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This paper aims to focus on the local government accountants’ perspective towards their current and potential role in the sustainability reporting process and to explore potential factors influencing the further development of their role.

A mail survey approach was adopted across local government organisations with a deeper analysis provided through semi-structured interviews.

Findings indicate that accountants are supportive of involvement in sustainability reporting, but their actual level differs significantly from the level of involvement they believe they should have, pointing to the existence of an execution gap. Potential factors are investigated, highlighting the limited integration of sustainability beyond the organisational level, the lack of understanding of sustainability by accountants and the current need for further up-skilling by accountants.

The study enhances understanding of the accountant’s perception towards sustainability reporting practices within the public sector, with particular focus on local government.

This is an exploratory study examining an area of accounting in local government in which there are few others. It seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring and examining the accountant’s perception towards sustainable development and their current and future prospects in the reporting process in the local government sector in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions: What are the theoretical and practical antecedents for recognising land under roads (LUR) as an asset in local government financial reports? Why was the process of regulating this aspect of accounting practice so protracted and so controversial?

The method used a critical analytical review and synthesis of relevant literature.

This study rejects the recognition of LUR, and suggests that the requirements to account for LUR should be withdrawn immediately. Regardless of the way that the debate has evolved as to the need or otherwise to value LUR or the methodology to be adopted, until the issue of a consistent, standards-based data set is addressed, there is unlikely to be a unified useful outcome.

The study’s findings provided opportunity to reach an overall conclusion and make policy recommendations regarding the saga of accounting for LUR by Australian local governments. However, the ability to generalise beyond Australia to other countries would need to be tested by additional research.

The study’s findings provided assessment of the impact of valuing LUR on financial reporting by local governments and suggested policy recommendations.

This study provided an understanding of Australian local governments’ accounting choices in regard to the valuation of LUR and documented the history of early adoption of valuation of LUR by local governments.

The literature on the public sector and accrual accounting is extensive and varied. However, there have been only isolated studies on the specific issue of LUR (Barton, 1999a, 1999b; Hoque, 2004; Rowles et al., 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 1999). This study adds to the few isolated studies on the specific issue of accounting for LUR. Originality/value – This study provided policymakers with rich information about accounting for LUR and, it should have the capacity to impact on the future policy directions and recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of accounting change in Indonesian local government. It sets to explore how various reform drivers with different interests and preferences compete and cooperate in the process of governmental accounting reform policy formulation in a developing country context.

The paper adopts a qualitative case study research involving semi‐structured interviews with the key informants within the institutional environment under which the local government organizations operate. This paper looks at the introduction of new accounting systems as a result of public sector reform in Indonesia local government by focusing on how the policy of reform was formulated. A review of related documents and regulations, as well as interviews with key informants, was conducted to gather information on accounting change.

The process of governmental accounting reform is characterized by rivalries and alliances amongst reform drivers. This confirms the political nature of the process of accounting policy formulation found in the extant literature of accounting policy setting.

This is a case study research within the institutional settings of Indonesian government bureaucracy. Any generalization of the conclusions from this study should undertaken with care even though there are similarities between Indonesian and other developing countries as institutions operate differently in different countries.

As the vast majority of studies in the extant literature have focused, mainly, on accounting reform in the context of developed countries, this paper makes important contribution by highlighting accounting changes in Indonesian local government.

Public information disclosure is a manifestation of transparency and contributes to governance-by-disclosure. Also, better financial reporting can improve the credibility and integrity of public finances and contribute to a better management of public resources. A survey was carried out in Cyprus of users’ of public financial reports concerning an expectation gap about the types of information included in such reports (information needs expectation gap) as well as the quality of such information (information quality satisfaction gap). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two focus groups of users and preparers of public financial reports were used to construct the questionnaire. Users of such reports, who belonged to all three categories of public sector financial reporting identified by IPSASB, were surveyed. The quantitative data obtained was analysed using SPSS and quadrant analysis to answer the research questions posed.

Data from 101 respondents confirmed that each of the information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as being a significant information need. Data analysis also showed that both types of expectation gap exist, especially as far as local authority and semi-public organisations are concerned.

The response rate in the self-administered survey was admittedly rather low but it was not unexpected mainly due to the survey’s very specialised nature and the tendency by people in Cyprus not to critique public bodies.

Deficient financial public sector reporting means the auditor general is not able to adequately express an opinion on public spending at the local government level. This, in turn, means taxpayers do not get the quality of services they pay for. At the same time, the lack of information transparency means corrupt practices are not eradicated. One answer to the problem would be legislating the content of public financial reports.

The lack of governance-by-public exposure means that services to the local community cost a lot more, due to corruption and inefficiency. In addition, it contributes to lowering market confidence and eventually contributes to financial crisis at the national level.

The survey conducted was the first of its kind in Cyprus to investigate financial public sector reporting and document both manifestations of the expectation gap. In addition, information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as significantly needed and this is the first time it has been done in Eurozone member state and in a country facing a financial crisis.

The aim of this study is to critically evaluate the institutionalisation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards in Indonesia.

This case study approach relies on obtaining its data from document sources and interviews with relevant people and/or organisations involved in policy-making and implementation of IPSAS in Indonesia. To inform the study, we developed and used an integrated model of institutionalisation based on the work done by Dillard et al. (2004) and Dambrin et al. (2007).

Our model shows that dissemination of new ideals and the transformation of these new ideals into new discourses were institutionalised at the economic and political level. However, the creation of a new [accounting]technique took place in the organisational field, instead of organisational level. The internalisation of IPSAS in the organisational field is characterised by limited use of IPSAS-based reports for making decisions. Overall the institionalisation of IPSAS in Indonesia is dominated by actors external to local governments.

The study’s results reflect the specific socio-economic and political contexts for a specific point in time.

Policy-makers in developing nations should consider the applicability of IPSAS in accordance with the actual needs and capacities of their local governments.

The findings show that developing nations and international organisations have underestimated the technical and institutional issues of developing nations in the globalisation of IPSAS.

The study extends institutional theory by developing a new model to conceptualise the dynamic processes, the role of actors and outcomes of public sector accounting reforms in an emerging economy.

Post-pandemic renewal has to be much more radical. In this chapter we develop a considered response to reimagining the public sector with a focus on Liverpool City Region, its local economy and local government. By drawing on wider ideas of new municipalism, new narratives of how to make local economies more social through public investment, accountability and democratic governance can be made. The local scale offers the frame through which this can be examined as we make the case for new municipalism in the Liverpool City Region.

As scholar-activists we have been involved in responding to the continuous austerity imposed on local government. We research and debate the social and economic problems faced in the Liverpool City Region and present some of our findings here. In our work, through an organisation known as ‘Beacon’ – a grass roots movement agitating for new municipalism – we make the case for new policy initiatives and seek to demonstrate a need for a different type of public sector reform through local government.

In the context of the ‘levelling up’ agenda of the UK government, there remains concern across the city region about how local government can function given the ongoing austerity imposed from the centre. We have a public sector that has faced disinvestment in communities for over a decade and because of this, we reimagine public sector renewal by advocating for a new municipalism based on strategies of economic and political innovation that can lead to greater levels of democracy, accountability, wealth creation and distribution. We show examples outside of the UK, such as in the US and Spain, where embryonic forms of new municipalism are evident.

Our work sets out a roadmap to achieve a new municipalist agenda in the Liverpool City Region through an activist movement, Beacon. We bring together ideas and practices that are often underway elsewhere that have real political and economic impacts. In articulating the need for renewal, not only must we critically reflect on underpinning problems but seek to campaign for the change we advocate. The challenge we face is one of coordination and scale.

This chapter provides an overview of local government auditing in New Zealand by outlining the nature of local government, particularly the legislative requirements in respect to financial and service performance reporting and those for external audit. It also summarises the role and powers of the Controller and Auditor-General and their office in respect to local government audit in New Zealand.

The general aim of this chapter is to scrutinize implicit assumptions regarding leadership in the public sector entailed in the normative concept of “good governance.” We draw on the concepts of leadership substitution (Kerr & Jermier, 1977), managerial leadership activities (e.g., Bass & Avolio, 1994), and demands for leadership (Blom & Alvesson, 2014). In our empirical study, we explore fine-grained processes of leadership in several local government organizations, including everyday decision-making and social interactions.

A qualitative study was conducted on the basis of 21 interviews with middle- and lower level managers and their subordinates in five municipal departments in Germany and three in Lithuania.

The results suggest that everyday leadership processes can be considered as the coexistence of leadership substitutes and leadership interventions, initiated by the leaders and their subordinates. Such leadership substitutes like routines, laws, and instructions turned out as particular important constituents of leadership processes.

Results of our study open several new avenues for further research on governance and leadership in local governance organizations. First, future research can proceed with a re-conceptualization of leadership in the context of local governance by drawing on the follower-oriented approaches of leadership and governance. Particular focus on tensions, conflicts, and struggles as well as on the interrelationships between different hierarchical levels of public administration could represent a fruitful extension of our study. Second, the institutional and country-based contexts of local government systems should be taken into account more explicitly while studying leadership practices.

In terms of implications for practice, the results of the study call for an explicit consideration of the everyday activities while implementing “good governance.” Considerations of leadership as process of daily interactions between leading persons, subordinates and codes, structures, process rules, and management instruments should become a necessary element of such concepts, otherwise, important aspects of a “good governance” would be ignored and couldn’t be realized.

Our study contributes to the behavioral perspective of governance structures in the public sector by providing empirical insights from local government contexts and by re-conceptualizing governance and leadership processes. Instead of a merely reductionist concentration on managerial positions and persons, we propose a social-constructionist view on governance that allows for a more fine-grained, context-sensible perspective on governance in the public sector. Concretely, we call for a conceptualization of micro-level governance structures and processes mainly as a result of ongoing order-maintaining and order-negotiating processes between supervisors and subordinates, accompanied by institutions of leadership substitution and interventions from leaders and subordinates.

This chapter develops a new reference for local government accountability in socioenvironmental issues based on the views of leading socioenvironmental nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) in Indonesia. This study introduces an alternative view related to the government accountability model by focussing more on the socioenvironmental issues, which tend to be marginalised due to the dominance of [neo]liberal economic development and New Public Management paradigm in the praxis of government. A Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method has been applied to annual reports from three main socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia ranging from 2015 to 2018. This study found that there are three important notes for the local government's regulation, practice and accountability's activities to be in a line with the sustainable paradigm and the views of these NGOs. First and the foremost, the government's policy should give attention to public needs and ecological standards. Secondly, the rights and obligations related to the environmental issues should be transparent and accountable. Lastly, the government should release the accountability reports in full disclosure document and make the reports publicly available for various stakeholders. In particular, the accountability reports play a role as a tool for people to monitor the government's activities in socioenvironmental issues. This research implies an alternative view in the context of socioenvironmental accounting literature enrichment. It also provides valuable input to other governments, especially in developing countries and countries with economic growth that are highly reliant on the natural resources sector, in order to manage and account for their natural wealth in a more responsible and sustainable manner. Likewise, this research offers an alternative discourse of socioenvironmental accountability from the view of socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia.