Mariafrancesca Sicilia

University of Bergamo | UNIBG · School of Management

Combining insights from public administration, accounting, and psychology, this article explores the microprocesses by which public managers use performance information, investigating whether the type of performance information use and the request to justify decisions affect the way in which information is processed. The study draws on data from a...

Drawing on a survey of 385 municipal public managers in Italy, this article investigates the potential association between managers' personality traits and their use of performance information. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the results show that cons cientious-ness, extraversion, and openness emerge as relevant...

Participatory budgeting (PB) aims to enhance citizens' participation in local government. While there is a significant body of literature on PB, few studies investigate the role of internal actors in its management. This study aims to understand public managers' perceptions of the whole PB process. Using the Q‐methodology on a sample of Italian loc...

Emotions are an important component of human life, influencing dyadic and organization-wide interactions. More specifically, leaders’ emotions affect positively and negatively not only their followers, but also organizational and group outcomes. Through a multiple case study of four collaborative governance networks, this paper explores whether and...

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 hetero...

Purpose The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope to enliven the debates of the past and future developments in terms of context, themes, theories, methods and impacts in the field of PSAR by the exchanges they i...

Co-production analyses the practices in which state or firms and lay actors work together in any phase of the production cycle. In the public sector, citizens are not seen as mere recipients of services but as co-producers at different stages. Scholarly interest in co-production has grown steadily in the past years. However, the research has yet to...

Harmonization of public sector accounting is attracting increasing attention from scholars and practitioners. A focal component of this phenomenon is the setting of accounting standards, whose legitimacy is paramount to their application. As participation by constituents is considered fundamental for ensuring this legitimacy, in this study, we focu...

This study investigates the conditions under which transparency contributes to citizens’ understanding of financial reporting and examines how this enhanced understanding is associated with public participation. To this end, a survey experiment was conducted in which two attributes of financial reporting transparency (i.e., content clarification an...

Purpose–This paper aims to highlight the importance of (public) value(s) and publicness in accounting andaccountability research. It pinpoints a range of issues that scholars need to contemplate when reconsideringpublicness in accounting research and practice. Design/methodology/approach–The paper adopts an interdisciplinary literature review assoc...

The book was inadvertently published without citing one of the co-authors. The corrections have now been carried out as follows:

This chapter presents the research aim and the methods deployed in collecting evidence and developing the theoretical framework for co-production. The literature on co-production has grown steadily in the past two decades, but in a fragmented way. Academic research has mainly tackled particular aspects of co-production, and focused on specific sect...

This chapter focuses on the different outcomes that coproduction can generate for three different actors: the lay actors, the regular service provider, and the community at large. The key factors that influence the behaviour of lay actors and their satisfaction with the coproduction process and outcomes are discussed. Additional lay actor outcomes...

This chapter focused on the management of coproduction, and addressed the many challenges to collaboration between professionals and lay actors. Collaboration management is not supposed to contradict ‘organically grown’ coproduction approaches and can be organised by both sides of the collaboration. The way coproduction is managed directly affects...

This chapter focuses on the first two components of the framework proposed in the book: the general context and the antecedents of co-production. While the general context includes the characteristics of the environment in which co-production takes place, the antecedents of co-production consist of those aspects that are necessary, according to the...

Purpose The paper aims to offer a viewpoint on how governmental budgeting needs to be reconsidered after the COVID-19 outbreak. Design/methodology/approach Building on extant research, and drawing on the Italian context, the paper provides reflections on four interrelated aspects: (1) how budgeting and reporting processes and formats are being mod...

This article discusses the concept of ‘publics’ and provides a case example related to Covid-19 to show the importance of strategically managing with and for publics. Specifically, the publics of local governance in lockdown are identified from two focus groups with local leaders conducted in Lombardy, Italy. Identifying, designing and visualizing...

The Task Force created in 2017 by the CIGAR network, the EGPA PSG XII, and the Accounting and Accountability SIG of the IRSPM launchs a call for setting guidelines to register COVID-19 effects on Government Financial Reporting

This study investigates how rhetoric is used to generate trust in public sector inter‐organisational networks. Drawing on evidence from a Local Safeguarding Children Board in England, where formal control systems were recognised to be insufficient to deal with the uncertainty inherent in the particular policy area, we explore how trustworthiness is...

Co-production is becoming a common way of providing public services. The interest of practitioners, engaged in this social innovation practice, has grown exponentially. So has done the academic literature that has blossomed over the last decade in a vibrant field of study. This book is a timely effort to address the lack of systematic knowledge on...

Drawing on upper echelons theory, the article investigates the potential impact of top managers’ background and demographic characteristics and personality traits on organizational decisions in the public sector. The top-management figure being investigated is the municipal chief financial officer (CFO) and the specific organizational decision unde...

Performance information research has grown rapidly over the last decade with much research emphasizing the importance of how information is framed, presented, and communicated by using a distinct rhetorical appeal. In this study, we examine how the framing, format, and rhetoric of performance information influences preferences among elected politic...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the convergence of private and public sector accounting standards is affecting conceptual and practical issues relating to heritage. More specifically, the paper is intended to provide a better understanding of the state of the art in national and international accounting standards on heritage ass...

This study looks at purposeful and legitimizing types of performance information use in local governments. Drawing on a survey of Austrian mayors who are at the politico-administrative apex of local government, the paper shows that purposeful and legitimizing uses of performance information coexist, but they appear to be negatively associated. In e...

Drawing on the results of a systematic literature review of empirical studies, this paper sheds light on six broad factors that facilitate the initiation and implementation of coproduction in public services. The factors are classified into two overarching categories: (1) organizational factors, including organizational arrangements, professional r...

Between patronage and good governance: Organizational arrangements in (local) public appointment processes This article investigates whether certain organizational arrangements in (local) public appointment processes could encourage the use of appointments as a tool of good governance rather than as a tool of patronage. Specifically, we studied the...

Co-production has become a buzzword for both scholars and practitioners in the past decade. This introduction to the thematic issue ‘Co-production: Implementation problems, new technologies and new designs’ unpacks the concept of co-production and illustrates how it has been operationalized on the ground in diverse country-specific contexts. To fac...

This paper looks at how the relationship between performance measurement system use(s) and organizational performance is affected by the type of performance information use and moderated by New Public Management (NPM) cultural orientation. Analysing data from a survey of Italian public managers, it shows that only monitoring and attention-focusing...

Public collaborative networks have been used across Europe to deal with challenges in public service delivery. However, running inter-organisational structures requires suitable management accounting and control systems. There are packages of mechanisms that help these networks build and maintain collaborative relationships between partners, enabli...

Traditionally, budgeting has been the process through which governments decide how much to spend on what, limiting expenditures to the revenues available and preventing overspending. Overtime, budgeting has increasingly been expected to perform different roles and functions, becoming an important political medium, a tool for providing impulses to t...

Despite an international resurgence of interest in coproduction, confusion about the concept remains. This article attempts to make sense of the disparate literature and clarify the concept of coproduction in public administration. Based on some definitional distinctions and considerations about who is involved in coproduction, when in the service...

Despite an international resurgence of interest in coproduction, confusion about the concept remains. This article attempts to make sense of the disparate literature and clarify the concept of coproduction in public administration. Based on some definitional distinctions and considerations about who is involved in coproduction, when in the servic...

Free online access: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Ej5N3ZV9YSHz5KZEhrvp/full

This paper explores the use of accounting information by local government politicians. The authors examined three very typical council decisions in both their policy formulation and decision-making stages, which had different levels of political conflict. During policy formulation, accounting information was used mostly to provide answers—improving...

This article investigates whether certain organizational arrangements in (local) public appointment processes could encourage the use of appointments as a tool of good governance rather than as a tool of patronage. Specifically, we studied the role of six organizational arrangements in 10 case studies of intra- and inter-organizational public appoi...

The tools of public value management – such as the strategic triangle and the public value account – are increasingly used by scholars and practitioners alike. At the same time, some confusion remains regarding their functionality in action. Based on our experiences with these tools in classrooms and boardrooms, we analyse how these instruments hel...

This book examines the various ways in which co-production can contribute to the creation, design, and delivery of public services, namely by engaging the expertise of users and their networks, by promoting public services that are better targeted and more responsive to users, by cutting costs against the background of austerity in public finance,...

Participatory budgeting is a form of co-production (“co-planning” and “co-design”) that allows citizens to influence public decision on the allocation of public resources to different public programs, services, and investments. In this chapter, four conditions for successfully implementing participatory budgeting as a form of co-production are iden...

Co-production is an umbrella term whose meaning has been widely debated on and whose practical consequences for public service delivery are an open research issue. This introductory chapter attempts to define what co-production is and what it is not, by an overview of the up-to-date literature. The chapter concludes by presenting the aims of the bo...

Although coproduction—the involvement of citizens and public sector professionals in the delivery of public services—is not a new issue in public administration, the concept is experiencing a resurgence of interest among scholars and practitioners. Since its formation in 2012, the International Institute of Administrative Sciences Study Group on th...

Participatory budgeting is a form of “co-planning” and “co-design” that is claimed to improve the level of democracy and public accountability. Drawing on evidence from the municipality of Rho’s participatory budgeting experience (in 2013 and 2014), this paper, through a Q analysis of citizens’ perceptions, reveals four types of “co-planners/co-des...

Purpose – Budgeting is central in public organizations. From a research viewpoint, it is an extremely multifaceted and potentially rich field to investigate and develop. The changing institutional and socio-economic landscape, moreover, requires a profound reassessment of its roles and features in accounting studies. The purpose of this paper is to...

Public services management and co-production in multi-level governance settings From a normative stance, co-production has been recommended at all stages of the public service cycle. However, previous empirical studies on co-production have neglected the question of how to make this happen. Moreover, little attention has been paid to how co-product...

From a normative stance, co-production has been recommended at all stages of the public service cycle. However, previous empirical studies on co-production have neglected the question of how to make this happen. Moreover, little attention has been paid to how co-production might occur in multi-level governance settings. The aim of this paper is to...

http://www.springer.com/in/book/9783319305561 This book examines the various ways in which co-production can contribute to the creation, design, and delivery of public services, namely by engaging the expertise of users and their networks, by promoting public services that are better targeted and more responsive to users, by cutting costs against t...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse, in terms of presence, determinants and purposes, the misrepresentation of expected revenues during budget formulation and the misrepresentation of actual revenues during budget execution. To this end, we use sixyear panel data from Italian municipalities with populations above 15,000. Our results suggest tha...

The topic of co-production of public services has gained a lot of appeal among academics and practitioners. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate the role of co-production of public services throughout the cycle of public services management. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing a case study of co-production of services for...

PurposeThe study contributes to the literature on public value and performance examining politicians’ and managers’ perspectives by investigating the importance they attach to the different facets of performance information (i.e. budgetary, accrual based- and non-financial information (NFI)). Design/methodology/approachWe survey politicians and man...

The contracting-out of public services has often been accompanied by a strong academic focus on the emergence of new governance forms, and a general neglect of the processes and practices through which contracted-out services are controlled and monitored. To fill this gap, we draw on contracting-out and inter-organizational control literatures to e...

The context of crisis requires to all types of organizations to introduce reforms and innovations in order to respond more effectively to the changes that are taking place. We can observe different effects from several perspectives. From an economic point of view, the crisis has created consequences on access to credit, on monetary policy, on indus...

Th e literature on budgeting in the public sector has traditionally focused on the annual budgetary process. Much less attention has been paid to rebudgeting—that is, what governments do to revise and update their budgets during the fi scal year. Because of its potentially large impact on appropriations, rebudgeting seemingly deserves more attentio...

Over the last decades the process of modernization in the public sector has fostered the adoption of new accounting techniques, such as accrual accounting and non-financial performance measurement systems. The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses on the different perceptions of politicians and managers as to the importance of performance inf...

In the last ten years, the management accounting literature has devoted extensive attention to control forms applied in cooperative agreements between partner organizations. While originally contributors developed a theoretical approach focused on pure control archetypes, more recently this approach was criticized because not sufficiently powerful...

Il volume ha per oggetto i sistemi contabili e di misurazione della performance delle aziende pubbliche, temi di grande interesse che sono al centro dell'attenzione da parte dell'accademia e degli operatori sia in Italia sia all'estero. Il lavoro si propone come una guida pratica, agile ed esaustiva e si rivolge a chi ha sviluppato uno specifico in...

Th e literature on budgeting in the public sector has traditionally focused on the annual budgetary process. Much less attention has been paid to rebudgeting—that is, what governments do to revise and update their budgets during the fi scal year. Because of its potentially large impact on appropriations, rebudgeting seemingly deserves more attentio...

Nelle amministrazioni pubbliche il bilancio preventivo assume un ruolo cen-trale alla luce delle peculiarità dei processi economici che avvengono in queste aziende Il volume descrive le funzioni del bilancio preventivo, ricostruisce i principali approcci decisionali descritti dalla letteratura e delinea le principali innovazioni che hanno interessa...

Our title is a play on the title of a celebrated Italian work first performed in 1921, Sei personaggi in cerca di autore [Six characters in search of an author], by Luigi Pirandello. Pirandello won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1934, "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art." Contemporary politicians and administrators are...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms adopted by cities to control the provision of externalized public services and to explore the determinants of such control choices. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents the results of a multiple case study based on the experiences of three cities and three public services...

Il Patto di Stabilità Interno (PSI) è stato introdotto in Italia nel 1999 per responsabilizzare gli enti locali rispetto al perseguimento dei vincoli imposti dal Patto di Stabilità e Crescita europeo. Da allora gli elementi caratterizzanti il Patto interno sono cambiati talvolta radicalmente con cadenza annuale.Questo capitolo, dopo un breve excurs...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the new public management (NPM) literature by investigating how politicians and managers perceive their relationships and respective roles during the accounting cycle and using multiple cases of Italian local government (LGs). Design/methodology/approach Drawing on public administration and pub...