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This paper uses a stakeholder approach to examine how the role of accounting and the status of accountants changed over a 30 year period (1970 to 2000) in a major Australian government trading enterprise. Data are gathered from semi‐structured interviews with organizational participants and documentation. The study provides support for the importance of stakeholders in shaping organizational processes and practices, including accounting practices, and for the effects of changes in stakeholder constituency and agenda on such practices. The study also provides evidence of the roles accounting and accountants may play in implementing a stakeholder agenda, including both instrumental and symbolic roles, and how the status of accountants may rise and fall commensurate with those roles.

This paper examines whether public sector reforms in a developing country is consistent with the principles of new public management (NPM). It examines whether Indonesian public sector reforms from the late 1990s to 2015, specifically the adoption of accrual accounting, are motivated by NPM philosophy. Reviewing and analysing Government regulations and reports, the study finds that the reforms are an attempt to implement NPM, specifically in relation to five financial management aspects (i.e. market-oriented, budgeting, performance management, financial reporting and auditing systems). However, the reforms are inconsistent with the NPM philosophy of efficiency and effectiveness in public service provisions. By requiring the use of the existing system, the reforms actually created inefficiency. This research is novel in investigating the gap between 'ideal concepts' and examining practices in an emerging country context.

Post-monarchical Ethiopia covers the period between 1974 and present-day Ethiopia. Ethiopia was ruled by the socialist government, the federalists, and the democrats. The socialists terminated the reign of the monarchs and instituted the Marxist ideology with the help of the former USSR and Cuba. They took advantage of the people's dissatisfaction with the aristocracy and the divide and rule tendencies of the monarchs. When the socialists took power, they gradually installed a system like what they had condemned. They became unpopular with the same people whose support brought them into power. Within the juntas, division arose, so killings and counter-killing gave power to some of the juntas. Ethiopia's subsequent forms of governance followed the same path as the socialist government. Hence, Ethiopia ended up with very poor WGI compared to other sub-Saharan African countries. This chapter tried to explain what happened and the lessons from this. Ethiopia was well-positioned to grow, but the monarchy started badly, and subsequent regimes followed their path.

There are two connected purposes: to reflect on the widespread current use and abuse of the term “public‐private partnership”, and to present a case study of an unusual joint venture associating a public and a private enterprise in delivering a multi‐utility service in the Canberra region of Australia.

The article combines the case study method with a review of relevant discourse about PPPs.

On the case study evidence presented, the article concludes that this joint venture comes much closer to being a genuine public‐private partnership than many arrangements loosely described as PPPs today.

The article invites the practitioner/academic community to think more precisely about the factors that need to be considered before it is appropriate to claim that a PPP exists.

The joint venture that is the subject of this case study has not previously been analysed in this way. The article suggests that it has value in serving as a model for the development of better thinking about PPPs.

Tightened government budgets are forcing public universities to confront a new economic reality as the traditional low tuition‐high subsidy model of public higher education becomes increasingly unsustainable. The shift toward reliance on tuition relative to taxpayer support reflects adjustments in consumer preferences, increased mobility, enhanced competition from non‐traditional providers, and reallocated government budgets. The outcome is clear: taxpayer support for higher education is decreasing, and is decreasing sharply and permanently when measured on a per student basis. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for university leaders that can provide the foundation for the transformation that needs to take place as universities face a permanent decline in public support. The primary goal is to point out differences between private business enterprises and public universities and then to suggest that many of the characteristics that define private sector excellence are applicable, often with modest modifications, to higher education.

The paper discusses and contrasts methodologies from the business and academic environments and suggest a hybrid framework for universities that captures appropriate business principles and provides beneficial outcomes while supporting and promoting academic excellence. It examines public university business schools as an example that provides initiatives that can be applied in many other areas of the university.

It is argued that many traditional practices in public higher education are incompatible with a changing environment that features permanent reductions in taxpayer support and greater reliance on tuition revenue from students who face attractive alternatives. There is also a changing demographic profile of applicants, many of whom require expensive remedial programs. The main result of the analysis is that a hybrid model of business and academic practices can provide a meaningful path for public universities to sustain excellence in a period of declining subsidy.Social implications – The framework developed in this paper includes the adoption of a distinctive, focused mission with a transparent budgetary system combined with the setting of differential tuition across areas based on willingness to pay and cost factors. Implementation of this framework can lead to an increase in social welfare by increasing efficiency, lowering costs, and effectively allocating resources across the university.

This paper's intent is to reach out to administrators and leaders in public higher education with an appeal to recognize that the new funding environment requires new ways of thinking about developing and implementing strategy. There is much to gain by becoming externally focused and accountable to those who are willing to pay for teaching and research, and also to recognize that vast differences in costs requires more attention by asking the fundamental questions: What products and services define our excellence and what should we not provide?

This paper seeks to address the question, “How can private home care providers compete and drive their businesses forward to deliver best value to the community?” Public sector managers in local authorities need this question answered so that they can provide their part of the solution, facilitating best value.

A review was performed of relevant literature on the commissioning (outsourcing) of home care and of best value. This indicates that the future of home care services, taking into consideration commissioning and how best value will be achieved, has not been researched widely. Therefore, an exploratory approach to research was adopted here using in‐depth analysis of a small number of particularly informative local authorities and private providers selected by purposive/judgemental (extreme and critical case) sampling. Personal contact was deemed necessary in order to perform an intensive investigation to pursue in‐depth information.

To improve value one can cut costs and/or increase quality. It is argued here that there is little immediate opportunity for private home care providers to cut costs and with fixed pricing substantial improvements in quality cannot be funded by increased prices or cost cutting elsewhere. To address this impasse, two solutions have been identified; increased economies of scale through consolidation in the marketplace and radical improvements in efficiency through the exploitation of information and communication technology (ICT). Both of these strategies have major ramifications for the “enabling local authority” taking actions to see best value delivered to its community.

This paper presents the findings of exploratory research. A more detailed study covering many more local authorities, private care providers and an international prospective will be conducted over the next two years.

This paper provides timely guidance to public sector managers in local authorities and private home care providers seeking best value in home care through commissioning.

Little has been found in the literature on strategies by which private home care providers can deliver best value, yet such strategies are needed urgently to achieve best value. This paper is a timely contribution to addressing this need.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of whether two early Australian public accounts committees were established for the purpose of legitimating governments of the time.

The paper addressed these issues through a study of the establishment, early work and abolition in the 1930s of the Victorian Committee of Public Accounts (VCPA) and the Joint Committee of Public Accounts (JCPA).

Clear evidence is found that the Joint Committee of Public Accounts (JCPA) had been copied from the VCPA and that the VCPA had been copied from the UK House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, which was established in 1861. This would indicate that the primary objective in the establishment of both these committees was legitimation rather than control. It was found that the subsequent work of both the VCPA and the JCPA showed a drift away from an accounting focus towards a policy focus. This is similar to the JCPA experience described by Degeling et al. in relation to the JCPA, which also supports the legitimation argument. It was also found that both committees could be disestablished with relative ease because their legitimating purpose was no longer strong enough to demand their continuation and that, in fact, their abolition became the factor that served a legitimating purpose for governments.

The paper suggests that the ideas of legitimation and mimetic isomorphism provide a more convincing explanation for the nature and work of these two public accounts committees than the idea of accounting colonisation.

Starting in the 1980s, South America went through dramatic political and economic changes. Military governments were replaced by democratic governments. These governments, forced by a severe crisis and the requirements of an increasingly competitive global economy, implemented, in the early 1990s, economic reforms based on free market principles and created the Mercosur. The major countries in this new and dynamic common market are Argentina and Brazil. In essence, these countries’ governments implemented policies conducive to competitiveness. As a result of these changes, quality became a key success factor for business. An increasing number of CEOs are becoming directly involved in quality. In Argentina, three institutions, created during the past ten years, are working in close co‐ordination to improve the country’s competitiveness. Similar activities are carried out in Brazil. A lot remains to be done in order to remain competitive in the increasingly difficult global markets.

Attempts to explain the limitations and constraints of government policy makers in the regulation of street vending. Looks at ways that street vendors in Mexico City create alternative forms of regulation that complement and challenge the state’s attempt to impose a “one size fits all’ form of regulation for the national economy. Cites two distinct forms of regulation and how these resppond to the different needs of vendors depending on their ability to negotiate their status with the state. Covers the organizations which the vendors have formed to assist them and question the “Mafia” status applied to these by the establishment.