Suchergebnisse

Child protection systems differ across the four countries of the United Kingdom, and understanding the differences provide important opportunities for learning and improving day-to-day practice. This authoritative book compares UK child protection systems with other systems world-wide as well as scrutinising and comparing the systems in different parts of the UK. Reflecting on the impact of devolution, the authors consider and critically analyse the way child protection systems are being developed, thought about and put into practice in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. An intra-c

This paper assesses the job of scrutiny and oversight in public services by examining the role of the internal auditor (IA) and external auditor (EA) and their relationship with the audit committee (AC) in two distinct English public sector environments. The research uses an exploratory qualitative case study approach based on semi-structured interviews, AC meeting observations, and documentation reviews. The study acts as a starting point to examine the effectiveness of governance arrangements during a period of change in the UK public sector. The research provides evidence of good triangulation between the work of the IA, EA, and AC. Nevertheless, having close interaction between EAs and ACs and a crossing over in terms of responsibilities may lead to a conflict of interest and raises serious doubts about the independence and objectivity of the EA. This needs to be closely monitored over the coming years. Due to the diversity and wider and more complex accountability relationships and intricacies found in public sector organisations the study highlights the need to consider additional factors to the analysis of simple principal agency theory assumptions. The research further provides evidence on the existence of loosely coupled CG structures within the roles of the EA and IA within local government. This is one of the few papers which explores the IA and EA roles and their relationship with the AC in an organisational and institutional setting different from the private sector.

AbstractThe paper examines corporate governance mechanisms which aim to ensure financial accountability in the context of long‐term Public–Private Partnership (PPP) contracts in Britain, and assesses the degree to which they provide taxpayers with control and accountability. The corporate governance arrangements are drawn from the private sector, and therefore downplay the traditional concepts of probity and stewardship, in part due to the British Treasury's adoption of private sector financial reporting. The paper draws on Shaoul et al.'s (2012a) governance‐based reporting framework to critique the corporate governance mechanisms of structure, financial reporting, contracts, and scrutiny in relation to British PPP projects. It shows that the way these mechanisms are set up means there is a lack of control by the public sector, thus rendering public accountability ineffective.

Africa's rapid population growth and urbanisation has made its socioeconomic development a global priority. But as China ramps up its assistance in bridging Africa's basic infrastructure gap to the detriment of institutions building, warnings of a debt trap have followed. Building upon an extensive body of evidence, the editors argue that developing institutions and infrastructure are two equally desirable but organisationally incompatible objectives. In conceptualising this duality by design, a new theoretical framework proposes better understanding of the differing approaches to development espoused by traditional agencies, such as the World Bank, and emergent Chinese agencies. This new framing moves the debate away from the fruitless search for a 'superior' form of organising, and instead suggests looking for complementarities in competing forms of organising for development. For students and researchers in international business, strategic and public management, and complex systems, as well as practitioners in international development and business in emergent markets.

Child protection systems differ across the four countries of the United Kingdom, and understanding the differences provide important opportunities for learning and improving day-to-day practice. This authoritative book compares UK child protection systems with other systems world-wide as well as scrutinising and comparing the systems in different parts of the UK. Reflecting on the impact of devolution, the authors consider and critically analyse the way child protection systems are being developed, thought about and put into practice in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. An intra-c.

ABSTRACTRoad schemes are of major importance in the global PPP market. We focus on Design‐Build‐Finance‐Operate (DBFO) arrangements covered by shadow toll or availability payment mechanisms, where the UK and Spain are key players. Now that a good number of DBFO schemes in the UK and Spain have been operational for well over half the contract period, there is scope for a detailed ex post evaluation of DBFO performance in both countries and an analysis of how the DBFO model has evolved. Preliminary results show that these contracts continue to be very expensive for public administrations, especially in the UK, where the financing costs and fee per kilometre are high. On the other hand, they are an easy source of revenue for the parent companies of the concessionaires, where the increased use of subordinated debt rather than equity seeks to reduce risk. However, despite circumventing the controversial hard‐tolling, some projects in both Spain and the UK present poor outcomes. Several other problems around these projects are identified, including lack of public accountability and transparency or poor governance, raising long‐term questions around affordability and opportunities for further study.

In 1993, the British government turned to the private sector to finance much needed investment in public infrastructure and manage services under its Public Private Partnerships (PPP) policy (Edwards et al., 2004), with transport forming by far the largest component by value of the PPP programme. (.)