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Expertly navigating the complex relationships between accounting and the development of hybridized public governance, this erudite Handbook critically analyses the most pressing challenges and limitations currently facing accounting and public governance research. Comprehensively drawing intricate links between accounting, public governance and hybridization, it conceptualizes the role of accounting by looking at the current and prospective needs of hybridized public governance.

The recent global financial and economic crisis has had surprising effects on several economies worldwide. This global event has promoted the discussion on how ethical, transparent, and rigorous the accountability of public sector institutions is. However, public manager accountability is translated into a vision that goes beyond its sphere of activity, demanding information on how public resources have been managed based on the maximization of social welfare and sustainable development. Tools, Strategies, and Practices for Modern and Accountable Public Sector Management is an essential reference source that discusses the process behind how public resources are managed as well as how they are coordinated to achieve collective success. Featuring research on topics such as corporate responsibility, fiscal accountability, and public administration, this book is ideally designed for researchers, managers, financial authorities, auditors, public managers, public administrators, regulatory authorities, accountants, professionals, and students involved with the accountability and reform of public management in local governments.

Accounting information, on the one hand, allows government officials to obtain better information to support greater decision making, transparency, and accountability. On the other hand, this financial information also allows local citizens more access to knowledge of how public resources are being managed and used by the local government entities. Measuring the pros and cons of this information may determine how certain officials remain in office while others do not. Financial Determinants in Local Re-Election Rates: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research that assesses whether accounting information and other factors have an impact on electoral results, which in turn impact re-election in local government. While highlighting topics including political financing, voting behavior, and capital spending, this book is ideally designed for political analysts, politicians, government officials, researchers, policymakers, public policy managers, financial analysts, academicians, and students seeking current research on financial information and other factors having an impact on electoral results.

The effects of recent economic and financial crises have reached an international scale; a number of different nations have experienced the fallout of these events, calling into question issues of accountability and reform in public management. Global Perspectives on Risk Management and Accounting in the Public Sector is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on current developments and future directions of the regulation, financial management, and sustainability of public institutions. Featuring discussions on risk assessment, transparency, and information disclosure, this book is ideally designed for regulatory authorities, researchers, managers, and professionals working in the public domain.

The continued growth of any nation depends largely on the development of their built infrastructures and communities. By creating stable infrastructures, countries can more easily thrive in competitive international markets. Sustainable Infrastructure: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice examines sustainable development through the lens of transportation, waste management, land use planning, and governance. Highlighting a range of topics such as sustainable development, transportation planning, and regional and urban infrastructure planning, this publication is an ideal reference source for engineers, planners, government officials, developers, policymakers, legislators, researchers, academicians, and graduate-level students seeking current research on the latest trends in sustainable infrastructure.

Since the mid-1990s, under the wave of New Public Management reforms around the globe, Italian local governments (LGs) have received growing pressure from the legislature to implement performance measurement systems. With reference to municipalities, data show that there has been a growing diffusion of management control systems (MCSs) and therefore some sort of performance measurement. In 1998, less than one-tenth of about 8,100 Italian municipalities indicated that they had a MCS in place. This number increased during the following four years to about 36% for municipalities with a population less than 60,000 inhabitants, and 77% for larger municipalities (source: Italian Court of Audit, 2003). Other evidence depicts similar trends: an increase in benchmarking projects during the latter half of the 1990s and 2001 (Lucianelli and Tanese, 2002), and a growing attention on cost accounting which led to half of Italian municipalities with some sort of measurement of costs in 2003 (Orelli and Visani, 2004).The general framework of the Italian Local Governments Accounting Standards (Commission for Local Governments' Finance and Accounting - Ministry of the Interior, 2004) emphasize that the annual budget approved by each municipality's council should present the true and fair view of the next year. In other words, municipalities should plan the year after attempting to determine the best feasible picture of it in terms - above all - of revenues and expenses. Toward this end the legislature (Decree no. 267/00, articles no. 162, 196, and 197) suggests the use of performance measures, especially those connected to a MCS.Therefore an important question is whether the growth of performance measurement had a positive impact on Italian municipalities' ability to estimate revenues and expenditures more accurately in their annual budgets. To answer this question we use a quantitative approach based on an analysis of annual budgets and annual reports of Italian municipalities covering financial years 1999-2002.