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This paper explores how the public sector engages citizens for innovation purposes. It connects the related but currently separate debates concerning the transition from the 'new public management' to the 'new public governance' paradigm and the application of different helix models to public sector innovation. Through a case study of a Danish municipality, the process for changing normativity and the perception of citizens' roles is illustrated. This includes the application of both new structures and instruments for engaging citizens in collaboration and a pragmatic approach to quadruple helix collaboration, which is context-driven rather than strictly compliant with theoretical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a systematic literature review of the studies investigating the impacts of municipal amalgamations. These are presented and discussed by distinguishing five categories: economic impacts, impacts on democracy, impacts on services provided, impacts on administrative staff, and socioeconomic impacts on population. Although the heterogeneity of impacts makes it difficult to draw some final conclusions on the effects of amalgamations, findings seem to suggest that cost savings and efficiency gains are modest, several aspects of local democracy are eroded, improvements of services are limited, and the duties of municipal staff increase, fostering professionalism but also stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community policing (CP) is a proactive approach to policing that relies on the involvement of community members. In this paper, we address relevant managerial issues pertaining to CP by resorting to the performance measurement construct, exploring the logics at play in CP and how they affect the design of CP performance measures. A longitudinal case study was conducted in a local police department in Italy. Findings reveal three logics, the co-existence of which creates a unification and temporal stratification of CP performance measures, thereby delivering theoretical and practical contributions to CP and public-management realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a relatively novel approach to the allocation of funds which allows ordinary citizens to become directly involved in how local government money is spent. This study identifies and examines the features and drivers of PB that incentivize citizen participation and the co-production of public services. Our analysis takes a fresh approach by setting PB initiatives in an innovative frame combining a paradigm of 'ideal' types of PB and their diachronic constituent phases. The results provide insights for both scholars and policy makers on the key features and drivers of citizen participation through PB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using a sample of 140 Spanish municipalities for the period 2008-2018, our results show that the gender of the mayor and the percentage of women councillors in local governments influence budget deviations both in expenditures and revenues. Concretely, municipalities with women mayors and more female members tend to overestimate revenues and underestimate expenditures; but these effects turn contrary when the number of female councillors increases, resulting in a better financial situation. Then, we may conclude that women could contribute to the financial health of local governments once they have enough representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel governance offers different settings to study executive decision-making and delegation. Associations of municipalities (AoMs), which are collaborative partnerships, are understudied arrangements in the delegation literature. Using a survey experiment with 240 Colombian mayors, this research explores whether issue specificity and issue salience shift preferences for delegating funding appropriations. Mayors overall prefer not to delegate and shifts in issue salience do not affect these preferences. Yet, mayors are less likely to delegate to regional AoMs when facing a policy-specific scenario. Moreover, this effect is contingent upon municipal population due to the relevance of cognitive shortcuts in more complex scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines collaboration formality as a function of institutional characteristics of organizations as well as personal characteristics of their leaders, in a non-Western context. Using a dataset of local governments and non-profits in Lebanon, we find organizations characterized by resource insufficiency and large staff size, and whose leaders have experience in the other sector to be motivated to use formal arrangements in cross-sectoral collaboration; those with female leaders opt for informal arrangements. A variety of characteristics of both institutions and their leaders affect formality of collaboration arrangements used by local governments and non-profits; yet, these effects exhibit cross-sector heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management requires wise utilization of performance information to generate expected results. The framework of Performance Information Utilization (PIU) explains why and how performance information is used in the public sector, although it does so without recognizing the role of the information user's perception. This article adapts the information system theories to conceptualize perception of performance information (PPI). Statistical analysis confirmed the validity of the construct and showed a significant relationship between quality and usefulness of performance information, and usefulness of multiple performance information systems. Tested model offers new insights in explaining the use of performance information in local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the substitution and complementarity effect that organizational social capital generates between two different types of performance information: nonroutine and routine performance information. The study of this topic is important since it offers a better understanding of how public managers inform their decision-making. Using department level data from 57 counties in Florida, this article finds that departments with higher levels of organizational social capital are more likely to complement the use of both routine and nonroutine performance information. Thus, the article reinforces the role and importance that organizational social capital plays into well-established and consolidated managerial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests whether vertical and horizontal collaborative arrangements generate organizational isomorphic pressures. Using neo-institutional theory, we explore whether local governments emulate their peers when they are (1) bound through collaborative agreements/associations (mimetic pressures), and/or (2) scrutinized by central government through a vertical agreement (coercive pressures). Municipal isomorphism is measured by municipality-dyad convergence across time based on: (1) the number of central-government grant applications submitted by municipalities and (2) use of information technologies. We test for changes in divergence between dyads on these measures using data from all possible dyads generated from 207 Chilean municipalities over 10 years (2005-2014). After controlling for potential confounding factors, findings show mimetic and coercive pressures, from horizontal and vertical forms of governance, reduce a municipal dyad's divergence in terms of grant applications and use of information technologies. However, collaboration effects on municipal isomorphism are contingent on the type of collaboration. While formal municipal agreements increase a municipal dyad's convergence, municipal associations unexpectedly seem to decrease it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A two-way relation links austerity to strategy, although the two literatures have not influenced each other much. On one hand, global economic and financial crises are expected to influence strategic planning practices of public managers struggling to ensure that while their organizations shrink they remain functional and effective. On the other, the type of strategic planning adopted is expected to influence the effectiveness of the crisis management strategy. Both links have been explored; however, theoretical research is not in agreement, while empirical research has focused on budget behaviours and has so far produced inconclusive results. We pose the following research questions: What are the effects of austerity on strategic planning practices? Does the type of strategic planning matter for crisis management? We analyse strategic behaviours of the largest fifteen Italian cities during the crisis and their effects. Decision-making behaviour is grouped under five different models: formal strategic planning, logical incrementalism, a combination of formal strategic planning and logical incrementalism (blended approach), disjointed incrementalism and inertia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of city governments worldwide engage in sustainability reporting, voluntarily and responding to legal pressures. Diverse practices emerged based on unique choices concerning formats, periodicity, authorship and dissemination efforts. Such design questions and associated outcomes are highly relevant for practitioners yet unaddressed in standard guidelines and most prior research that primarily concern content and conjectured reporting benefits. This article presents a framework suited to assessing real-life practices and outcomes. An exploratory evaluation in Amsterdam, Basel, Dublin, Freiburg, Nuremberg and Zurich suggests that sustainability reporting can benefit organizational change, management and communication yet also lead to 'fatigue' and discontinuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budgeting has endured changes in management ideals, because it supports an instrumental rationality in which organizations should use their own resources to produce their own results. Budgeting depends on and enforces traditional and transactional systems based on predefined entities, such as single-purpose organizations and measurable outputs. This study investigates this issue and asks what types of entities budgeting needs, and where and when these entities can be negotiated and reconstructed. This study shows that budgeting and its reinforcement of traditional and transactional systems makes it difficult to proceed towards new management ideals based on cooperation, sharing, and responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyse the clash of concurrent perspectives (Public Administration (PA), New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG)) in the area of delegating public services by local governments to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in education and the elderly care sector in Poland. The article is based on 22 case studies of service delegation throughout Poland, carried out at the University of Warsaw in 2013 as part of an Innovative Project within the framework of the EC Human Capital Programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management has become an important element of the reform agenda of public sector around the world. However, scholars and practitioners highlight that many public administrations do not manage performance very well. A ‘litmus test’ of the success of a performance-based reform is observing whether public managers use performance information to make better-informed decisions. Having said that, the aim of this article is to see whether public managers of Italian local governments in the Apulia region (the South of Italy) use performance information after the last performance-based reform (Brunetta’s Reform: decree No. 150/09). The learning purpose is analysed and discussed. The research may suggest scholars, practitioners and policy makers the routes for developing performance utilization in difficult organizational contexts where performance management systems do not work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of governance is a key for political accountability, hence, the importance of identifying its determinants. Here, we focus on one dimension of quality of governance: fiscal transparency. Drawing on a sample of 691 Catalan municipalities (2001–7), we estimate the factors determining levels of budgetary transparency. Political competition and decentralization are the most important determinants of fiscal transparency. By contrast, budgetary variables do not appear to play any role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social accounting and reporting practices are widely adopted all over the world by various kinds of organizations. While most of the literature focuses on private corporations, in recent years several scholars have called for more attention to be directed towards public and non-profit sectors' reporting practices. This article offers an overview of the main peculiarities of social reporting with reference to the Italian not-for-profit and public sectors. In particular, adopting an Institutional Theory approach, the article discusses reasons that social reporting practices demonstrate a process of convergence towards a partially regulated framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contracting-out is a public sector reform tool, and it is used as a specific form of privatization. Because of its multi-dimensional character, it does not always lead to positive improvements, even in developed countries, and its impact in countries in Central and Eastern Europe may be limited. This issue is discussed in the theoretical part of this paper. Its analytical part investigates selected important dimensions of contracting-out for local public services in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, namely forms of delivery, decision-making processes concerning the selection of the form of delivery and of supplier, and costs comparisons. The final part provides a brief list of possible tools to improve the current negative situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]