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Scholars have pointed out the need for improvement and refinement in public management research, also depending on the role of public administration for sustainable development. Because government organizations employ a substantial portion of the workforce, management practices in the public sector are critical areas for designing, implementing and delivering policies that can achieve the goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For these purposes, and in implementation of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) programme, Italy recently launched an ambitious National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) which includes, among other things, upskilling goals for staff employed, following the modernization process that has involved the Italian public sector in the last decades, with the Decree n. 150/2009. Aiming both to understand the extent of the application of the reform and to answer some basic questions (why, what and how) concerning Individual Performance Appraisal Systems (IPAS), we conducted a content analysis on the 220 documents already produced by the Italian Ministries. The study has been conducted in two different steps of the reform process and provides solid evidence of the reforms' effects on designing and implementing individual performance systems. The analyzed documents reveal no longer-term vision in implementing the IPAS that involves some critical performance management utilities such as training, development, fair pay and deployment of employees, raising new questions about a sustainable approach to the individual performance management process even in public organizations.

Social enterprises (SEs), part of the third sector, are hybrid organizations combining the pursuit of social scopes with commercial business solutions. In seeking for social value, they pair for-profit and non-profit features, thereby compensating for shortcomings of both the public sector and the commercial market. Therefore, the performance management of such organizations assumes a crucial relevance. Among the available tools, the balanced scorecard (BSC) aims to capture performance multidimensionality, at the same time fostering legitimacy towards stakeholders.

In general terms, the BSC has the limit to follow a linear and static logic of construction and functioning. For this reason, scholars combine it with system dynamics (SD) to create dynamic balanced scorecards (DBSCs). However, literature seems to devote scarce attention to the adoption of such analytic tools in the third sector, particularly in SEs. This chapter wants to contribute to bridging this gap by proposing a tailored application in the context of a social cooperative, active in the clothing recycle and in the re-integration of disadvantaged social categories. By referring to previous literature about DBSC, two modelling strategies are identified: the BSC-driven and the SD-driven. The latter, based on inductive reasoning, is the one privileged for the study because of its wider flexibility. The modelling outputs consider different perspectives than the ones within traditional BSCs, contain elements of circular causality and show how financial and non-financial performances interplay and co-determine each other. Insights from the proposed model can be useful to support both decision-making and stakeholder engagement.

This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter presents the conceptualised model, which consists of seven workforce management practices with their respective measurement variables. Drawing from existing theories, models, and practices, the chapter concludes that a construction organisation that will attain its strategic objectives in the current fourth industrial revolution era must be willing to promote effective recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, performance management and appraisal, employee involvement and empowerment, training and development, as well as improving workers emotional intelligence and handling external environment pressure. These practices can promote proactiveness, participation, and improved skills and can lead to effective commitment, better quality, and flexibility within the organisation.

This chapter aims to contribute to the literature on sustainability in the public sector by discussing how human resource and human resource management can help to integrate environmental management into organizations and improve environmental performance. Public sector scholars have neglected the study of Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) until now. Nevertheless, implementing such practices could lead to positive outcomes regarding awareness of environmental issues, organizational reputation and attractiveness, job satisfaction and organizational performance. The authors discuss the relevance and the necessity of developing a field of research on GHRM in public organizations. Starting from a conceptual review of the main literature on GHRM, this chapter provided some directions for future research.

This chapter of the book aims to achieve sustainability and productivity in light of the interaction between managers and engineers in a lean and agile supply chain management system in today’s organizations. The main innovation of this chapter is the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) model and fuzzy analysis network process (FANP) to create a suitable platform for the realization of this interaction between managers and engineers and to identify exactly which expert system is ideal for the main purpose. Indeed, this chapter introduces its readers to the application of strategic management tools such as the BSC accompanied by FANP in the elements of supply chain management where data analysis of lean and agile networks in supply chain management can create a competitive advantage in the organization.

On the one hand, there is a long tradition of approaching management control and innovation as opposites that prompt organisational tensions. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that management control may foster innovation and promote innovative behaviour. At the same time, both these perspectives focus on innovation management, and discussions regarding the role of management control in innovation leadership are conspicuously absent from the literature. In this chapter, we analyse how innovation leaders use management control in two service companies. We demonstrate that, in contrast to innovation managers who employ management control systems primarily for planning, monitoring, and evaluation purposes, innovation leaders use management control for advocacy, engagement, and visibility.

In recent years, international bodies and public opinion have recommended that governments adopt social responsibility practices to inform and be accountable to citizens about their sustainability actions in environmental, social and economic fields (Galera et al., 2014) and restore citizens' confidence in public authorities (Crane et al., 2008; Shepherd et al., 2010). This chapter reviews the literature on measuring and reporting sustainable performance in the public sector. Analyzing 35 studies published in a period of 10 years (from 2012 to 2021), we address two specific research questions: How and to what extent have public organizations changed to integrate sustainability reporting (SR) systems? What are the enabling organizational factors in adopting SR in public organizations?

This chapter contributes to the Public Value (PV) literature in relation to accounting by providing evidence on its content's operationalization through performance measurement. In particular, it establishes the link with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which may work as guiding principles of a public organization’s action. Accordingly, organizations embedding SDGs include them in their strategic decisions and disclose them through performance measurement and narratives.

The SDGs' presence is explored in the PV of a sample of Italian health institutes through documentary analysis of their performance plans. The aim is to verify if and how SDGs are pursued and whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected PV content.

Besides Goal No. 3 (Health), the PV content of the investigated institutes contains various SDGs. Before the pandemic, their PV was aligned with SDGs mainly related to prosperity, economic growth and social inclusion. In the following period, the number of SDGs increased, introducing planet and environmental protection dimensions. No one explicitly mentions pursuing SDGs, revealing a non-institutionalized sensitivity of managers towards SDGs. The analysis distinguishes between ‘core’ SDGs, revealed mostly by traditional performance measures disclosing the achievement of institutes' mission, and ‘complementary’ SDGs, expressed mostly through narratives. This can derive from performance measurement, which employs the language of performativity, while the contribution to society is relegated in the narratives, making them less incisive.

In Morocco, as in many developing countries, environmental responsibility is not well integrated into corporate management at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels. While the management literature offers a rich body of knowledge on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies and practices, less attention has been paid to exploring the complexity of environmental responsibility through the lens of corporate culture. This research aims to address this gap by examining the influence of cultural factors on the deployment of environmental responsibility using Johnson's (2000) model of corporate culture. This model identifies seven components of corporate culture: stories or myths, symbols, power structures, organizational structures, control systems, rituals and routines, and paradigms. Through a Moroccan industrial group case study, this chapter presents the successful deployment of environmental responsibility and describes how managing cultural factors facilitated this transition. This chapter also identifies the unique aspects of the group's culture that allowed redesigning the company's management systems. These insights offer valuable implications for managers and policymakers seeking to improve the environmental performance of large enterprises in developing countries.

This chapter presents the outcome of an empirical study titled ‘Knowledge Sharing and Transfer (KST) that Really Works: An exploration of KST in Sub-Saharan South African Public Sector Institutions’. Enablers of KST were explored through the lens of lived experiences of managers working at Gautrain Management Agency (GMA), a rail transport public sector operator in South Africa. Qualitative data were collected from 15 managers and analysed using Thematic and Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA) qualitative analytical tools. Four themes, essential originating antecedent factors, complementary people enabling factors, organisational enabling factors and effective KST implementing factors emerged. Rahman’s KST model was adopted as a theoretical framework and used to better understand the study findings. The current study affirms two elements within the theoretical framework, namely, complementary people enabling factors and organisational enabling factors, while the remaining two, essential originating antecedent factors and effective KST implementing factors, were not affirmed. This study contributes a new KST framework that helps business managers understand KST from the South African public sector practitioners’ perspectives, which represents this study’s contribution to the business performance measurement body of knowledge and practice.