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New public management (NPM) has transformed the public sector auditing context, although in quite different ways. Further, investigations into NPM’s impact on public sector auditors and audit institutions have been largely unconnected, with the exception of the critical examination of performance audits. We investigate the question of how public sector auditors’ roles and activities have changed as a result of NPM and later reforms.

We examine and synthesise public sector audit research examining reforms since the year 2000. The research presented considers changes to external and internal public sector audits as well as the development of public sector audit institutions – known as supreme audit institutions (SAIs).

Considerable changes have occurred. Many were influenced by NPM, but others have evolved from the eco-system of accounting, auditing and public sector management. External auditors have responded to an increase in demand for accountability. Additional management and governance techniques have been introduced from the private sector, such as internal auditing and audit committees. NPM has also led to conflicting trends, particularly when governments introduced competition to public sector auditing by contracting out but then chose to centralise to improve accountability. There is also greater international influence now through bodies like the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) and similar regional bodies.

NPM reforms and the eco-system have impacted public sector auditing. Sustainability reporting is emerging as an area requiring more auditing attention; auditors also need to continue to develop better ways to communicate with citizens. Further, research into auditing in non-Western nations and emerging technologies is also required, especially where it provides learnings around more valuable audit practices. Empirical evidence is required of the strengths and weaknesses of SAIs’ structural variety.

The paper aims to clarify how work-specific characteristics at both the individual and organizational level influence professional civil servants’ readiness for change during the implementation of reforms in public administration. We examine the influence of work characteristics at the individual and organizational levels, such as reform-related strains, organizational climate, and organizational professionalism, on the employees’ response to change. In addition, we also consider the interaction between these specific work characteristics.

This article employs a quantitative multi-level analysis to examine the influence of individual and collective predictors of employees' readiness for change. For our analysis, we used data from the evaluation of a school reform in Switzerland aimed at aligning teachers' working conditions with those of other administrative employees. The survey conducted for the evaluation includes responses from 2,162 teachers.

Our study expands the understanding in public management research of work characteristics that either promote or reduce employees’ readiness for change in the public sector. Our findings suggest that the organizational level, in our case the school level, influences the individual’s response to change. Furthermore, the role of organizational professionalism in terms of a reform-related transformation of the identities, structures, and practices of the actors concerned is highlighted as a potential stressor and catalyst that reinforces the negative correlation between reform-related stress and willingness to change.

This paper offers insights into how public managers can effectively overcome challenges in the implementation process of public school reforms. This also includes the awareness among change agents that positively associated changes at the organizational level may have negative consequences at the individual level, due to the fact that they affect professional understanding, for example, which may cause the affected actors to respond with resistance.

This paper contributes to the small number of multi-level research studies on the responses to change in public administration and answers the call for research to investigate the hurdles that may arise when implementing change. Further, the paper contributes to the literature on the impact of new public management (NPM) on the identity of professional civil servants.

This essay focuses on an argument that challenges the notion of market reform as a desirable idea. It examines how market requirements, accounting practices, political intervention and organizational conditions interact and create conflicts in the implementation of market reform. In our case study, we aim to elucidate the detrimental effects of expanding pricing mechanisms into areas typically untouched.

The essay adopts a critical perspective toward the marketization in the public sector organizations based on the authors' previous studies and observations of the reforms in Swedish schools over the last 30 years. The case is conceptualized within Callon’s framework of the sociology of worth.

The paper provides an example of market dynamics introduced without the presence of pricing and qualification mechanisms, resulting in a trial-and-error situation. In this context, we document and problematize a trend toward marketization that has had negative consequences for Swedish schools. In doing so, the paper shows how market requirements, accounting practices, political interventions and organizational conditions interact and create conflicts during the implementation of market reforms. The case shows the emergence of a new economic entity and its underlying rationale, the quantification/pricing mechanism, with a special emphasis on the role of accounting and the repercussions on subjectivities as values shift.

This paper follows up on the New Public Financial Management (NPFM) global warning debate on the emergence of pricing/charging mechanisms in public services. It provides a critical overview of the diffusion and relevance of accounting evaluation processes to sustain continuous reforms, despite claimed criticisms, limitations and (un)intended consequences. The paper also provides some reflections on new avenues for further research and some possible ways out for accounting studies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between the attitudes of principals, municipality-specific aspects of reform implementation, and principals’ resistance to change.

The collected data are based on a multi-level structure. The levels of analysis are at the school level (school principal) and at the municipality level. Therefore, the research question posed in this study is examined using a quantitative multi-level analysis.

The results show that both the personal attitudes of school principals and adjustments made by the school presidency of the municipality affect the school principals’ willingness to change.

The study’s focus on schools limits the ability to generalize the results to apply to other organizations. Nevertheless, schools are an important object of study for change management research because they share crucial organizational characteristics with other organizations in the public sector.

Studies that have looked at the change reactions of leaders in the public school sector have rarely examined individual and collective factors together. We focus on both, since the municipalities in many countries have a certain amount of leeway in implementing reforms, meaning that their involvement is of central importance for a successful change process.

Country comparative studies especially in Africa on public procurement reforms toward financial control and accountability of public expenditure are limited. Meanwhile, these kinds of studies have potential for providing useful insights on how value for money through public procurement is being ensured across Africa. This paper attempts to provide this. The purpose of this paper is to highlight several policy recommendations for public management aimed at improving public procurement and public financial management (PFM) systems in Africa.

The paper adopts a qualitative case study using secondary data drawn from Global Integrity Index (GII) of the Transparency International and the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessments databases to investigate variables that influence public procurement practices in three purposively selected African countries. The comparative approach for presenting some of the experiences of countries in public procurement methods is used in this paper.

The findings suggest three main variables, namely, government structure and economic variables, complicated by socio-cultural values interact to influence public procurement and PFM systems in the case study countries.

Data for the GII indicators used were only available from 2013, which restricted the discussion of those indicators to a short span (2013–2015).

The socio-cultural milieu within which public procurement takes place has implications for how governance structures function to deliver value-for-money public procurement.

This study adds value by comparing three countries within Africa to reveal common variables which influence public procurement and PFM systems.

This study aims to provide insights into the possible impact of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) on public governance and perceived levels of corruption in developing countries.

Through a multivariate analysis on panel data applied to 36 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and sub-Saharan Africa over the period 2010–2020, the authors test the impact of IPSAS adoption on transparency, accountability and perceptions of less corruption. The authors examine the moderating role of transparency and accountability in the strength of the relationship between IPSAS and perceived corruption.

The main results show that IPSAS adoption promotes an increase in transparency and accountability and leads to the perception of less corruption. Additional tests show that transparency and accountability strengthen the effect of IPSAS adoption and experience on perceived corruption.

The first limitation may be the use of the Transparency International CPI to measure the level of perceived corruption. Probably, the CPI does not reflect the actual levels of corruption in countries while the literature argues that these two measures are related. Also, the lack of data on the status and level of adoption of IPSAS by governments may be one limitation of the sample.

The study may help public authorities in their decision to adopt IPSAS. In light of the findings, standard-setting bodies could be encouraged to strengthen the disclosure requirements of IPSAS that make governments more transparent and accountable to limit perceptions of corruption.

This study may also help citizens understand the benefits of such reforms in protecting public assets and how such standards may help improve social welfare.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies that examines the impact of IPSAS on good governance by combining the dimensions of transparency, accountability and perceptions of corruption in DCs. It also provides insights into the moderating role of public governance pillars. Finally, it includes the IPSAS experience of the country, which has been little tested previously.

Drawing on work from home (WFH), job demand-control and street-level bureaucracy literature streams, this paper specifically focuses on the emerging trend of WFH for public sector employees in a developing country context of Egypt.

The empirical sample comprises focus group discussions with a total of 40 public sector employees in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used on focus group discussion transcripts to bring out main themes linked to this topic.

Our findings show that employee (marginal discretion power, pharaonism, corruption), citizen (unfamiliarity with digital services) and country (lack of proper info-structure, overstaffing in the public sector)- level challenges hinder and/or slow down the potential for WFH in Egyptian public sector.

A major implication of our paper relates to highlighting the criticality of e-governance and WFH for public sector employees, as well as highlighting multilevel challenges associated with those. At the same time, socio-economic and political consequences of offering such options need to be considered in a country like Egypt where most public organisations are overstaffed, and those employees lack modern day employability skills. Hence, there needs to be an open debate in countries such as Egypt on the consequences of e-governance and WFH and whether it may facilitate delivering citizen services digitally. Also, high power distance culture plays a role in this context, and any change cannot be successful unless that specific aspect is confronted.

This study contributes to the emerging WFH literature by being one of the pioneering studies to offer a multilevel (micro, meso and macro) assessment of this phenomenon in the under-researched fragile developing country’s context.

This paper examines the Australian and New Zealand government’s wellbeing budget reforms.

The paper describes the development of wellbeing budgeting in Australia and New Zealand based on an analysis of official websites, documents and media sources.

Both governments have experienced challenges identifying measures representing different areas of wellbeing and recognising the connections between the measures applied. They have found it difficult to access reliable data. The development of wellbeing budgeting also raises questions about participation, data reporting, and presentation, which can impact its efficacy.

The paper outlines practical challenges governments face in creating and using wellbeing budgets. It proposes a future research agenda to deepen our understanding of these issues and their social and economic implications. The scope of the study is limited to publicly available documents.

This is one of the few studies investigating wellbeing budgeting, which has evolved as an important tool for public governance. Therefore, the study’s findings may draw substantial interest and attention from practitioners, researchers and government policymakers wanting to integrate these reforms into their governance machinery.

Since the 1980s, New public management has fostered the introduction of managerial approaches similar to those of the private sector in public administrations. Recently, the advantages of performing risk management in the public sector have been recognized; however, to the best of our knowledge, research on risk management in public administrations is underdeveloped, and there is a need to understand how risk management is performed. This paper addresses these issues and investigates whether and how risk management is performed in Italian public administration.

This study focused on a sample of 503 Italian municipalities and used a mixed research method. Through a qualitative content analysis of documents published on municipalities’ websites, data and information were collected and elaborated using quantitative indicators.

The main results are that a high percentage of large Italian municipalities perform risk management and comply with theoretical provisions on risk management, sometimes displaying isomorphic behavior in risk management practices.

This study provides a new perspective on risk management in Italian municipalities, contributes to filling a gap in the literature and suggests a theoretical perspective on municipalities’ approaches when introducing new managerial practices.

The purpose of this multi-voiced paper is to propose a prosocial paradigm for the field of performance management and management control systems. This new paradigm suggests cultivating prosocial behaviour and prosocial groups in organizations to simultaneously achieve the objectives of economic performance and sustainability.

The authors share a common concern about the future of humanity and nature. The authors challenge the influential assumption of economic man from neoclassical economic theory and build on evolutionary science and the core design principles of prosocial groups to develop a prosocial paradigm.

Findings are based on the premise of the prosocial paradigm that self-interested behaviour may outperform prosocial behaviour within a group but that prosocial groups outperform groups dominated by self-interest. The authors explore various dimensions of performance management from the prosocial perspective in the private and public sectors.

The authors call for theoretical, conceptual and empirical research that explores the prosocial paradigm. They invite any approach, including positivist, interpretive and critical research, as well as those using qualitative, quantitative and interventionist methods.

This paper offers implications from the prosocial paradigm for practitioners, particularly for executives and managers, policymakers and educators.

Adoption of the prosocial paradigm in research and practice shapes what the authors call the prosocial market economy. This is an aspired cultural evolution that functions with market competition yet systematically strengthens prosociality as a cultural norm in organizations, markets and society at large.