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This article aims at shedding light on differences in terms of crisis management approaches adopted by the Italian government in order to tackle the two most impactful crises that heavily hit the entire globe in the last 15 years: the financial and economic crisis occurred in 2007/2008 and the health crisis occurred in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the article makes conceptual previsions on the potential impact of the health crisis even though, at this time, it is hard to predict the exact extent of its negative consequences.

The authors implement a comparative approach, in terms of budgetary response, to identify the differences and the consequences of the different responses provided by the Italian government to deal with the two worldwide crises.

While the economic and financial crisis occurred in the past decade required the Italian government to adopt predominantly austerity measures, the pandemic occurred due to the spreading of COVID-19 pushed the Italian government to adopt investment and fiscal policy based on tax breaks in order to allow the re-launch of the socio-economic fabric of the nation.

The originality of this paper stems from the scant research focused on the budgetary response of governments to tackle global crises. In addition, the paper endeavours to demonstrate the consequences of the myopic vision of the political leaders who, as it occurred in the Italian context, mainly aimed at maximizing the results in the short run at the expense of the potential consequences in the long run.

Acknowledging fiscal crises as critical junctures for policy makers, this paper investigates how the recent fiscal crisis has affected the paradigmatic approach to the design of an ongoing governmental accounting (GA) reform.

This paper analyses the Italian GA harmonization as a peculiar instance of an ongoing GA reform at the crisis outbreak. A longitudinal narrative analysis of official documents is complemented with semi-structured interviews with key policy makers and participant observations.

The fiscal crisis is found to play an indirect role in the Italian GA reform, which, promoting centralization of competencies in the fields of GA, determines the intensification of the approach adopted before the crisis outbreak.

This paper extends the knowledge on the nature of post-crisis reforms by highlighting how fiscal crises can work as catalysts for paradigmatic approaches to ongoing GA reforms. This paper analyses the designing of a GA reform, whereas the long-term adaptations and outcomes of the reform are not taken into consideration.

The tight link between GA and financial management issues featuring the current paradigmatic approaches to reforms suggests the need to design GA reforms consistently with fiscal and financial management policies.

Whereas the extant literature on the nature of post-crisis reforms analyses the latter as responses to the former, this paper enlarges the knowledge on the topic by focusing on a peculiar instance of a GA reform that was ongoing at the crisis outbreak.

The purpose of this research is to highlight the impact of integrative leadership behaviors on network performance in local government networks.

The data were retrieved from a survey conducted on 362 local government network leaders in Italy. Their leadership behaviors were compared with the level of network performance anonymously self-reported.

The findings show that high frequency in the usage of a specific category of behavior does not always lead to high performance in local government networks. Moreover, leadership behaviors leading to highly performing networks are not always engaged most frequently by networks' leaders.

This research gives an empirical contribution to a neglected topic: network leadership. Moreover, the authors attempt to highlight how it is able to influence network performance.

The article aims at improving the authors’ understanding on how international organizations function by shedding light on management reforms at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The article shows the characteristics of the performance management system implemented at the OECD, the main obstacles encountered, adaptations addressing the low measurability of policy advice activities and other issues.

While multilateral collaboration could be an effective way to contrast several wicked problems, the global actors face multiple legitimacy and financial challenges. This makes understanding the way they function of outmost importance. Unfortunately, public management and administration research, while steadily grown around the reform efforts of national governments, has neglected the global level. The article addresses this literature gap through the in-depth analysis of a case study aimed at exploring the unfamiliar international organizations context. It relies on two literature streams: performance management and network management. The collaborative nature of international organizations makes the latter particularly useful.

Among the various public administration types, international organizations providing policy advise display several features that make performance measurement more difficult. The OECD case study analysis offers several insights into other international institutions struggling with managerial reforms in an effort to address legitimacy and financial issues. It shows that implementing a performance management system is possible and necessary to sustain the support of member countries and ensure a well-functioning multilateral system.

The single case study offers only limited and analytical generalizability of the findings.

Research on international organizations could help to unveil implementation obstacles or undesired effects of management reforms in other coping and networked organizations.

The article investigates the OECD, which is one of the less studied among the many global multilateral institutions. Other original features include the adoption of a public management approach to the study international organizations and the focus on network performance, a recent topic in the network management literature.

Social return on investment (SROI) has received increasing attention, both academically and professionally, since it was initially developed by the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund in the USA in the mid-1990s. Based on a systematic review of the literature that highlights the potential and limitations related to the academic and professional development of the SROI model, the purpose of this study is to systematize the academic debate and contribute to the future research agenda of blended value accounting.

Relying on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses approach, this study endeavors to provide reliable academic insights into the factors driving the usage of the SROI model and its further development.

A systematic literature review produced a final data set of 284 studies. The results reveal that despite the procedural accuracy characterizing the description of the model, bias-driven methodological implications, availability of resources and sector specificities can influence the type of approach taken by scholars and practitioners.

To dispel the conceptual and practical haze, this study discusses the results found, especially regarding the potential solutions offered to overcome the SROI limitations presented, as well as offers suggestions for future research.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature and enhance a conceptual debate on the future of accounting when it concerns a blended value proposition.

The paper aims at contributing to the cutback management and organizational decline streams of research by providing an in‐depth analysis of the main challenges that public managers have to address in managing public spending and activity cutbacks as a response to the current financial crisis.

After a literature review of the field, an analysis of the activities of international cooperation between public managers is carried out and the strategies adopted at the global level are compared to the challenges and complexities identified by the literature.

Recovery policies adopted at the international level follow some literature indications such as the clear long‐term forward‐looking focus and the attention to post‐crisis challenges. In turn, the crisis is perceived to have politicized decision making. There are concerns that the pressure to reduce levels of staff and services poses the risk that the public sector will not have the ability to manage future crises.

Much of the discussion on the crisis focuses on macroeconomic policies and the business sector. Public sector policies are a powerful instrument to overcome the crisis. The article compares recommendations from the theory on crisis management, both in the public and in the private sector, with concrete strategies adopted at the international level.