Suchergebnisse

The aim of this article is to analyse the level of public financial information disclosed by certain Arab countries in the Middle East, in view of calls for greater transparency and international trends in this respect. Accordingly, we examined the financial reports published online by the selected countries, contrasting them with the financial statements and contents proposed in the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) issued by the International Federation of Accountants. The results show that the Arab countries analysed present a low level of public financial information. They all present similar degrees of compliance with IPSAS 1 and 2. Nonetheless, we can observe that aid-receiving countries are implementing the policies stipulated in the international recommendations in response to the demands of donors and international agencies. Countries with oil revenues experience less pressure to implement the IPSAS. Points for practitioners The findings of this article may be of interest to public managers in all the selected Arab countries, especially those in the public administrations of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and to consulting companies in the Gulf region. The analysis made of financial legislation and of the IPSAS 1 and 2 indexes for the selected countries may encourage them to initiate a process of financial reforms.

AbstractThis article analyzes the effects of changes in the political system‐from dictatorship to democracy‐on financial information systems and on their reform. We chose to study Argentina, Chile and Paraguay as these three countires share a similar geographic and social‐political context. They all had dictatorial governments during the second half of the 20th century and peformed a transition to democratic systems in the 1990s. We provide a brief overview of the political context and of government accounting regulations, both before and after the transition. We propose an adaptation of Lüder's contingency model to be applied to the situation in these three countries. This model enables us to identify the principal agents and motives favouring or prejudicing the implementation of reforms to financial information systems. Ours is the first academic study of reforms to government financial information systems in three Latin American countries that have made the transition from dictatorship to democracy, identifying the contingent factors that have affected the adoption of reforms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The current economic crisis is increasingly affecting the public sector, requiring stricter control of deficits, and local administrations are not exempt from these requirements. Therefore, it is essential to consider management forms that may produce cost savings in the provision of public services. In this article we propose an evaluation of municipal waste collection and disposal services to determine whether single/joint or public/private municipal service provision, together with other factors including quality, political aspects, and the socio-economic environment, most contribute to reducing costs. The results obtained for the period 2002-08 show that joint management (inter-municipal cooperation) and public management (in relation to single and private management systems, respectively) have a greater effect on reducing the costs of this service. Thus, small and medium-sized local authorities can identify formulas for reducing costs and thus be in a better position to overcome the economic crisis. Adapted from the source document.