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With the aim of monitoring the existing regulations that are applicable to community of owners facing delinquency, in view of the importance of this issue for the achievement of the Urban Agenda, the present study aims to analyse the most stringent and controversial measures available for the community of owners facing delinquency from a comparative perspective.

The present work addresses the recent legislative amendments that have taken place at national level in this field in several countries and analyses to what extent they have addressed the delinquency problem faced by community of owners.

The current paper shows that, in the end, legal certainty, the prospective legal and economic effects on mortgage lending and constitutional concerns are the underlying reasons behind the reluctance to implement some stringent measures to face delinquency. It also shows that recent amendments concerning alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are a missed opportunity.

Community of owners plays a key role in cities for the achievement of the Urban Agenda, so the periodical contributions from co-owners are paramount to the proper implementation of urban regeneration, energy efficiency and accessibility policies. To this end, the paper analyses existing regulations that are applicable to community of owners facing delinquency, which may increase in the coming years due to the current socioeconomic context.

This paper builds on existing research and goes one step further by addressing the recent legislative amendments that have taken place recently at national level in this field. These measures may serve as an inspiration to other EU legal systems.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

The process of performance measurement provides support to company management to achieve the objectives established in strategic planning. Through the definition of critical success factors and related key performance indicators, performance measurement verifies the gap between planned objectives and the results achieved, informing the responsible bodies to enable them to evaluate performance and, if necessary, implement improvement actions. Although many types of companies adopt performance measurement, this process is challenging when applied to national health services. This paper aims to identify the evolution of performance measurement and the critical success factors of national health services.

The authors conducted an explorative case study of a leading national health service to delineate the evolutionary path of performance measurement and the main critical success factors.

The results indicate a significant increase in the maturity of performance measurement of a national health service that has been motivated by international reforms and national regulations. This research highlights performance measurement features such as a balanced set of metrics, targets, and incentives linked to strategic objectives and regular and frequent performance reviews. Furthermore, it identifies the performance measurement model of a leading national health service.

The evolution of performance measurement and numerous critical success factors of national health services are described; the critical success factors cover a wide range of financial to operational aspects such as patient safety, organizational appropriateness, and clinical appropriateness.

This paper aims to unravel the puzzle that the United Kingdom’s high-quality government accounting and fiscal architecture is associated with low-quality outcomes, including poor productivity growth, high public debt, public services which do not meet citizen expectations and historically high levels of taxation. It contributes to public sector accounting research in the fields of fiscal transparency and governance.

This paper uses Miller and Power’s (2013) economization framework and Dunsire’s (1990) concept of collibration to explain why being a global leader in public sector accounting reform and in fiscal and monetary architecture has not protected the UK from weak governance. The intersection of economization’s roles of accounting with modes of government accounting clarifies the puzzle.

Whereas accruals government accounting contributes to fiscal transparency, this is not a sufficient condition for well-judged policy and its effective application. Collibration is the dominant mechanism for mediation in the fiscally centralized UK, but it has failed to deliver stable outcomes, in part because Parliament is limited in its ability to hold back inappropriate behaviour by the Executive. Subjectivization has disrupted adjudication because governments at all levels resist constraints on their behaviour, with unpredictable and often damaging consequences.

This paper provides insights through the combined lens of economization and modes of government accounting, demonstrating the practical value of this conceptualization. Although some causes for unsatisfactory outcomes are specific to the UK, there are cautions for accounting and fiscal reformers in other countries, such as Member States of the European Union.

This study aims to explore vocational education as stated in the basic constitution, law, government and ministerial regulations in the Indonesian context. This study aims to outline the Indonesian vocational education paradigm based on regulatory documents.

This research uses a qualitative document analysis approach by extracting vocational themes regarding senior high school and higher education from the available documents. The keywords used for document document analysis are education, vocational school and vocational higher education. These words are forced to be used to distinguish the types and levels that exist in Indonesian education.

The findings of this study identified that the political paradigms of vocational education, such as equality and justice, naming (regulative), purpose and life skills, the curriculum of local cultural value, decentralized authority, link and match and future paradigms are important themes raised in this study. This is a study to explore the politics of Vocational High School and Vocational Higher Education in Indonesia.

The vocational education policy documents in Indonesia that were analyzed may have been forgotten. As a result, the forgotten documents are not included in the analysis document. Forgotten interpretations and documents are part of the limitations of this research.

It is hoped that the findings of this research will have an impact on improving vocational education policies in Indonesia. This can also be a comparison for other countries in looking at vocational education paradigms and policies. In general, these research findings can help in improving vocational education policies. However, this research still has limitations in terms of the number of documents analyzed.

This study contributes to the promotion and political debate of vocational education nationally and internationally. The study further explores how interest groups are taking a role in achieving Vocational High School and Vocational Higher Education policies that are compatible with today’s needs and demands.

Street-level bureaucracy (SLB) has been essential to public administration in executing government policies and shaping public service quality. This paper aims to uncover the knowledge gaps and ongoing challenges to inform future analysis on SLB.

This literature review analyzes the publications on SLB between 1971 and 2023 by using various bibliometric methods, including trend analysis, network co-occurrence, and thematic evolution from 994 journal articles extracted from the Scopus database.

Research on SLB has shifted focus from specific issues such as work efficiency in the early 2000s to broader themes like governance methods, policy implementation, social policy, and public service delivery. This change reflects the adaptation of the field to global challenges and policy evolutions. International collaborations have contributed to the evolution, enriching SLB discourse with cross-cultural insights and comparative analyses. The partnerships have led to innovative strategies and models to address the challenges faced by SLB, enhancing public service delivery and policy implementation.

This paper shows the need to integrate the shift in SLB from specific practices to broader administrative themes with the global insights from international collaborations. In underrepresented regions, such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, research is suggested to enrich the global understanding of SLB.

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of institutional quality on the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using a data set comprising 45 African nations during the timeframe 2000 to 2020.

The data are divided into two periods, with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) data covering the years 2000–2015 and the SDGs data spanning from 2015 to 2020. Controlling for other factors, the researcher employs an index of institutional quality and applies the generalized method of moments (GMM) method to analyze the data.

The findings demonstrate a noteworthy inverse relationship between institutional quality and the achievement of both the MDGs and SDGs. The findings reveal a significant and positive link between economic growth and the achievement of the MDGs, while the impact on the SDGs is shown to be insignificant. Population growth significantly drives the SDGs. The results further reveal that trade openness and industrialization contribute positively to the achievement of both the MDGs and SDGs.

The findings emphasize the importance of improving institutional quality, promoting economic growth and supporting trade openness and industrialization for sustainable development in African countries.

The contribution of the study is twofold. Firstly and to the best of the author’s understanding, this research marks an initial endeavor to empirically investigate the nexus between institutional quality and the SDGs in the context of Africa. Secondly, it adds novelty to the literature by examining how institutional quality influences both the SDGs and their precursor the MDGs, providing insights into the actual contribution of institutions to development within the framework of these two major global compacts.

The paper examines the recent trends in information technology for combating corruption and its impact on the Indian economy. It further explores how technology is being used to tackle corruption in India and the resulting economic benefits.

The methodology encompasses qualitative analysis to investigate corruption comprehensively. It involves content analysis of corruption-related documents, case studies, and expert interviews. Recent information technological advancements are explored, including blockchain and AI, for their anti-corruption potential.

This study reveals that the negative impacts of corruption on society include reduced economic growth, weakened institutions, and decreased public trust in government. Various technological advancements such as e-governance, blockchain, AI, and big data analytics have been implemented to enhance transparency and accountability in government processes. Special cases and examples of application of such technology tools and techniques adopted by the organizations to control corruption are discussed.

This paper highlights the need for legal reforms, institutional strengthening, and awareness-raising campaigns to complement technological advancements in the fight against corruption.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits and challenges of implementing circular economy (CE), as well as shed light on the influence of procurement strategy in CE implementation in construction projects.

A qualitative research approach with abductive reasoning was adopted. The empirical data were collected from the construction industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The results reveal that clients, consultants and contractors have limited awareness, knowledge and motivation to implement CE in construction projects. The absence of incentives to design projects following CE principles, lack of involvement of contractors and suppliers, non-use of materials that use CE principles and current procurement strategies are the main challenges for the implementation of CE in the UAE.

Previous research offers limited knowledge on CE and its implementation in construction projects particularly from a procurement strategy perspective. The findings of the study provide new knowledge of the benefits, challenges and role of procurement strategy for implementing CE. It is suggested that collaborative and partnering-based procurement methods are needed to facilitate the effective implementation of CE.

Within the context of public sector accountability, the purpose of this paper is to examine South African state-owned enterprises (SOEs) auditing practices and how they have contributed to mitigating prevalent corporate governance issues in South African SOEs.

This paper utilised a thematic content analysis of archival documents relating to South African SOEs. Firstly, to assess the extent to which the auditing dimension of the corporate governance codes, applicable to South African SOEs, conforms with best practices. Secondly, to determine the extent to which the audit practices of all the 21 South African SOEs listed in Schedule 2 of the Public Finance Management Act, have implemented the identified best audit practices.

The findings suggest that South African SOEs appear to have adopted and implemented best audit practices to enhance the quality of their accountability in relation to their corporate governance practices, as contained in their applicable corporate governance frameworks. However, despite the high levels of conformance, the observation that most South African SOEs continue to fail and require government bailouts, appears to suggest that auditing has no bearing on poor SOE performance, and that other corporate governance factors may be at play.

The discussion and findings in this paper suggest that the auditing practices of South African SOEs are adequate. However, that SOEs in South Africa continue to be loss-making may imply that this has contributed little to mitigating their corporate governance problems. Thus, policymakers and standard setters, including the Institute of Directors South Africa and relevant oversight bodies should pay attention to better developing means by which to curtail fruitless and wasteful expenditures by South African SOEs through improved corporate governance practices.

Most SOEs’ mission statements encourage SOEs to be socially responsible and utilise taxpayers’ monies efficiently and effectively without engaging in fruitless and wasteful expenditure. This study is conceived in this light.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, while acknowledging previous studies, this paper is the first to explore this topic in the context of SOEs and in the context of Africa.