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This chapter examines performance management, which has arguably been the kernel of New Public Management inspired version of public sector reform. The first part is a literature review that looks at experiences of performance management in both developed and developing countries. It looks at the difficulty in transferring public sector reforms from developed to developing countries. This is followed by the evaluation of performance management in the post-1994 public service in South Africa. Both the individual and organisational performance systems are highlighted, followed by an analysis of performance management reforms. There is a well-developed performance management system but the empirical data and qualitative reports found that it has not worked particularly well. There are concerns around a number of issues, including the measurement of targets; the signing of performance targets; a focus on outputs rather than outcomes; a lack of harmonisation between individual and organisational performance; a lack of capacity of managers, which in some cases is due to unskilled patronage appointments; a focus on compliance rather than performance; and a lack of accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of government accounting in Ghana and Benin using neo-patrimonial and organizational façade lenses.

The study used two country case studies that engaged with stakeholders including donors, civil society, politicians, and civil servants. Semi-structured interviews were used as the main data collection technique, which were complemented by document analysis.

The study finds that government accounting reforms are decoupled and used in both countries as a façade which is caused, to a varying degree, by indigenous neo-patrimonial governance traits of informal institutions, patronage, and clientelism. And despite the relatively superior Ghanaian system, in terms of its functioning, compared to the Beninese, government accounting plays a more symbolic role in the former than in the latter.

This is one of the very few theoretically informed empirical studies that examine the state of government accounting in the two major African settings – Anglophone and Francophone. The results inform policies more tailored to indigenous governance issues for better outcomes.

This chapter examines one of the specific manifestations of political–administrative relationships, namely the delegation of powers to managers. The first part of the chapter is a literature review of political–administrative relationships in both developed and developing countries. This is followed by a discussion of the framework for delegation in South Africa that was laid down in the late 1990s. Next is an analysis of the implementation of delegation in the 2000s, along with the National Planning Commission recommendations in 2012, which has led to a resurgence in delegation initiatives. There is a well-developed government monitoring system of delegation that has led to some improvement in compliance with delegation, but the overall delegation levels are on the low side. Delegation to officials is often thwarted by Ministers who wish to retain control and/or promote patronage. Further, in some cases, managers lack capacity or are unwilling to manage and take responsibility for delegated authority.

This paper examines the exercise of Black employee voice in South Africa over the past 53 years. Black workers constitute almost 4 out of every 5 workers in the country and experienced racial oppression from the time of colonisation up to the end of apartheid in 1994. They are still congregated around the lower skilled occupations with low incomes and high unemployment levels.

The paper draws on the theory of voice, exit and loyalty of Albert Hirschman, but extends voice to include sabotage as this encapsulates the nature of employee voice from about 2007 onwards. It reflects a culture of insurgence that entered employment relations from about that time onwards, but was lurking below the surface well before then.

The exercise of employee voice has gone through five phases from 1963 to mid-2016 starting with a silent phase for the first ten years when it was hardly heard at all. However, as a Black trade union movement emerged after extensive strikes in Durban in 1973, employee voice grew stronger and stronger until it reached an insurgent phase.

The phases employee voice went through were heavily influenced by the socio-political situation in the country. The reason for the emergence of an insurgent phase was due to the failure of the ruling African National Congress government to deliver services and to alleviate the plight of the poor in South Africa, most of whom are Black. The failure was due to neo-patrimonialism and corruption practised by the ruling elite and politically connected. Protests by local communities escalated and became increasingly violent. This spilled over into the workplace. As a result many strikes turned violent and destructive, demonstrating voice exercised as sabotage and reflecting a culture of insurgence.

Cambodia is embarking on a major programme of decentralisation and deconcentration (D&D) reforms, which have the potential to transform the way the country is governed and to build greater accountability into its governmental system. The D&D reforms promise to transfer much greater powers and capabilities to province and district level administrations. Provincial public servants will have the responsibility to deliver most services and to be accountable to elected councils. Potentially, they will move government closer to the people in important ways. However, if they are to do this responsively and accountably, a great deal will have to change in the ways that public administration – and especially human resource management (HRM) in the civil service – is structured and operated.

Analysts of modern-day sub-Saharan Africa have argued that its “neopatrimonial regimes,” descending from pre-colonial polities, translate badly to the scale of the nation-state and hinder democratic accountability. In this paper, I argue by contrast that the problem with today’s failed or failing states is that they are not patrimonial enough, if we understand patrimonialism in classic Weberian terms as a system based on traditions of reciprocal interdependence between rulers and citizens, and characterized by personal but malleable ruling networks. I make this argument by showing how the Asante Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries shifted from a working model, incorporating both patrimonial and bureaucratic forms of authority, to an exploitative one that reneged on its traditional commitments to the wider public. The cause of this shift was the expansion of exchange with European nations as a rival avenue to power and wealth. This problem continues today, where African rulers are incentivized by the demands of global banks, the United Nations, and G20 governments rather than internal authority traditions, thus limiting their ability to establish locally effective and publically accountable hybrids of patrimonial and bureaucratic governance.

This chapter reviews the literature to contextualize the intervention in the post–cold war era characterized by the momentum of globalization dominated by informal actors beside the legal authority of the state. It indicates how these actors deviate the primary purpose of the humanitarian intervention and create an ungovernable environment of the state particularly when interventions are operated in countries endowed with natural resources. The case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) serves as a model to ascertain such phenomenon in which actors such as states involved in intervention come in collusion with shadow elites, lobbyists and multinational companies to establish clandestine networks of illegal exploitation and smuggling of natural resources. The chapter winds up by suggesting the redefinition of policies of interventions to keep humanitarian intervention in its primary mission while holding actors involved in illegal and smuggling of natural resources accountable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public sector accounting reforms, mainly the adoption and implementation of the Cash Basis International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS) in the Central Government of Bangladesh.

Drawing on the ideas of new institutionalism, the paper investigates the factors which have forced the country to accept the Cash Basis IPSAS but have delayed its implementation in practice.

Different approaches towards the Cash Basis IPSAS are now distinct in the Central Government of Bangladesh. Differences between Bangladesh and other emerging economies have been narrowed as the potency of institutional pressures has increased, and there is a risk, as experienced in other emerging economies, that the very adoption of the Cash Basis IPSAS may remain more a rhetoric than a reality in Bangladesh. The paper demonstrates that the extent to which professional accountants and their associations participate in reforms determines the public sector accounting reform trajectories in emerging economies.

The paper demonstrates that reforms driven by indigenous administrators can have the potential of becoming more instrumental in emerging economies than the externally propagated reforms, such as IPSASs and accrual accounting. What is important is to advance incrementally those public sector accounting reforms that local administrators have identified as important, that they could cope with their existing knowledge and capacity, and that they are interested in engaging with the reform process.

First, the study has contributed to extending neo-institutional theory by bringing out the responses of different stakeholders responsible for implementing public sector accounting reforms, mainly the Cash Basis IPSAS, in practice. Next, the paper has raised a question as to whether the Cash Basis IPSAS could be an appropriate reform measure for the central government of Bangladesh.

The paper aims to review the concept of leadership as practiced in the West and in Africa, and goes on to establish the link between these two approaches and sustainable development in Africa. It does this with the view of assessing their implications for the attainment of sustainable development on the continent through a developed leadership–impact–effect conceptual model.

In seeking to achieve its purpose, the paper uses a literature review approach to assess the leadership orientation in the West (particularly in relation to effective leadership) as against the studied leadership situation prevalent in the African continent to find out their impact on development (sustainable).

Findings from the paper reveal a great disparity between the leadership situation in the African continent and the attainment of sustainable development. It also affirms a link between effective leadership approaches, like the transformational leadership approach, and the attainment of sustainable development.

Based on the findings, it is recommended that African leaders resort to effective leadership styles, with a great emphasis on the transformational style, which integrate creativity, vision and participation, as it attempts to create sustainable development for the citizenry in the continent.

The paper demonstrated the relevance of effective leadership in ensuring sustainable development in Africa and as a tool for achieving economic growth and development.