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In the context of global new public management reform trends and the associated phenomenon of performance auditing (PA), the purpose of this paper is to explore the rise of performance audit in Australia and examines its focus across audit jurisdictions and the role key stakeholders play in driving its practice.

The study adopts a multi-jurisdictional analysis of PA in Australia to explore its scale and focus, drawing on the theoretical tools of Goffman. Documentary analysis and interview methods are employed.

Performance audit growth has continued but not always consistently over time and across audit jurisdictions. Despite auditor discourse concerning backstage performance audit intentions being strongly focussed on evaluating programme outcomes, published front stage reports retain a strong control focus. While this appears to reflect Auditors-General (AGs) reluctance to critique government policy, nonetheless there are signs of direct and indirectly recursive relationships emerging between AGs and parliamentarians, the media and the public.

PA merits renewed researcher attention as it is now an established process but with ongoing variability in focus and stakeholder influence.

As an audit technology now well-embedded in the public sector accountability setting, it offers potential insights into matters of local, state and national importance for parliament and the public, but exhibits variable underlying drivers, agendas and styles of presentation that have the capacity to enhance or detract from the public interest.

Performance audit emerges as a complex practice deployed as a mask by auditors in managing their relationship with key stakeholders.

Statistical process control (SPC) can be applied to service processes, but the framework and methods may deviate from applications in industry. This was investigated in several pilot projects covering a range of service processes. Three main issues emerged. First, in addition to the traditional distinction in back office and front office processes, the customer process is leading in achieving control and improvement of service quality. Second, process diagnosis of service processes from back office to customer may reveal quality problems. Finally, measurements in front office and customer processes are needed to control these processes. From current practice and literature, it is not evident which types of measurements are adequate to provide prompt feedback to front office personnel. Introduces a framework for measurements, which suggests the type of measurement depending on the type of service process, whether it is the front office or customer process, and the type of quality characteristic in Kano’s model (must be, the more the better or delighting). Uses practical examples from the pilot projects to illustrate the issues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a multidimensional model of marketing culture and performance in tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. The paper introduces a model proposing certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions and attempts to underline how such associations affect restaurants’ performance.

A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting managers and employees of tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. A sample of 334 tourism restaurants’ managers and employees were involved in the survey. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to test the hypothesised interrelationships of the research model.

The empirical findings indicate that the marketing culture dimensions are seven rather than six, as proposed by Webster’s (1990) original model: service quality, interpersonal relationships, management–front-line interaction, selling task, organisation, internal communication and innovativeness. “Organisation” had positively and significantly affected “interpersonal relationships”. “Interpersonal relationships” had positively and significantly affected each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications”. On the other hand, each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications” had positively and significantly affected “innovativeness”. However, “innovativeness” itself had positively and significantly affected each of “service quality” and restaurant performance. Finally, “service quality” had positively and significantly affected restaurants’ performance.

Only seven dimensions of marketing culture were examined; meanwhile, there could also be other dimensions that affect restaurants’ performance. This paper has also examined the effect of a multidimensional model of marketing culture on restaurants’ financial performance only; the use of other types of non-financial measures could yield different results. The fact that paper’s sample consisted only of Jordanian restaurants further limits its generalisation potential.

The paper reinforces the importance of sound marketing culture to Jordanian tourism restaurants. It further underlines the importance of several marketing culture dimensions, particularly those related to employees’ selection, development and communication. Further, the paper emphasises the particular importance of front-office employees to the success of Jordanian restaurants. Tourism restaurants’ managers and executives can benefit from such findings for designing their marketing culture strategies to achieve long-term performance objectives.

This paper represents the first empirical attempt to examine the interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990). Accordingly, it should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within service organisations, and how such dynamics affect organisations’ performance. Further, the paper is the first of its kind to study marketing culture dynamics in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. International tourism restaurants planning to expand their operations in Jordan’s tourism industry have now valuable empirical evidence concerning the marketing culture dimensions and their effect on performance.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Tests the effectiveness of three different types of service company employees as advertising spokespersons in an experiment involving print advertisements for a bank and a hotel. Reveals that front‐office employees functioned best as print advertising spokespersons and that CEOs were adequate and back‐office employees were least effective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), organizational affective commitment (AC), and performance at low-skilled back office positions.

In all, 397 participants in low-skilled back office positions from a service company completed a questionnaire assessing EI, AC, and performance. The authors used multiple regression models for testing whether higher levels of EI and AC predicted better performance. Additionally, they tested to see whether EI and AC were positively related.

The results showed that workers in low-skilled back office positions with higher EI and AC had better performance. In this sense, intrapersonal skills and mood management were the dimensions of EI with the highest predictive power. Also, EI and AC were positively related, with intrapersonal skills and adaptability being the dimensions of EI most closely associated with AC. Finally, the predictive power on performance was increased when EI and AC were considered simultaneously.

Traditionally, the involvement of EI and other personal dimensions in increasing organizational commitment and better work performance has been studied in high-skilled and executive positions, as well as in front office low-skilled positions. However, there is little empirical evidence regarding the simultaneous influence of EI and AC on performance in low-skilled back office positions. This gap prompted this research, which suggests that the investment of organizational resources is mandatory for improving EI and, hence, organizational commitment and work performance in these employees.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It investigates its manifest and underlying agendas with a view to determining its degree of cost management focus and scientific management foundations.

The paper uses historical and website analysis methodologies for investigating historical office management philosophies and practices, as well as contemporary office design and management philosophies and related ABW practices and discourse. These are examined through the theoretical lenses of governmentality and impression management theories.

Despite a rhetoric of staff empowerment, ABW’s dominant agenda is overhead cost reduction and operating cost management. This reflects scientific management principles of early twentieth-century office design and management. Cost efficiencies and productivity emerge as key ABW output foci. While ABW adopters and advocates present ABW as a desirable staff satisfaction and operations facilitator, the cost agenda nonetheless commands centre stage.

Accounting research into the office and its processes is much needed. This has been largely neglected in favour of line management and factory floor costing and accountability systems. In a world dominated by service industries, the office as a centre of organisational and economic activity merits researchers’ greater attention.

Contemporary office design and functioning developments merit greater recourse to and acknowledgement of their historic roots. Then, practitioners can better design and implement systems that build on past knowledge and learnings. While such innovations as ABW may carry potential for improved organisational performance, care is needed with respect to their balancing of agendas and suitability for their institutional and cultural environments.

Organisational work has become a dominant part of social life in most economies today. Such innovations as ABW must be considered in terms of the societal culture into which they are introduced: how they reflect and adapt to that culture and what impacts they may also have on the culture itself. This includes dimensions such as organisational and self-control, as well as personal and organisational accountability.

This study presents itself as one of the very few refereed research studies of ABW currently available in the accounting, management or property research literatures. It also represents one of the very few studies of the office in the accounting research literature internationally.

The work presented aimed at developing an integrated framework for holistic performance management.

The research was carried out using an action research approach. A case study was used as the basis for developing a pilot framework for performance management, involving both employees in the case organization and researchers. The research is based on theoretical contributions within performance management, total quality management, and trend analysis.

A generic holistic performance management framework is outlined, encompassing diverse areas that need to play together and reinforce each other to give full effect to an organization. The main focus is a case study of a bank office, where a tailored version of the performance management framework was developed to give a setting where all these elements now are harmonized and work together.

The framework must be viewed as a pilot that should be further tested in other types of industries/organizations to verify its validity on a broader basis.

The generic framework for integrated performance management is novel and seems suitable for adaptation to many different industries and types of organization and can function as a guideline to avoiding launching concepts and programs that ultimately do not cancel each other out as their inter‐linkages have not been understood.