Search results

The marginalisation of council housing in Britain since the Housing Act of 1980 threatens to obscure some of the very valuable lessons to be learned from almost a century of mass public housing provision. This chapter demonstrates that despite considerable economic problems, and in the face of social change since 1980, a relatively poor council estate remained a site of social capital, and that women were particularly prominent in working with local agencies to solve problems.

Using data from the 2013 European Company Survey, this chapter operationalizes the representation gap as the desire for greater employee involvement in decision-making expressed by the representative of the leading employee representative body at the workplace. According to this measure, there is evidence of a substantial shortfall in employee involvement in the European Union, not dissimilar to that reported for the United States. The chapter proceeds to investigate how the size of this representation gap varies by type of representative structure, information provided by management, the resource base available to the representatives, and the status of trust between the parties. Perceived deficits are found to be smaller where workplace representation is via works councils rather than union bodies. Furthermore, the desire for greater involvement is reduced where information provided the employee representative on a range of establishment issues is judged satisfactory. A higher frequency of meetings with management also appears to mitigate the expressed desire for greater involvement. Each of these results is robust to estimation over different country clusters. However, unlike the other arguments, the conclusion that shortfalls in employee involvement representation are smaller under works councils than union bodies is nullified where trust in management is lacking.

Purpose – In recent years, various communities across Canada have recognized the need to include young people's input in community/urban decision-making processes. As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Canadian governments and policy makers are obligated to take young people's views into consideration when decisions about them are made. The aim of this chapter is to examine how some communities have attempted to involve young people in such decision making by creating youth advisory councils.Design/methodology/approach – This chapter draws on an open-ended small-scale survey conducted with youth council members and adults familiar with the operation of youth councils.Findings – The findings suggest that many youth councils were mostly initiated by adults for youth. However, the successes of these youth councils were many. Participants reported that youth councils provided young people with a voice on an array of issues ranging in scope from local to national/international. Despite these successes, the ability of young people to have a voice in decisions that affected them was hindered by the many challenges that youth councils faced (e.g., lack of adult support).Originality/value – This chapter provides strategies to help overcome barriers to genuine youth participation in the decision-making processes of communities/cities. It also critically engages with the concept of participation as it relates to youth councils as an avenue for enhancing young people's civic and political lives. Finally, it adds to the literature by examining the Canadian context which has often been overlooked in research on youth councils.

This chapter aims to determine the extent of stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process in three Australian local councils. The frameworks of Arnstein (1969) and Friedman and Miles (2006) and the case study methodology are used to assess the stakeholder engagement practices of three best practice Australian local councils. The findings highlight the existence of five levels of stakeholder engagement ranging from informing to empowering. However, the extent of stakeholder engagement varied depending on the nature and purpose of engagement. This study adds to the limited literature on stakeholder engagement in sustainability accounting and reporting, especially in a public sector context. This study provides practical insights into engagement with stakeholders and is useful to both organizations and their stakeholders. Although focused on a public sector and Australian context, the findings of this study have implications for stakeholder engagement in various local and global contexts.

Since at least the 1980s, the accounting profession has discussed and written about the gap between academics and the practice of accounting. More recently, accounting academics have joined the call for increased faculty engagement with the accounting profession. As a result, the 2018 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) Eligibility Procedures and Standards for Accounting Accreditation include “Engagement” as a significant pillar of the new standards. The objective is to challenge accounting department faculty to engage more intentionally with accounting practitioners. Accounting Advisory Councils might represent an important opportunity to achieve such engagement. The authors conducted a survey to gain an understanding of advisory councils and how they might address the concerns of the accounting profession for more interaction and collaboration between the academy and the profession. It is encouraging that 96% of our AACSB accounting accredited respondents indicated that they have a functioning Accounting Advisory Council and that they believe the Council is very valuable in support of the department’s mission. In addition, the accounting department leaders reported a very high level of engagement with council members outside regular meetings. The survey results of this chapter provide additional insights on organization, membership, and engagement regarding Accounting Advisory Councils.

This paper examines accounting practices and legitimacy in Tanzanian Local Government Authorities (LGAs).

It uses data from multiple sources, including interviews, observations and documents, to provide theoretical and practical understanding on how accounting has been practiced and the conditions which sustain its undertaking. It applies a grounded theory method to develop a theory systematically from the raw data.

The principal research findings from the data concern the central phenomenon of ‘manipulating legitimacy’. This involved the purposeful and deliberate use of accounting techniques to influence and control (and sometimes even to falsify) the perceived reasonableness of the Councils’ operations. The paper revealed that the effective operations of the Tanzanian LGAs were highly constrained by their context. This had forced the LGAs’ officials to use important accounting practices such as budgeting, financial reporting, auditing and performance measurement, to manipulate the organisational legitimacy, a process which ensured the availability of resources to both LGAs and the individual officials.

The main limitation of the research is that the data was collected from a limited number of local authorities in just one developing country. It is hoped that future research in other developing countries will be undertaken to broaden and deepen our understanding.

The paper identifies the importance of manipulating legitimacy in understanding accounting practices in local government.

This study examines the factors that influence the uptake of stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process. The chapter addresses the scarcity of research in the area of stakeholder engagement by highlighting the factors that accelerate involvement of stakeholders in the sustainability accounting and reporting process. Case study research was used to explore the influences on stakeholder engagement practices of three Australian local councils. Data collection methods included interviews and document analysis.

This research highlights external as well as internal factors that can encourage meaningful stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process in public sector organisations. The findings of this research recognise government regulations as the key driver behind the uptake of stakeholder engagement policies and practices. However, managerial commitment and professional bodies’ support is observed as necessary to encourage and sustain creative and meaningful engagement. These findings also have implications for stakeholder engagement in the private sector.

Purpose – The chapter seeks to contribute to the discourse concerning the United Nations Security Council's role in strengthening a rules-based international system and maintaining international peace and security under the rule of law. Its particular purpose is to examine the Security Council's Al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions regime (1267 regime) from a rule of law and due process perspective.

Methodology – To this end, the chapter reviews the 1267 regime's controversial listing and de-listing procedure and identifies shortcomings in relation to traditional due process guarantees. It then discusses reform options available to the Security Council as far as forms and modalities of an effective review mechanism are concerned.

Findings – The chapter has two main findings. First, it concludes that the ‘individualisation’ of Security Council sanctions in terms of targeting individuals directly has not been accompanied by the creation of a means for the new targets to appeal the measures imposed on them. Second, it finds that a lack of political will has so far prevented comprehensive reform of the 1267 regime but that such reform is becoming increasingly urgent. The chapter suggests that reform initiatives need to address the value, effectiveness and sustainability of the 1267 regime more broadly. The Security Council, in particular, needs to consider what it is prepared to give up to maintain the 1267 regime as an effective UN sanctions regime, or whether it is prepared to give up the 1267 regime to maintain the authority it interprets to have from the UN Charter.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, English local government faced a period of significant budget reduction and uncertainty. Austerity measures were effectively rolled out over several budget iterations, resulting in a 37% real-term reduction in core central government funding, equivalent to a 25% reduction in income/spending power (including council tax) between 2010 and 2011 and 2015 and 2016. At the same time, changes in government policy in a range of areas between 2011 and 2012 and 2015 and 2016 created 164 new burdens on local government, with an estimated value of £11.5 billion, many of which were unfunded. All of this during a period when local government was being encouraged to freeze council tax and when natural pressure on locally collected taxation and services was increasing due to the economic recession.

This chapter reviews the responses of four English local governments to the austerity period triggered by the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007. For the English councils the results develop into two main themes. Firstly, there appeared to be a common set of anticipatory and coping capacities employed both in the lead up to the funding cuts from 2010 onwards and in the way councils subsequently dealt with aspects of the crisis. Secondly, despite this commonality, the specific and local contexts experienced by each council, both internally and externally, determined their overall path to dealing with austerity. These two paths were self-regulation and constrained adaption.