Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

According to a report just issued by Dr. ARTHUR NEWSHOLME, the Principal Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, it appears that a majority of the staff of the Medical Department of the Board have been engaged in assisting to establish as favourable sanitary conditions as possible at the training centres for the new troops so that the risks associated with the concentration and feeding of large numbers of men under temporary conditions should be reduced to a minimum.

The study focusses on explaining why advocates for reform to state audit in the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 1980s, focussed on improving the links between the new National Audit Office (NAO) and Parliament, rather than on traditional notions of audit independence. The study shows how this focus on the auditor's link to Parliament depends on a particular concept of liberty and relates this to the wider literature on the place of audit in democratic society.

Understanding the issue of independence of audit in protecting the liberties and rights of citizens needs addressed. In this article, the authors investigate the creation of audit independence in the UK in the National Audit Act (1983). To do so, the authors employ a neo-Roman concept of liberty to historical archives ranging from the late 1960s to 1983.

The study shows that advocates for audit reform in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s were arguing for an extension to Parliament's power to hold the executive to account and that their focus was influential on the way that the new NAO was established. Using a neo-Roman concept of liberty, the authors show that they believed Parliamentary surveillance of the executive was necessary to secure liberty within the UK.

The neo-Roman republican concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, the preservation of liberty and democracy.

Public sector audit can be a fundamentally democratic activity. Auditors should be alert to the constitutional importance of their work and see parliamentary accountability as a key objective.

The neo-Roman concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, preservation of liberty and democracy.

This study aims to examine the public budgeting process in the higher education and research sectors of Iran. It focuses on the actors’ budgetary roles and uses their perspectives to identify deficiencies in the budgeting process that cause delays in the transition to a performance-based system.

This study uses an interpretive research paradigm. It applies the grounded theory methodology to analyze the interviews conducted with those responsible for budgeting at Iranian public universities and research institutes (PURI). The results are interpreted using Wildavsky’s (1964) budgetary roles paradigm.

Using Wildavsky’s (1964) paradigm, “spenders” and “guardians” are identified and their perceptions about the public budgeting process are described. The results suggest a decoupling between the actors’ perceptions based on their budgetary roles. Spenders consider budgeting as a negotiation-based process, while guardians’ decisions are largely based on “outputs” and “information.” This study demonstrates that the disagreement over the perceived budget process was due to different budgetary roles. This disagreement leads to delays in the transformation of the budget process in Iranian PURI.

While efforts are made to obtain a sample of individuals with different roles and responsibilities, the selection is limited by subjects’ willingness and availability. Therefore, sample size and diversity are potential limitations of this study.

When organizations attempt to transition to performance-based budgeting (PBB), it is critical to understand the current budgeting process to identify potential impediments. Understanding these impediments allows for alternate approaches to be considered. This is particularly important for universities that are mostly funded by the government (such as those in Iran). The results of this study show that the contradictory perceptions among budget actors have a significant impact on budgeting transition and require attention to understand budgeting decisions.

This study contributes to the budgeting literature in three ways. First, it examines the impact of endogenized shared values among budget participants on the budgeting transition process. Second, by focusing on budgetary roles, it contributes to the literature by examining disagreement on the perceived budgeting process and its implications for transforming the process into PBB. Finally, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the public budgeting process in a developing country – Iran.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the importance of putting a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in place, particularly as you plan for your older years.

This article takes the form of a review of the current LPA and offers advice on how to register a LPA.

By registering a LPA both the donor and their family benefits from peace of mind.

The Public Guardian Board Annual Report 2012 stated that the aim is for every adult in England and Wales to have a LPA.