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Within the context of public sector accountability, the purpose of this paper is to examine South African state-owned enterprises (SOEs) auditing practices and how they have contributed to mitigating prevalent corporate governance issues in South African SOEs.

This paper utilised a thematic content analysis of archival documents relating to South African SOEs. Firstly, to assess the extent to which the auditing dimension of the corporate governance codes, applicable to South African SOEs, conforms with best practices. Secondly, to determine the extent to which the audit practices of all the 21 South African SOEs listed in Schedule 2 of the Public Finance Management Act, have implemented the identified best audit practices.

The findings suggest that South African SOEs appear to have adopted and implemented best audit practices to enhance the quality of their accountability in relation to their corporate governance practices, as contained in their applicable corporate governance frameworks. However, despite the high levels of conformance, the observation that most South African SOEs continue to fail and require government bailouts, appears to suggest that auditing has no bearing on poor SOE performance, and that other corporate governance factors may be at play.

The discussion and findings in this paper suggest that the auditing practices of South African SOEs are adequate. However, that SOEs in South Africa continue to be loss-making may imply that this has contributed little to mitigating their corporate governance problems. Thus, policymakers and standard setters, including the Institute of Directors South Africa and relevant oversight bodies should pay attention to better developing means by which to curtail fruitless and wasteful expenditures by South African SOEs through improved corporate governance practices.

Most SOEs’ mission statements encourage SOEs to be socially responsible and utilise taxpayers’ monies efficiently and effectively without engaging in fruitless and wasteful expenditure. This study is conceived in this light.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, while acknowledging previous studies, this paper is the first to explore this topic in the context of SOEs and in the context of Africa.

The purpose of this article is to assess the state of financial reporting in provincial government departments in South Africa. One of the obstacles in transforming financial reporting in South Africa is changing from cash accounting to accrual accounting. The survey in this study revealed that, while most public sector accounting guidelines and legislation are in place, government departments are still using cash accounting. The current accounting information system seems to be unsuitable for accrual accounting. Respondents assigned a poor rating to the effectiveness of public sector financial reporting, and the slow rate at which this system is being transformed.

Financial transactions fraud (FTF) and financial statements fraud (FSF) grew exponentially during the past decades coupled with complex and sophisticated technological developments. This study aims to investigate the practitioners’ interpretation of fraud with recurring audit issues in the disclaimer audit opinions (DAOs) reports within the Solomon Islands public sector (SIPS).

The empirical study involves qualitative data analysis. The analysis alongside theoretical developments is informed by the “fraud triangle” theory.

The research results revealed the practitioners’ acknowledgement of FSF, FTF and fraud in the SIPS, as generally prevalent and aligned to some components of the fraud triangle theory. This study is sceptic about the good intentions of the International Public-Sector Accounting Standards –Cash-basis framework and favours the Provincial Government Act 1997 and the Public Finance Management Act 2013 requirements. It further suggests that fraud is positively linked to repeated audited report issues and the executive management when DAOs issues appear repeatedly in annual audit reports.

This study contributes to the literature on fraud and attempts to link the interpretation of fraud with recurring audit issues in the DAOs reports in the SIPS. It views fraud awareness and knowledge from the perspective of the audit practitioner. There is an increasing need to understand how fraud knowledge impacts decision making and the actions of auditors and others, an area that is underdeveloped.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of school governing bodies (SGBs) members’ role in financial management in no-fee schools so as to understand their compliance with policy frameworks when managing school finances. No-fee schools are schools in which the learners cannot be levied fees because of the poor socio-economic background of their parents, and are located in Quintiles 1-3 according to National Norms and Standards for School Funding Policy.

A qualitative research design/approach within the interpretive paradigm was adopted for the study. A sample of 22 participants from six selected no-fee schools was purposefully selected to participate in the study. The participants were principals, SGB chairpersons, SGB treasurers and finance officers. Data were collected through interviews and document analyses and were qualitatively analysed through coding and categorisation.

The findings reveal that the perceptions, experience and understanding of SGB members on their financial management roles differ. They lacked the proper knowledge to manage their funds effectively. This lack of knowledge is mainly because of the members’ literacy level and limited training.

This study offers a novel empirical and theoretical perspective on finance of no-fee schools and SGBs. This research subsequently recommends that rigorous training of chairpersons and treasurers should be done by department officials located in the finance section. Further, training should be conducted in a language that would be understood by the intended recipients.

This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

This article attempts to examine audit committee composition and structure affecting and leading to enhanced audit committee performance, with due regard for the principles of good governance and international best practices. The article recommends the ideal composition and structure of the audit committee to assist committees to meet their requirements, to ensure optimal performance and to improve the effectiveness of their oversight of financial reporting and corporate governance. The framework developed could also be used as a guideline in the selection and recruitment process for audit committees. The requirements are based on the regulatory requirements of the King II Report on Corporate Governance in South Africa (2002), the Companies Amendment Act 20 of 2004, the Corporate Laws Amendment Bill (2006), the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), the JSE Limited requirements, the Blue Ribbon Committee Report (1999) and the Sarbanes‐ Oxley Act of 2002 in the USA.

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.

The impact of debt on economic growth has attracted immense economic research necessitated by ballooning public debt stock among countries and most of the literature presume a symmetric relationship between debt and economic growth. However, this study contemplates an asymmetric relationship and thus relies on annual series from 1970 to 2019 to examine the asymmetric effects of public debt on economic growth in Ghana.

The nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) bounds approach was employed. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is the dependent variable while public debt and other control variables each decomposed into their positive and negative shocks constitute the independent variables.

The results reveal that a positive shock to public debt insignificantly impacts the growth of the economy in the short and long runs. Also, a negative shock to public debt exerts significant short-run negative and insignificant long-run positive effects on the growth of the economy. The divergence in the short- and long-run effects on growth of a negative shock to public debt and the general insignificant effects of a positive shock to the same is a glitch that is attributed to overcapitalized loans and poor utilization of credit facilities.

The study recommends “inter alia” that the government of Ghana strengthens the short to medium-term debt management strategies achievable through the enforcement of the Public Financial Management Act (PFMA) Act-921 and the Public Procurement Act (PPA) Act-914 to deal with any adverse effects of debt on the growth of the economy.

The novelty of the current study lies not only in the fact that it captures recent public debt dynamics at a time Ghana faces extreme fiscal constraints and escalating cost of debt servicing but it also does so in an asymmetric environment which is unprecedented an assumption in the analysis of Ghana's public debt–economic growth nexus.

The purpose of this study is to examine the viewpoints and experiences of multiple budget actors to understand their particular budget related behaviours contingent upon the COVID-19 (C19) pandemic of a developing country.

This study uses Uganda as a case study and employs semi-structured interview method for the data collection. In trying to generate themes and patterns, data are analysed through three levels of coding: open, axial and selective coding. The contingency theory is used to interpret the data.

The task of budgeting formulation, implementation and control in times of C19 lead to varied actual behaviours of budget actors because of the environmental uncertainty, inappropriate structural and technological conditions and manipulative organisational cultures contingent upon the Ugandan C19 budget context.

The insights generated from the study can be useful for the national governments of emerging economies, e.g. African countries, to understand the conditions that influence the budget actors' behaviour and together, develop long-term financial resilience strategies to face future emergencies.

This study contributes to accounting and public budgeting theory by showing that contingency theory is a relevant framework for understanding budget actors' behaviour in emergency situations. The study potentially strengthens the contingency theory framework through its incorporation of organisational culture perspective into the “people” element.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effectiveness of accountability mechanisms employed in financial management practices of school principals in the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Education. The strengths and weaknesses of the systems and mechanisms of the processes to hold school principals accountable are explored in detail in this study. The argument that this article seeks to advance is that accountability of the school principal to the school governing body (SGB) does not yield the best results in terms of efficiency. It creates a loose arrangement in terms of which the school principal takes part in financial mismanagement in schools.

Data collection was made through semi-structured interviews whose purpose was to draw experiences from SGBs, particularly the finance committees who are in fact the sub-committees of the SGBs; as well as literature review. The finance committee is made up of the chairperson of the SGB, the secretary of the SGB, the treasurer of the SGB, and the financial officer who is a clerk responsible for the keeping and the management of financial records of the school. The process started with semi-structured interviews, then transcribing, coding, developing themes, making meaning of the themes and subsequently developing a principle.

Mechanisms employed by schools and the Department of Education to hold principals accountable for their financial management practices fail to make them fully accountable and effectively face the consequences of acts on their part that are illegal and unlawful. The mechanisms need a great deal of overhauling. The argument that this article seeks to advance is that this account of the school principal to the SGB does not yield the best results in terms of efficiency. It creates a loose arrangement in terms of which the school principal easily gets away with a crime when financial mismanagement occurs in the school.

Participants could possibly not be comfortable and willing, to tell the truth as it is. Participants might have the fear that telling the truth could land them in trouble with the law. Whilst participants were assured by the researchers of their anonymity and the confidentiality of the information given by them, there was no guarantee that the fear of being exposed would subdue completely. There was also a possibility that some participants would not be willing to say the truth as it is for fear of being victimised by other participants for exposing the status quo in their schools.

The findings and recommendations from this study may be used by the Department of Basic Education as a source of information for policymakers and stakeholders to understand the effectiveness of their mechanisms to ensure the accountability of school principals on issues of financial management. On the basis of this study, policymakers will then be able to revisit their policies for the purpose of strengthening them. The principal is therefore responsible for the day-to-day administration and management of school funds because of this mandatory delegation. However, when things go wrong, it is the SGB that is held liable.

School principals hold dual accountability in terms of which they are accountable to the employer only in so far as their professional responsibilities are concerned on financial management in the first instance. They are by no means accounting officers in schools. In the second instance, they are fully accountable to the SGB for issues relating to financial management. Section 16A of SASA lists the functions and responsibilities for which the principal as an employee of the Department of Basic Education, and in his official capacity as contemplated in Sections 23(1) and 24(1) (j) of the same Act, is accountable to the head of department (HOD).

The study provides a theoretical and empirical contribution to the existing literature on the effectiveness of the mechanisms employed to ensure the accountability of school principals in their financial management practices in schools. It offers practical recommendations putting in place mechanisms that effectively hold school principals wholly accountable for their financial management practices in schools. Most of the time, it is easy for the principal to get away with a crime even in instances where he or she is called upon to account for alleged financial mismanagement.