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This paper analyses the degree of political decentralisation and its relation to the local councils in Tanzania. It explores the institutional and political set-up of the local councils originating from the degree of political decentralisation and how it influences the tension between the bureaucrats and local politicians.

Qualitative approach by a comparative case study is adopted to investigate the phenomenon in two local governments in Tanzania. The data were collected through interviews with 37 senior local government officials and eight focus group discussions with 48 administrators and councillors.

The findings indicate that the two local governments are subjected to a similar political system guided by similar rules and guidelines from the central government bureaucracy for implementing the party manifesto and central government priorities. Thus, the local politicians have little room for negotiation in adopting local agenda to reflect the preferences of the local community. Any attempt to challenge this status quo creates political tensions between bureaucrats and the administrators.

The findings provide invaluable insights to different stakeholders such as political scientists, government officials, and policymakers with interests in research or practice of political decentralization and political-administrative relation.

This paper seeks to examine the impacts of the new public management (NPM)‐oriented management accounting on political control at the Malawian local government level. The objective is to investigate the extent to which NPM‐based management accounting practices have increased managerial autonomy and reduced political control.

The paper is based on an empirical study conducted in six local government assemblies in Malawi. These include Salima Town Assembly, Blantyre City Assembly, Lilongwe City Assembly, Mzuzu City Assembly, Mzimba District Assembly, and Zomba Municipal Assembly. It is based on qualitative research methodology. The qualitative data were mainly collected through personal interviews with assembly managers and councillors. In addition, the study also relied on a review of various literature and newspaper articles providing insights to the subject under study.

The paper has found that the NPM‐based management accounting has led to loss of local political control. In this regard, politicians resort to unproductive behaviors which include interference, sabotage and corruption to regain their lost political control. On the other hand, the administrators sustain their managererial autonomy through NPM‐based managerial prerogatives, seeking central government intervention and colluding with the councillors in corrupt activities.

The paper is of both theoretical and empirical value. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the management accounting literature by looking at management accounting in the context of new organizational arrangement models. In addition, the paper makes an empirical contribution to the knowledge vacuum of the impacts and applicability of the NPM‐based management systems in developing countries. It provides information and insights for reformers to consider the social, political, and cultural environment of the implementing countries so as to prevent counter‐productive consequences that may present massive negative implications on public policy outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to refine and expand an emerging US government communication model, the government communication decision wheel, by testing the differences between the communication practices of US public sector communicators working for non‐elected officials versus those employed by elected officials.

Drawing from surveys of 781 US government communicators, the study compares the communication practices and influences of government communicators working for elected officials versus non‐elected officials.

The study identifies four significant differences and five similarities in how the public sector environment affects non‐elected and elected officials’ communicators’ public relations practices.

While the study and underlying model focus on US government communication, this study provides valuable theoretical insights. It supports the model's underlying premise that the public sector is unique from the private sector while also further refining the significant differences within the US government sector.

This study helps US government communicators identify unique environmental attributes that affect communication activities in the public sector. It helps identify how these attributes affect communication practices within individual and collaborative contexts. Finally, it helps non‐governmental communicators and communicators outside of the US to understand how the attributes may affect communication practices when they collaborate with government communicators from the four levels of US government as well as with those who work for elected and non‐elected officials.

Despite the critical importance of communication in the public sector, very little research focuses specifically on government communication outside of political communication. The findings provide valuable insights for practitioners and contribute to public relations theory development for the under‐researched public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how headquarters’ managers perceive – cultural, administrative, geographic and economic (CAGE) – distance between countries and its influence on the strategy of international subsidiaries.

This study applies the transaction cost and behavioural theory and presents an exploratory and qualitative methodology approach through six semi-structured in-depth interviews to evaluate managers’ perceptions of distance between countries.

The research findings show that cultural and economic distances indeed have a major influence on subsidiary strategy and a smaller impact of administrative and geographic dimensions, which results into forced changes on the marketing-mix, i.e. product, price, design and brand, as well as on the level of autonomy granted to foreign subsidiaries.

The limitation is related to the home country and the entry mode of foreign direct investment. The findings presented here reflect the nature and behaviour of Portuguese companies with subsidiaries.

The research provides recommendations for managers to be aware of the influence of more than one dimension of distance between countries to improve their decision-making of standardisation-adaptation strategy for foreign subsidiaries. Furthermore, the study stresses that managers’ perceptions may lead to the conclusion that proximity and knowledge of foreign markets does not make international business easier.

This empirical research not only tests the transaction cost theory and behavioural theory on managers’ decisions to invest abroad but also promotes organisational changes to achieve the suitable strategy for international subsidiaries. The study contributes to the area of international business by positing six research propositions concerning distance between countries to be tested in future studies.

This study aims to examine the effects of vocational training programs for people with disabilities on their income.

It conducted a multinomial regression analysis of 10,469 survey responses from 31 provincial administrative areas in mainland China.

It finds the following antecedents all influence the trainees’ self-reported income, including their perception of the quality of the program, the training subject, the degree of consistency between their current job and this subject, their employment sector, their motivation and access to training resources and the geographical location of the program.

The findings are not representative of people with disabilities across mainland China because the respondents were not randomly sampled.

The findings suggest that to increase the income of people with disabilities, the training can be designed according to the needs of employers by teaching subjects relevant to the needs of the labor market, reaching out to motivated trainees and enhancing the quality of training. Training institutions, employers and governments are recommended to work together to integrate class-based learning with workplace-based learning and practices. More training resources can be devoted to the self-employed people with disabilities or those who operate in the informal sector and are in less-developed areas.

The improvement of employment opportunities and income of people with disabilities supports the safeguarding of their social economic rights and the building of an inclusive society.

Few studies have empirically explored and explained the effects of vocational training programs on people with disabilities’ income. This article fills this gap by assessing the performance of China's vocational training programs funded by the Federation of Disabled Persons at all levels.

A number of studies and indicators have ranked European countries in terms of the performance of their public sectors. This paper aims to demonstrate that there are important conceptual problems with such rankings and comparisons.

Using the existing indicators, the paper first shows how European countries' public sectors are ranked. It then goes on to show how conceptual problems with these indicators may lead to incorrect conclusions.

Countries' public sector performance cannot be summarised using a single indicator because of inability to define “the public sector” and the disagreement on what it means for public sectors to perform.

Despite increasing demand and supply in policy circles for international public sector indicators, the existing ones are unreliable.

This paper extends the assessment of international public sector indicators beyond a mere technical evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the new public management (NPM) literature by investigating how politicians and managers perceive their relationships and respective roles during the accounting cycle and using multiple cases of Italian local government (LGs).

Drawing on public administration and public management literature, the paper depicts models of interaction between managers and politicians through the analysis of the cases of five Departments in three Italian LGs.

Results show that, in contrast with NPM claims, no model of neat separation between politicians and managers can be depicted in the analyzed cases. Rather, alternatively patterns of sequential or reciprocal integration emerge, together with some cases of “confusion”.

Further research is needed in order to investigate the factors that can explain the types of interactions and roles.

The paper fills the gap in NPM literature that gives scant importance to the political dimension and its relationship with management in public organizations. It addresses the diversity in the perceptions of politicians and managers as to their roles and relationships.

Reform of local political management continues to be part of the international agenda for change as governments seek to create the conditions for better performance in local government. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of changes in political management upon the performance of local government, with England as a case study, and the implications for local government reform elsewhere.

Using statistical data derived from the system of comprehensive performance assessment (CPA), the analysis uses Kendall's tau to correlate CPA score per local authority against the respective political governance arrangement of each local authority in England.

As the correlation coefficient did not reach the level of statistical significance, the principal finding is that the relationship between different political governance arrangements and local authorities' performance is not demonstrated. The implications of this for governments' reforms of political management are discussed.

The data are based upon English sources and point to the importance of conducting comparable analysis in other societies that have undergone similar changes in local political management.

In instituting reforms of local governance, governments rarely pay serious attention to measurable outcomes and the paper suggests the value in so doing.

The specific relationship between local political management and performance has not previously been measured in precisely this way.