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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the status quo of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainable public value (SPV) reporting by electric utilities. Furthermore, the study attempts to find out whether a stock exchange listing and/or a public ownership are positively associated with electric utilities’ reporting regarding their contributions to a sustainable development (SD) or not.

An empirical analysis of sustainability reports published by electric utilities from 28 different countries all over the world is carried out. The investigation is based on a documentary analysis of 83 GRI G4 reports.

The findings show that electric utilities’ coverage of GRI indicators of the electric utilities sector disclosures varies between, as well as within, the different categories of the GRI guidelines and that the coverage of sector-specific indicators is often lacking behind the general coverage rates. Furthermore, the study reveals that a stock exchange listing is positively associated with electric utilities’ GRI-based SPV reporting. In contrast, public ownership does not show a significant association.

Electric utilities have a significant influence on SD. They operate in a regulated environment that is targeted at utilizing electric utilities for economic and environmental public policy objectives. Against that background, the study discusses which issues of SPV creation are reported by electric utilities that use the GRI guidelines and therefore brings together the public value (PV) and the sustainability community.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the predictive power of each dimension of public service motivation (PSM) on job performance (JP) in a Taiwan sample.

The present study adopted a cross-sectional approach using a large-scale questionnaire survey in Taiwan (N=2,239). Participants from six utility sectors in two infrastructure-relevant ministries (Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA)), with heterogeneous sectors, were recruited, including representatives of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), Chunghwa Post (CHP), Taiwan Power Company (TPC), CPC Corporation, Taiwan (CPC), Taiwan Sugar Corporation (TSC), and Taiwan Water Supply Corporation (TWSC). The sample consisted of 2,239 public employees from six public utilities.

Although the results suggest that the PSM observed in western society also exists in the Taiwanese public utilities context, the self-sacrifice (SS) and the compassion (COM) dimensions were unconfirmed. The research found that for all utilities SS was significantly negatively correlated with JP, while attraction to public policy making (APP) and commitment to public interests (CPI) were significantly positively correlated with performance. Moreover, CPI was the only dimension of PSM that consistently predicted employees’ JP across utilities.

First, the authors tested the theory using a limited sample of public employees from Taiwanese public utilities. The cross-sectional design does not offer a clear cause-and-effect relationship as examined in the current study. Data collected only from public utilities in Taiwanese sample may cause concerns for the generalisability of the present findings to other settings. Second, the data do not address the timevariant effects of PSM. Third, the current empirical findings are based on Taiwan’s public utilities. The observations should be interpreted with caution. A broader sample of employees would make the empirical results more generalisable beyond the country-specific findings.

Researchers should unpack the PSM and JP concepts and strategically explore subdimensional relationships, but these results offer new insights into the influence of such subdimensions on the link between PSM and JP. PSM in public utilities has great potential to enhance JP through high levels of CPI and APP. Furthermore, public utilities management staff should acknowledge the value of PSM for JP and, if applicable, praise it with substantial rewards.

The relationship of the PSM to JP in public utilities is much less studied, especially in Asian countries. Moreover, no study on employees in public utilities has previously used a Taiwan sample.

There are striking similarities between publicly-held government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investor-owned public utilities. Each firm enjoys large scale economies that give a significant competitive advantage over other companies, possesses a dominant market position that it may be able to exploit to earn profits above competitive levels, and has a strong incentive to enter new markets when the life cycle of its core markets constrain its ability to increase profits. The recent behavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac indicates that the government must impose more stringent economic regulation on those GSEs in order to be sure that they achieve their public purposes.

The purpose of the chapter is to develop the pragmatic logical framework for safeguarding successful Public–Private Partnership (PPP) implementations in water supply in emerging markets. The case analysis related to the research question of how efficacy of PPP implementations could be improved revealed considerable shortfalls within the current modus operandi. The research was limited to urban water utilities of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with implications most relevant for emerging markets conditions. The proposed logical framework could improve efficacy and sustainability of PPP undertakings in water supply in developing countries. The framework is centred on the simple question: ‘What would constitute a meaningful quid pro quo within the envisioned PPP arrangement to eligible counterparts?’ The framework would necessitate properly answering many complex and uncomfortable questions of PPP arrangements, especially in terms of performance management, public accountability and underlying benefits to the parties. PPP in water utilities is a popular notion amongst governments and the international financial institutions (IFIs). PPP is commonly considered to be a tool for providing an optimal solution to chronic problems of water utilities in terms of underperformance and underinvestment. In-spite of massive efforts of modernization and institutional upgrade of the water utilities in Central Asia, success rate with PPP modalities is still rather low.

The paper seeks to assess the performance of 234 public and private water and wastewater utilities from industrialized and developing countries.

A group of financial and operational indicators was calculated for the sample utilities.

Some indicators calculated for the private sector, represented by US and UK water and wastewater utilities, demonstrated better values compared with public utilities, such as staff number per 1,000 connections and return on equity ratio and tariffs charged. On the other hand, the percentage of unaccounted‐for water and the debt to equity ratio evidenced no advantage in private over public utilities. Further, the performance of water and wastewater utilities of developing countries and Egypt does need improvement.

A key problem in most of water and wastewater utilities is the absence of performance assessment tools. To this end, this research utilized indicators as a means of performance assessment of water/wastewater utilities.

The paper is based on a five year, UMIST‐Institute of Management study into the changing nature of the quality of working life and seeks to uncover differences in the incidence and impact of organizational change on the perceptions and experiences of managers in the public sector, the private sector and the (former public) utilities. The research indicates that there are significant differences in the impact of organizational change on managers in the three sectors with public sector managers and managers from the utilities having been more adversely affected. An analysis of managers’ perceptions of their “organization as a place to work”, prevailing managerial styles in their organization and managers’ perceptions of the “changing nature of their job” also reveals wide differences between managers in the three different sectors.

This study examines the distortive effects of the states’ regulatory climate on the underwriting costs of new equity issues of public utilities. Each state has its own public utility commission (or public service commission) to regulate the natural monopolies of public utilities. The wealth‐maximizing behavior of utilities is constrained by the rate‐making process monitored by the commissions. The policies of a state’s commission collectively establish the ’regulatory climate’ in that state. Using a sample of new equity securities issued, during the period from January 1973 through September 1980, by utilities listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, we investigate the effect of the regulatory climate on underwriting costs. Our findings are that,in general, the direct costs of flotation, namely, underwriting commissions and out‐of‐pocket expenses,are positively related to regulatory climate where as the indirect cost of flotation, namely, underpricing of the new issue, is negatively related to regulatory climate. These results are counter intuitive since they imply that as the regulatory climate becomes more unfavorable the direct costs of flotation increase and the indirect cost of flotation decreases. This is clearly a distortive effect of the regulation and we offer some explanations for it.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the conditions and manner in which communal services are performed in Serbia. All public utility companies face significant issues such as unclear ownership, politicized management, insufficient funds for investment, and dominant market positions. These issues are cited as reasons why they are ineffective, chronically illiquid, insufficiently modernized, and unable to offer citizens satisfactory service quality.

The article is based on an analysis of current legislation, especially the Law on Communal Services and the Law on Public Enterprises, and on laws regulating the communal sector. Since this area is in transformation, proposals for new laws are discussed with strategies for restructuring public utility companies and with suggestions from experts on drafts of legislative solutions.

The article points out major issues related to inefficiency of public utility companies, and the reasons why citizens are provided with low‐quality services.

There is a dearth of literature, especially critical literature, on this topic in Serbia. This paper fills this gap partially.

This paper has direct implications for improving performance of communal services in Serbia. Combining all other observations and suggestions, it should intrigue creators of new legislative solutions in this area.

This paper is based on a survey of existing legislation and legislation under review, representing a significant contribution to understanding the issues faced by the communal sector.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an analysis of Italian water utility companies to determine whether their performance was related to certain relevant variables that have been broadly discussed in the existing literature. Among these are ownership structure, size and diversification. In addition, the paper considers another variable – the geographical location.

The paper reviewed the annual financial statements of 80 Italian water utility companies between 2004 and 2008. It also obtained data regarding tariffs, volumes supplied and population served from Conviri, the Italian national authority for water. Finally, the paper discusses the significant differences among clusters, using parametric statistic methods.

It was found that ownership structure, size, diversification and geographical location had an impact on the performance of water utility companies, although with different degrees of significance.

Further studies are necessary in order to improve the way that performance of water utilities is assessed. First of all, it might be helpful to improve our data categories, adding financial data, tariffs, volumes supplied and population served for more than one year and obtaining segmental reports for multi‐utilities. In addition, it would be interesting to apply other methods, such as DEA analysis, to confirm our research findings.

For a local authority it is convenient to entrust water services to publicly owned companies because they apply lower tariffs and make higher investments pro capita on the pipe network. Moreover, since economies of scale and scope exist, a company's growth and diversification should be encouraged.

In Italy the water industry is currently the focus of a vast political debate. As a matter of fact, a recent law (n. 133/2008 article 23‐bis modified in November 2009) encourages private administration of this industry. The results led to an improvement in the debate on the strategic choices and organizational structure of water utilities, giving helpful suggestions to policy makers and local authorities for developing future strategies.

The research findings improve the existing literature on performance assessment regarding water utilities, for the first time focusing on the Italian context, where companies with different features coexist: public and private utilities, small, medium and large companies as well as mono and multi‐utilities.

Project portfolio management (PPM) has been recognized as critical for the productivity of research and development (R&D) investments, but empirical research on PPM use and outcomes in non-commercial R&D environments is limited. The purpose of this paper is to investigate PPM processes and outcomes in a unique R&D context within Brazilian electric power utilities.

An exploratory best practice survey was used to collect data on PPM processes, methods and performance results in the power sector. Analysis of the data employs descriptive statistics and comparative analysis in the light of the literature.

The findings emphasize the importance of strategic value and the need for PPM to be customized for the specific context. The results also demonstrate the importance of adopting selection criteria and measures in accordance with the organizations strategic goals.

The findings may help organizations better understand how PPM can be tailored for the environment. PPM managers in utilities and other non-commercial R&D environments may find guidance in tailoring and improving their PPM approaches.

The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, it provides empirical findings to support PPM concepts on strategic alignment and the importance of context by demonstrating how PPM works to deliver strategy in a unique environment. Second, it contributes to the management of R&D projects and portfolios in power utilities, providing an example and analysis that may offer guidance. The contributions from this study may also offer insights that are valuable for R&D management in other utilities, or for R&D management in general.