must be 500 words , APA FORMAT, 5 scholarly sources or more ( articles are attached) Statesmanship as it relates to financial management in the public administration context.
must be 500 words , APA FORMAT, 5 scholarly sources or more ( articles are attached)
- Statesmanship as it relates to financial management in the public administration context.
- The challenges that a would-be statesmanship would face in this area and the statecraft needed to lead successfully.
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PERFORMANCEANDFINANCIALMANAGEMENTINLOCALGOVERNMENT.docx
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TheRightMixARTICLE.docx
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Determinantsofsoundbudgetingandfinancialmanagementpracticesatthedecentralisedlevelofpublicadministration.docx
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ATaleofTwoHatchetMen.docx
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TransparencyinGovernments.docx
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PublicFinancialManagementSystemsandCountries.docx
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VideoWatch.docx
PERFORMANCE AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION
Public Administration Quarterly ; Randallstown Vol. 41, Iss. 1, (Spring 2017): 4-6.
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The fourth article included in this symposium, which was written by Zachary Mohr, responds to the lack of empirical research on how local governments use costing accounting at the department or service area, examining the influence of transaction costs on the measurement of indirect costs for service delivery. A major finding from this research is that service measurability uncertainty was found to be positively related to indirect cost measurement, which will require more attention over time given that more organizational leaders have an interest in results-based, decision-making and are pushing for a stronger understanding of direct and indirect costs.
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This symposium presents five articles on performance and financial management in local government, including citizen engagement through participatory budgeting, performance management, benchmarking property taxes, cost accounting, and comparative performance statistics as benchmarks. A major tread that runs through these specific topical areas is the desire to bring more accountability and transparency in local government, which continues to manifest both from internal organizational forces (Kelly and Rivenbark, 2011) and external community demands (Piotrowski and Van Ryzin, 2007). The goal of this symposium is to advance the research stream on performance and financial management in local government, responding to its prominent role in the study and practice of public administration.
I begin this symposium with an article written by Whitney B. Afonso that addresses how local governments are responding to growing pressures to increase transparency and citizen engagement through participatory budgeting, which has received a great deal of attention over the past several decades (Ebdon and Franklin, 2006). The majority of research on this topic, however, has approach citizen engagement from the perspective of the local government. This article presents a case study on participatory budgeting in Greensboro, North Carolina from the perspective of citizens, where they were given the authority to develop and vote on selected budget proposals. After identifying some of the specific challenges that citizens face when they take on the initiative to engage government, the author concludes that citizens must be persistent through participatory budgeting and that the government must foster these relationships for meaningful change.
The next article, which was written by Jeremy L. Hall, presents the components of capacity needed by local governments when embracing the benefits of performance management. They are financial capacity, administrative capacity, economy of scale and efficiency, inadequate strategic planning, task complexity and simplicity, and complex implementation environments. He then concludes by addressing several perceptual barriers to successful performance management, which includes the illusion of control. This article adds value to performance research given the paradigm shift that is occurring from performance measurement to performance management in local government. It also responds to the research on performance management that has found problems in the design and use of these systems for increasing governmental accountability (Heinrich, 2002).
I then included an article written by Spencer T. Brien, David Swindell, and Brent Stockwell on a property tax benchmarking initiative in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area, responding to how public officials are extremely interested in how their own property tax burdens compare to neighboring jurisdictions. This study identifies two critical challenges when benchmarking property tax burdens, which include how the activity itself needs to be designed in a manner to add value to the participating jurisdictions and how the data are appropriately safeguarded. The authors conclude with several avenues for additional research opportunities, which parallel the performance management research of actually using data for decision-making. One of the more interesting possibilities is how benchmarking data actually influence decision-making during the annual budget process, which is where the actual property tax burden is changed and approved by elected officials.
The fourth article included in this symposium, which was written by Zachary Mohr, responds to the lack of empirical research on how local governments use costing accounting at the department or service area, examining the influence of transaction costs on the measurement of indirect costs for service delivery. A major finding from this research is that service measurability uncertainty was found to be positively related to indirect cost measurement, which will require more attention over time given that more organizational leaders have an interest in results-based, decision-making and are pushing for a stronger understanding of direct and indirect costs. The author concludes that a logical extension of this research would be to expand our understanding of transaction cost dimensions across all services, which is part of our profession's desire to expand performance management and benchmarking in local government.
The final article of the symposium, coauthored by William C. Rivenbark, Dale J. Roenigk, and Roberta Fasiello, presents lessons learned from the North Carolina Benchmark Project to advance our understanding of why local governments participate in benchmarking consortiums and how they review and make decisions regarding the comparative data. A major finding from this study is that local governments use benchmarking data both for excellence and satisficing when responding to departmental rankings. This would suggest that not all comparative data are being used for the purpose of performance management, suggesting that there are accountability and transparency reasons for participating in a benchmarking consortium that has been in existence for approximately 20 years.
References
REFERENCES
Ebdon, C. & Franklin, A. L. (2006). Citizen Participation in Budgeting Theory. Public Administration Review, 66 (32): 437-447.
Heninrich, C. J. (2002). Outcomes-Based Performance Management in the Public Sector: Implications for Government Accountability and Effectiveness. Public Administration Review, 62 (6): 712-726.
Kelly, J.M. & Rivenbark, W.C. (2011). Performance Budgeting for State and Local Government, 2nd edition. Armonk, NY : M. E. Sharpe.
Piotrowski, S. J. & Van Ryzin, G.G. (2007). Citizen Attitudes Toward Transparency in Local Government. The American Review of Public Administration, 37 (3): 306-323.
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Copyright Southern Public Administration Education Foundation Spring 2017
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Activity-based costing: Usage and pitfalls
Latshaw, Craig A; Cortese-Danile, Teresa M.
Review of Business; New York Vol. 23, Iss. 1, (Winter 2002): 30-32.
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Analyzing local government financial performance: evidence from Brazilian municipalities 2005-2008
Alternate title: Analisando locais desempenho financeiro do governo: evidências de municípios brasileiros 2005-2008
Gomes, Ricardo Corrêa; Alfinito, Solange; Albuquerque, Pedro Henrique Melo.
Revista de administração contemporanea Vol. 17, Iss. 6, (Nov 2013): 704-719.
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The effectiveness of regulatory disclosure policies
Weil, David; Fung, Archon; Graham, Mary; Fagotto, Elena.
Journal of policy analysis and management Vol. 25, Iss. 1, (Jan 2006): 155-182.
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Public Participation in Local Politics: The Impact of Community Activism on the Windsor-Detroit Border Decision Making Process
Sutcliffe, John B.
Canadian Journal of Urban Research Vol. 17, Iss. 2, (January 2008): 57-83.
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Performance and accountability: Making government work
Curristine, Teresa.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD Observer; Paris Iss. 252/253, (Nov 2005): 11-12.
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· Subject
Decision making
Public administration
Transaction costs
Public finance
Empirical methods
Local government
Accountability
Costs
Financial management
Property taxes
Transparency
Budgeting
Performance management
Citizen participation
· Location
North Carolina
United States–US
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ARTICLE
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The Right Mix? Gender Diversity in Top Management Teams and Financial Performance
Niels Opstrup , Anders R. Villadsen
First published: 19 December 2014
https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1111/puar.12310
Citations: 70
Abstract
Recent research has illustrated that demographic diversity influences the outcomes of public sector organizations. Most studies have focused on workforce diversity; by comparison, little is known about how managerial diversity affects organizational outcomes. This article focuses on gender diversity in the top management teams of public organizations and its relationship to financial performance. Theory suggests that management diversity can be a positive asset for organizations, allowing for the use of more diverse knowledge and human skill sets. Results of this study, however, suggest that organizations may only be able to leverage these advantages if they have a supporting management structure. In a longitudinal study of top management teams in Danish municipalities, the authors find that gender diversity in top management teams is associated with higher financial performance, but only in municipalities with a management structure that supports cross-functional team work. These results are interpreted in light of existing theory, and implications are suggested.
Practitioner Points
· Little is known about how the composition of the top management team in public organizations matters for organizational outcomes.
· Greater gender diversity has the potential to lead to superior organizational outcomes but does not automatically do so.
· To reap the benefits of diverse top management teams, the organizational structure must facilitate behavioral integration between members of the top management team.
· Gender diversity in the top management team is related to better financial outcomes when organizational structures promote integration and discretion of the top management team.
· Gender diversity in top management positions has no effect in traditional hierarchical organizations.
Recent research has explored how characteristics such as tenure (Juenke 2005 ), race (Pitts 2005 ), experience (Villadsen 2012 ), and gender (Meier, O'Toole Jr, and Goerdel 2006 ) influence the actions of public managers. This research, however, generally fails to allow for the fact that management is rarely an individual endeavor; while a single person may top the hierarchy and serve as the public face of an organization, actual top management is often better described as a team effort (Finkelstein and Hambrick 1990 ). In this article, we move the focus from the individual manager to the top management team and examine how its composition affects organizational outcomes.
A considerable amount of research has investigated how various management practices affect public organizations. These practices include leadership (Fernandez 2005 ; Van Wart 2013 ), managerial networking (Meier and O'Toole 2003 ), organizational strategies (Andrews, Boyne, and Walker 2006 ), contracting (Hefetz and Warner 2004 , 2012 ), and performance-information use (Moynihan and Ingraham 2004 ; Moynihan and Pandey 2010 ). This substantial line of research has provided valuable insights about how managers can affect the outcomes of public organizations. Much less research has been devoted to the composition of management teams and the dynamics among individuals occupying managerial roles in organizations. This is a critical gap in our understanding of public management. Top management is composed of individuals who apply their knowledge, perspectives, and worldviews to contribute to decision making as well as the overall direction of organizations (Hambrick, Cho, and Chen 1996 ).
In this article, we explore how gender diversity in top management teams (TMTs) affects financial performance in public organizations. Research focusing on private firms indicates that managerial gender diversity is related to positive performance outcomes (Auh and Menguc 2006 ; Carter, Simkins, and Simpson 2003 ; Dwyer, Richard, and Chadwick 2003 ; Erhardt, Werbel, and Shrader 2003 ). However, little research has yet explored the outcomes of TMT gender composition in public sector organizations (Pitts and Wise 2010 ), and to our knowledge, no studies have focused on how diversity may affect financial performance. We respond to an increasing interest in diversity in public organizations (Park 2013 ; Pitts 2005 ; Pitts and Wise 2010 ) and draw on recent theories about team diversity (for reviews, see Jackson, Joshi, and Erhardt 2003 ; Van Knippenberg and Schippers 2007 ) in order to explore how the gender composition of TMTs affects financial outcomes in public organizations.
In this article, we argue that TMT gender diversity is a positive asset for public sector organizations, for three reasons. First, drawing on the theory of representative bureaucracy, gender diversity is likely to generate a better understanding of the organization's environment because a collective of diverse team members can relate to many different aspects of increasingly heterogeneous organizational surroundings (Keiser et al. 2002 ; Park 2013 ). Second, diversity may inspire more creative and innovative output because it enables organizations to draw on a wider range of social and human capital as well as different cognitive templates (Østergaard, Timmermans, and Kristinsson 2011 ). Finally, diversity may provide more effective problem solving because diverse teams evaluate more alternatives and explore more potential consequences (Carter, Simkins, and Simpson 2003 ). Further, we draw on theories of group decision-making processes to suggest that male-dominated TMTs may be excessively risk seeking compared with those with a more even gender balance. Based on this, we predict that financial performance is likely to be better in organizations with a gender-integrated TMT.
We propose that the benefits of diversity are contingent on organizational factors. Gender diversity in the top management team is likely to be related to superior performance specifically when management structures facilitate behavioral integration and cross-gender TMT work. We suggest that the mixed results of previous research were caused by disregarding the role of organizational structure as an important mediating factor. This is consistent with research pointing to the importance of the structural context for achieving active representation (Keiser et al. 2002 ).
Gender diversity in the top management team is likely to be related to superior performance specifically when management structures facilitate behavioral integration and cross-gender TMT work.
Previous studies of the outcomes of diversity and representation in public organizations have predominantly taken education as their point of departure, relying on various measures of student performance (Pitts and Wise 2010 ). In this article, we focus on the financial performance of multipurpose public organizations. Of course, we recognize that “making money” is not the prime objective of public sector organizations. However, sound financial management is a fundamental prerequisite for effective service delivery, particularly in the post–New Public Management period, when many organizations, agencies, and units have gained greater financial autonomy. The ability to control finances effectively is an important factor underlying the work public organizations carry out. Deficits and budget overruns may impede the effective steering of public spending (Serritzlew 2005 ; Wildavsky and Caiden 2004 ).
More specifically, we study the relationship between TMT gender diversity and financial performance in a longitudinal analysis of 91 Danish municipalities. Our results indicate the importance of organizational structure for accruing the benefits of TMT diversity. Only in municipalities where the management team is organized according to an executive board model do higher levels of gender diversity correlate with better financial results (measured in terms of operational results and outperforming the budget in the course of the year). No such effect is found for municipalities using a traditional specialized organiza
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