Operating within the boundaries of legislation, accountability and personal agendas

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-365
Author(s):  
Sotirios Karatzimas ◽  
Carles Griful Miquela

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the views of mayors and comptrollers of Catalan municipalities on aspects related to the Spanish legislation on financial sustainability – its usefulness and necessity of maintaining, its impact on citizens’ welfare and alternative proposals. The setting is rather interesting as strict rules are imposed by a legislation criticized of mimicking European Commission policies, on well-performing municipalities, in light of the recent “independency” conflict. Design/methodology/approach The study uses insights from the public choice theory and the concept of accountability to draw a framework that could explain the perceptions of mayors and comptrollers. The views of the two groups are captured with the use of an online questionnaire. Findings The results indicate that while the application of strict rules has borne fruit, this trend is not sustainable in the long run and a careful reconsideration is required. Accordingly, both groups express concerns on citizens’ future welfare. It moreover appears that in this particular setting, mayors’ and comptrollers’ sense of accountability toward citizens exceed their personal interests. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of strict budget stability and sustainability rules on the long-term financial sustainability of local governments from the point of view of mayors and municipality comptrollers who are called to implement them.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Noronha ◽  
Jieqi Guan ◽  
Sandy Hou In Sio

Purpose While the COVID-19 virus has been spreading worldwide, some studies have related the pandemic with various aspects of accounting and therefore emphasized the importance of accounting research in understanding the impact of COVID-19 on society as a whole. Recent studies have looked into such an impact on various industries such as retail and agriculture. The current study aims at applying a sociological framework, sociology of worth (SOW), to the gaming industry in Macau, the largest operator of state-allowed gambling and entertainment in China, which will allow for its development during the COVID-19 pandemic to be charted. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the theory of SOW as a framework and collects data from various sources, such as the government, gaming operators and the public, to create timelines and SOW frameworks to analyze the impact of the virus on the gaming industry and the society as a whole. Findings Detailed content analysis and the creation of different SOW matrices determined that the notion of a “lonely economy” during a time of a critical event may be ameliorated in the long term through compromises of the different worlds and actors of the SOW. Practical implications Though largely theory-based, this study offers a thorough account of the COVID-19 incident for both the government and the gaming industry to reflect on and to consider new ways to fight against degrowth caused by disasters or crises. Social implications The SOW framework divides society into different worlds of different worths. The current study shows how the worths of the different worlds are congruent during normal periods, and how cracks appear between them when a sudden crisis, such as COVID-19, occurs. The article serves as a social account of how these cracks are formed and how could they be resolved through compromise and reconstruction. Originality/value This study is a first attempt to apply SOW to a controversial industry (gaming) while the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are ongoing. It offers a significant contribution to the social accounting literature through its consideration of the combination of unprecedented factors in a well-timed study that pays close attention to analyses and theoretical elaboration.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen McGill ◽  
Anna Robinson

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the long-term impacts autistic adults experienced from childhood participation in the applied behavioural analysis (ABA). Design/methodology/approach Possible participants were recruited through advertisements on social media and autism and ABA organisations. Possible participants were given the choice between an online or face-to-face interview or an anonymised online questionnaire. Findings Reflections from 10 participants were indicative of a predominantly detrimental impact of ABA. Reflections gave rise to a core theme “recalling hidden harms of childhood experiences of ABA”. Outcomes are discussed in relation to the impact on autistic identity, current research and progressing understanding of the impacts of early intervention from the autistic perspective. Research limitations/implications The practical implications of ABA are discussed alongside recommendations for future practice and research with the involvement of autistic individuals within interventive processes. Originality/value This is the first paper to take an in-depth, qualitative approach to autistic experiences of ABA. The findings themselves are driven to conceptualise and give voice to the core impacts which carried through participants’ exploration and understanding of self.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania El Kallab ◽  
Cristina Terra

PurposeThis paper explores the role of colonial heritage on long-term economic development from a resource-curse perspective. The authors investigate the impact of colonial exports on long-term economic development through two channels: (1) a direct impact of the economic dependency on natural resources and (2) an indirect impact via its effect on colonial institutions, which persisted over time and influenced current economic development.Design/methodology/approachTo address this issue, the authors use an original data set on French bilateral trade from 1880 to 1912. The authors use partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in the empirical analysis, so that the authors are able to construct latent variables (LVs) for variables that are not directly observable, such as the quality of institutions.FindingsThe authors find that exports of primary goods to France had a negative impact on colonial institutions and that for French colonies, this impact was driven by minerals exports. Despite its impact on colonial institutions, exports of French colonies had no significant indirect impact on their current institutions. The authors find no significant direct impact of colonial trade on current development for French colonies. Finally, colonial exports of manufactured products had no significant impact on colonial institutions among French colonies and a positive impact among non-French ones.Research limitations/implicationsResearch implications regarding the findings of this paper are, namely, that the relative poor performance within French colonies today cannot be attributed to the extraction of raw materials a century ago. However, human capital and institutional development, instead of exports, are more relatively important for long-term growth. Some limitations in trying to determine the simultaneous relationship among colonial trade, institutions and economic performance are the relation between colonial trade and the extent of extraction from the colonizer, which is hard to quantify, as well as its precise mechanism.Practical implicationsSince the initial institutions set in those former colonies presented a strong persistence in the long run, their governments should focus now on building sound and inclusive political and economic institutions, as well as on investing in human capital in order to foster long-term growth. Once a comprehensive set of institutional and human resources are put in place, the quality and quantity of exports might create a positive spillover on the short-run growth.Social implicationsOne social implication that can be retrieved from this study is the ever-lasting effect of both human capital investment and introduction of inclusive political and economic institutions on the long-run impact of growth.Originality/valueThe paper uses an original primary data set from archival sources to explore the role of colonial heritage on long-term economic development from a resource-curse perspective. It applies a relatively new model partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) that allows the construction of LVs for variables that are not directly observable, as well as channeling the impact on growth through both direct and indirect channels. Finally, it allows for the simultaneous multigroup analysis across different colonial groups.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-227
Author(s):  
Kwabena Frimpong

Purpose – This article aims to focus on the impact of the current austerity measures on UK public sector anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity building initiative developed over the years to tackle fraud against the public purse. Design/methodology/approach – The article draws on secondary sources of data and available literature on fraud and financial crime. Findings – Fraud is a challenge in the UK public sector but the cut-back on anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resources, given the scale of public sector fraud, the growing emphasis on accountability and the time of austerity with public money more exposed to fraud is arguably a back-door/u-turn policy on zero-tolerance approach in tackling public sector fraud and financial crime. There is the potential of this encouraging more fraud and financial crime against the public sector in the long term if measures are not taken to devise strategies for enhancing anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity. Research limitations/implications – The research implication for this article is that it opens an avenue for future studies to examine post austerity strategies for strengthening public sector anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource strategies to deal with emerging fraud threats to UK public sector. Practical implications – This article acts as a reference guide for policymakers to reflect on the long-term adverse impact of the austerity on anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity and capability in tackling fraud public sector fraud. Originality/value – The paper attempts to present an alternative lens to examining the scale of UK public sector fraud problem rather than relying on headline story of declining fraud in UK.


Author(s):  
Hanna Kim ◽  
Ryan Michael Allen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese Central Government’s plan to alleviate brain drain, called the Thousand Talents Plan, has been glocalized by three major local governments: Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong. Design/methodology/approach The lens of glocalization pays special attention to the impact of local reactions to global forces. Materials from the Recruitment Program of Global Experts for three major cases were examined for glocal characteristics. An analysis of each case was carried out to compare the strategies and implementations to explore the individual glocalizations and larger national similarities. Findings The findings show that each of the localities has distinct regional variations in their strategies: Shanghai utilized its economic prowess, Tianjin focused on clustering experts, and Guangdong maximized its geographic proximity to Hong Kong. At the same time, all three policies were still rooted in human capital development theory, with a keen emphasis to attracting migrants with greater propensity for staying long term in China. Originality/value The study of brain drain is important because it is a problem that plagues communities around the world, especially non-western societies. While China’s tactics to combat brain drain have been examined, the consideration of glocalization in the cases of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong have not been carried out.


Author(s):  
Silvia Gardini ◽  
Giuseppe Grossi

The international literature suggests that the causes of weak financial sustainability of public organizations depend on both external and internal conditions. Whereas the external conditions are related to demographic and socio-economic factors, the internal conditions are associated with the political and managerial settings, and thus, the latter could be addressed by the local government with the aim to maintain financial sustainability over the long term. Based on a literature review, the authors explain the most consolidated trend of such variables with respect to the impact of those variables on financial sustainability, and simultaneously, they reveal a disproportion in what the literature has most recently analyzed. Ultimately, the authors highlight the need for further research regarding the managerial factors and additional cross-country comparisons of the roles of both external and internal conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 669-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Bethlendi ◽  
Csaba Lentner ◽  
László Nagy

Purpose This study aims to assess the sustainability of local governments in a highly centrally regulated fiscal model. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a novel approach, a broad data set of almost 3,200 local governments and network methods. This paper analyses financial data from annual reports and other socio-economic sources using cluster analysis. Findings Even in this model, local governments show significant differences in terms of long-term sustainability. Investments do not compensate for the depreciation of tangible assets at a significant part of local governments. A specific type of soft budget constraint can be noticed. Heads of local governments do not “play” for subsequent ad hoc bailouts by the central government, but rather engage themselves in political competition for development subsidies. A further finding of this study is that shrinking populations itself does not explain the differences in local governments’ financial management. Research limitations/implications Further directions of research include the application of an extended approach to sustainability that gives an account of the availability and quality of local services, as well as aims to identify the qualitative social characteristics (success criteria) of the local government financial management. Practical implications The findings can be useful for policymakers, state audit offices, auditors, voters, users of public services and other stakeholders. Social implications The paper argues in favour of moving away from the financial balance in its narrow sense to a long-term and broader term of financial sustainability. Originality/value The findings provide new empirical evidence about the accounting-based measurement of financial sustainability in local governments.


Author(s):  
Marek Dylewski

The objective of this study is to answer the question should the annual budget continue to be the basic document and the basis for the financial management of local governments, or is it necessary to make changes in the budget system. These doubts arise from the research question: whether the referred annual budget in the current conditions is a tool of stabilization of the financial system of local government units or not? Introduced in the Public Finance Act of 2009, the system of two independent documents, i.a. the annual budget and the long-term financial forecast, without specification of hierarchy, relationship and connection between these documents, does not lead to financial stability of local government from both the point of view of implementation of the budget and the consequences of decisions made by the local government authorities. The lessons that have been learned indicate that the annual budgeting is increasingly leading to destabilization of the financial system of local government units


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Anas Al Qudah ◽  
Azzouz Zouaoui ◽  
Mostafa E. Aboelsoud

Purpose This study aims to better understand the phenomenon of corruption in Tunisia in relation to its impact on economic development. The period of study is 1995 to 2014. The auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is adopted to examine the existence of a long-term relationship between the above-mentioned variables and also the direct and indirect consequences of corruption on economic development in Tunisia. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a modern econometric technique to estimating the long-term relationship (e.g. the co-integration) between corruption and economic development; using this technique also allows us to investigate the impact of corruption on economic growth. Findings The empirical results show that corruption has a negative effect on per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Tunisia for the period under review. This effect is described as a direct effect of corruption in the long term; specifically, declines are observed in per capita GDP, over the long run, by almost 1 per cent, following a 1 per cent increase in the level of corruption. The results also show that corruption has indirect effects via transmission channels, such as investment in physical capital, which is positively significant in the presence of corruption. The same observation is made at the level of government expenditure during the previous year, while for those of the current year, the coefficient becomes negative but not significant. With respect to human capital, the impact of corruption on education expenditures is insignificant. Originality/value The paper begins with an overview of previous literature in this area. Given the nature of corruption and the differences in the meanings attributed to it, from one country to another and from one culture to another, the paper moves on to study the impact of corruption in Tunisia as a case study for one country with one socio-cultural environment. The authors then propose several methods and possible solutions, which could be implemented to deal with this problem.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Okan Duru

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and clarify “irrationality” problem through the maritime industry practices and leading incentives behind common investors. Design/methodology/approach This paper includes a review of broader business and economics literature; review of shipping business practices and detection of institutional pathways and misleading mechanisms behind the irrational preferences; investigation of data (for some arguments); and introduction of a theoretical approach. Findings There are several industry practices and norms well established and followed by decision makers, which may cause and initiate illogical and irrational (long-run) preferences. Short-termism is an erroneous habit of common shipping investors, which is embedded and forced through traditional financial math (i.e. discounted cash flow), financial system (e.g. initial public offerings with high-frequency transactions, interest rate governance and asset valuation mechanism) or flawed contracting tradition (i.e. commission bias). Practical implications Both shipping business and financial institutions need to redesign their working mechanisms, evaluation systems, risk detection and assessment procedures. As discussed in Section 4.7, commission-based (float) services must be converted to regular flat rate payments with long-term contracts to protect investors from rational choices of intermediaries in the short-run which encourages investor’s irrationality. Having a long-term service contract will also improve sustainability of intermediaries and lower their business risk (win-win). Originality/value The impact of this paper is two-fold. First, it raises critical questions about professional decay and drawbacks of some traditional instruments in the shipping business. For the first time, this paper emphasises on various challenges which deteriorate credibility of the industry and causes ill-defined investments. Some arguments have extreme priority for strengthening the foundations of the industry. Second, this paper establishes a new stream of scholarly research highlighting weaknesses of conventional economic approach and demand for outsourcing other schools of economics (e.g. institutional and behavioural) into the shipping business.


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