great heights outside the boundaries of their organisations, but they are constrained by their day-to-day organisational activities.

This paper offers new empirical insights into the different leadership activities carried out by Italian city managers discussing the differences between the time devoted to some activities and the perception of their leadership style.

The impact of form of government on municipal expenditures has been debated by several scholars and researchers over the past thirty years. Part of the support for preference of the council-manager form of government over the other government forms relies on claims that the council-manager form provides increased efficiency in the operation of government. Results of numerous municipal expenditure studies, however, reveal that this outcome is not always clearly demonstrated. Almost all of this existing literature has utilized data from municipalities with populations greater than 25,000. This study evaluates the relationship between form of government and per capita expenditures in cities and towns with populations between 2,500 and 25,000. Survey data from 559 cities and towns are analyzed to determine whether or not their form of government can be significantly related to municipal per capita expenditures. Results of this analysis reveal that council-manager cities and towns exhibit significantly higher per capita expenditure levels than cities and towns with the non-council-manager forms of government.

This research explores the role of political ideology in local policy formation by assessing the impact of the city manager's ideology on local expenditures. While previous studies have identified nuanced and overlapping roles between administration and politics, here we extend those investigations by positing that ideology may influence a manager's role in the policy formation of the budget. Although some conceptualizations of city managers assume them to be largely apolitical in a partisan sense, we find a significant effect of ideology on local expenditures among city managers. This adds to the literature that suggests that city managers may not merely passively implement policies created by elected officials; rather city managers may influence policy in multifaceted ways, thereby driving a need to further investigate individual influences upon policy formation.

Much of the literature on citizen participation in the budget process links the council-manager form of government with higher levels of citizen participation, assuming the council-manager form represents professional administration. This is contradictory to the reality that different forms of government have “borrowed” features from each other and many now have mixed forms of government (i.e., adapted). The literature also contains ambiguities about city managers’ role in participatory budgeting. We review the literature and identify three competing theories about the role of professional managers in the budget process. We directly examine the effect of city managers in terms of their professional dimensions, institutional environment, and individual willingness to represent citizens. Using survey data from Florida, we demonstrate that managers’ professionalism, perceived political environment, and attitude toward citizen input are important factors explaining local governments’ adoption of participatory budgeting.

This paper seeks to investigate how seriously diversity issues are considered by municipal governments in North Carolina and to identify specific diversity management practices (DMPs) that are adopted more often by municipalities. It also aims to examine whether the adoption levels of DMPs are influenced by demographic and economic factors and the various backgrounds of city managers.

Data about adopted DMPs and city managers' backgrounds were collected by surveying all municipalities in North Carolina with populations of at least 5,000 (response rate: 50 percent). An index was constructed to determine the adoption level of DMPs, and the cities were divided into four groups, based on their index scores (i.e. DMP scores). Analysis of variance and correlations were used to test the relationship between a number of factors and the index score.

A number of DMPs were identified as being more popular among municipalities that took diversity and its related issues more seriously, and other DMPs as being less popular among cities that did not pay particular attention to diversity. It was also found that the adoption level of DMPs was significantly affected by population size, the heterogeneity of population, urbanization level, and city manager's age.

The DMPs that were found suitable for each one of the four groups of cities can be used as a guide when cities in a particular group want to adopt more DMPs to support and encourage diversity at work. According to the findings, cities need to be more proactive in managing diversity by introducing appropriate DMPs when their demographics are changing substantially.

This is one of the first studies to identify the more popular DMPs among municipalities with different attention levels toward diversity and its related issues. The study also contributes to the construction of a comprehensive diversity management model that explains how cities respond to changing demographics.

This chapter concludes the book by addressing the complexities and challenges associated with smart cities. Despite the widespread enthusiasm and progressive policies surrounding smart cities, navigating this world remains a desirable yet complex challenge. Drawing on existing literature, this final chapter serves as a synthesis of the key points covered throughout the book and offers practical guidelines for navigating the landscape of smart cities. This chapter provides valuable tips and insights for both citizens and policymakers, recognizing their pivotal roles in shaping the future of smart cities. Additionally, it delves into the current challenges faced by smart city initiatives and discusses potential future directions. Emphasizing the need for ongoing adaptation and innovation, this chapter highlights the importance of overcoming obstacles and capitalizing on opportunities in the rapidly evolving digital age. By offering a comprehensive overview and practical recommendations, this chapter aims to equip readers with the knowledge and tools to navigate the complexities of smart cities effectively. It concludes the book on a forward-looking note, emphasizing the dynamic nature of smart city development and the continuous need for adaptation and innovation.

Some public sector organizations have decided to implement activity-based costing (ABC), a new cost calculation device and management accounting innovation initially designed for the private sector. The purpose of this study is to better understand the translation of this new calculation device in the context of a local government and to identify the trials of strength that actors faced during the implementation.

Building on actor-network theory and the concept of “trial of strength,” this study examines how a major change in a large local government’s structure, the merger of several cities, led to the adoption of ABC. This case study provides a setting for conducting a longitudinal analysis of the translation of a cost management innovation, ABC, in a public sector organization.

This study highlights how human and non-human actors interact when implementing a management accounting innovation in a local government and the trials of strength that they face. It also shows that although ABC helped the local government deal with issues such as setting fees, assessing outsourcing opportunities, increasing accountability and improving processes, the oversophistication of the technology used to implement the ABC model and the lack of links between the costing device and the budgeting process provoked a struggle among these two networks, leading actors to choose the budget over ABC.

This study’s findings extend the work on trials of strength of Christensen et al. (2019) and Laguecir et al. (2020). While those two studies focused on the struggles existing between opposing networks of human actors regarding the strategic orientation or the mission of public sector organizations, this study highlights that trials of strength may also occur when actors agree on the objectives of the new accounting innovation but not on how it is implemented.

Revenue diversification interacting with form of government that has different management behaviors may produce a variation in the level of public spending. The purpose of this paper is to understand how revenue diversification interacts with form of government in determining the level of public spending.

A cross-sectional research design with the analysis of interaction effects was employed in order to achieve this research objective. Drawing from the economic and financial management perspectives on revenue diversification, this study proposes the following hypotheses: in the council-manager form, greater revenue diversification leads to less spending; in the mayor-council form, greater revenue diversification leads to more spending; and mayor-council governments with diversified revenues spend more than council-manager governments.

The regression results support the second and third hypotheses, but not the first hypothesis.

This study offers a robust link between revenue diversification and form of government by examining how their interaction produces a variation in the level of public spending.

The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the rationalities and mechanisms through which markets have been proffered as alternatives or complements to traditional welfare‐based provision and the effect of this development on the subjectivity of workers.

The research involved collection of archival data, personal encounters and in‐depth interviews with managers, staff and elected representatives at a local authority in New Zealand. Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality is mobilised to interpret these data.

The paper finds that the mandatory changes required by legislation are associated with efforts to constitute local authority workers as business‐like subjects through disciplinary mechanisms and technologies of the self. While markets have permeated this local authority, with some managers and staff claiming to work in a business‐like manner and transact with each other as customers, these discourses have not vanquished the traditional concern of working for one organisation to serve the community.

While the results of this study are not generalisable to other contexts, they show how the introduction of New Public Management in a specific context is associated with a contest between the traditional discourses of community and public service, and the more recent ones of enterprise and customer. The paper illuminates the pathologies associated with these new technologies and how their implementation is often divergent from the rationalities in the name of which they are promoted.

The paper will contribute to ongoing debate on how best to deliver public goods and services and especially, the limits and potential of markets.

The paper's mobilisation of Foucault's governmentality framework in the study of a local authority case study in a contemporary setting is relatively unusual.

This study aims to explore the formation of municipal risk management (RM) and the reasons for the differences of RM practices between the seven biggest cities in Finland.

The empirical data of this comparative qualitative case study comprises 33 interviews conducted with municipal managers. Supplementary material includes documentary material on municipal rules governing RM as well as annual reports and risk tools used in the municipalities.

This study found differences in cities with respect to when, how and why RM practices had evolved. The results indicate that differences in RM practices and development paths between cities are largely explained by the differences in the original reason to initiate RM, time span since its introduction, professional and educational backgrounds of risk managers, local risk events and accounting infrastructure such as RM tools developed in a city. These findings also suggest that even within the same municipality, different functions can be at different phases regarding RM.

This study reports on RM as a new form of accounting in the field of Finnish municipalities. This highlights how fairly uniform considerations at the field level lead to variation in the elaboration of RM practices at the municipal level. The study finds that different paths in the development of local RM involve iterative evolution between the phases of emergence, largely explained by contextual differences. This study contributes to understanding the emergence of new accounting forms in a municipal RM context.