Public Sector Research Research Articles

The Impact of Accountability Mechanisms on Public Sector Environmental Sustainability Performance: A Case Study of Sri Lanka

Asia is the fastest growing economic region that has attracted significant economic and infrastructure development. With increasing development, this region has become one of the main environmental polluters with significant environmental degradation, reduced water and air quality, and imperilled biodiversity. Traditional international donor and funding agencies such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have strict environmental safeguard policies drawn from Sustainable Development Goals, to ensure borrowing countries and projects comply with environmental sustainability. However, with an increasing shift to non-traditional donors such as China, environmental safeguards are not a key priority in developmental projects. The public sector plays a significant role in ensuring environmental sustainability and accountability, and is increasingly being pressured to revisit their concept of sustainability. Robust public sector accountability frameworks are paramount to achieve environmentally sustainable development. However, environmental sustainability research in developing country context is limited, public sector research is even scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap by clarifying the concept of environmental accountability of public sector entities in pursuing internationally funded development projects in Sri Lanka as a fast developing country in the south Asian region. This further analyses the roles and responsibilities of public sector agencies in relation to the environmental sustainability practices and the impact of international development funding agencies, including donor agencies on public sector accountability. The analysis indicates that despite the existing environmental sustainability guidelines and principles set by international agencies, environmental degradation continued to be a significant challenge in the country.

Public Accounting Research and Theories: A Literature Review

The purpose of this study is to provide a structured overview of the literature on research on public accounting and the theories used by referring to articles published in four reputable international journals in 2009–2018. It is expected that this article can be a basis for future research and becomes a work request for more precise and focused research questions. A literature review-based approach with two important steps in the analysis of trends in public accounting research was used. First, journals as the source of the data are limited to four reputable international journals that published public sector research. Second, articles are divided into three areas that include financial accounting, management accounting, and auditing. A structured method was then used to analyze the relevant and identified articles. Results show that articles published in four leading international journals do not specifically discuss public accounting. So far, journals publishing public accounting remain rare. Of the four journals, articles in public reports are few. Ten popular theories on how to apply public accounting research were discussed.
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 Keywords: Public Accounting, Literature Review, Theory.

A register of public-sector research organizations as a tool for research policy studies and evaluation

Abstract This article presents the conceptual and methodological design of a register of public-sector organizations, as well as a preliminary delineation of such organizations in Europe. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed, as well as the potential usage of the register for interlining datasets and analysis. The significance of the register for research policy and evaluation studies is also discussed, as related with changes associated with New Public Management reforms.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the public research sector. Towards a comprehensive typology

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the public research sector. Towards a comprehensive typology

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the public research sector. Towards a comprehensive typology

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the public research sector. Towards a comprehensive typology

The future of pharmaceuticals industry within the triad: The role of knowledge spillovers in innovation process

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of knowledge spillovers on productivity returns pharmaceutical leading firms. The analysis is based upon a dataset (sourced from the EU R&D investment scoreboards) made of R&D-intensive pharmaceuticals firms. In particular, we quantify the impact of R&D spillovers on the total factor productivity (TFP) between 2002 and 2010 on the basis of technological proximity. Thus, we elaborate more future scenarios to know what will happen, what can happen and how a predefined target may be obtained. Indeed, a numerical analysis for prediction of scenarios was conducted using the Method of Least Squares. The technological relatedness between the firms is computed through an original Mahalanobis industry weight matrix, based on the construction of technological vectors for each firm (Aldieri, 2013; Jaffe, 1986). The results confirmed the leadership of Europe and the USA in the pharmaceutical sector, highlighting the innovative capacity of Pfizer. The results might be interpreted to provide some useful implications for pharmaceutical policy strategy given that mainly in the pharmaceutical industry the private sector innovations derive from public-sector research investments.

A register of public-sector research organizations as a tool for research policy studies and evaluation

A register of public-sector research organizations as a tool for research policy studies and evaluation

International Medical Knowledge Transfer as a Tool of Public Diplomacy

The international dissemination of expertise in most transition countries is underdeveloped because of a number of developmental and practical challenges. Croatia’s overall educational and innovatory potential for health knowledge transfer remains above average when compared to what has been achieved by other new EU Member States, and it is dominated by public sector research institutes and universities. This unrealized potential could be improved further by enhancing the international dissemination of Croatian medical expertise using public diplomacy. The aim of this paper is to address the way in which the international dissemination of medical expertise in transition countries can serve as a tool of public diplomacy to improve its scope and success, in addition to advancing the scope of the knowledge transfer itself. The case of Croatia is used as an example. An effective communication strategy is an important element of public diplomacy that, by influencing public opinion, provides the necessary precondition for active societal support of the willing participants in the transfer of knowledge. Hence, at the beginning of this paper we present the concept of international knowledge transfer in general, and then proceed to present the example of the transfer of Croatian medical knowledge. The second part of this paper addresses elements of public diplomacy and different communication mechanisms and the potential for the international dissemination of domestic medical expertise, with the primary emphasis on Croatia. Finally, we present an overall analysis and an algorithm of public diplomacy activities that each country in transition can adopt to overcome failures associated with the international dissemination of medical expertise.

The Effect of Budget Management Quality and Internal Audit to Financial Statement Quality in the Ministries and Agencies

The government’s financial statement represents the state’s financial management accountability. This research aims to analyze the factors that influence the quality of the state’s financial statement using the variables of the state’s budget management quality and internal audit. This research observed 52 data that covered the period of 2015 – 2017 using the multiple linear regression analysis based on data panel. The variable also uses control variable to analyze data properly such as size and work unit. Results of the research suggest that the budget management quality and internal audit has a positive effect on the central government’s financial statement quality. This is also supported by correlation test of Pearson. Each ministry and agency should be empowered the budget management quality and internal audit to support the financial statement quality in ministries and agencies. As public sector institution control of budget should be the main concern to create good financial statement quality. This may the first paper which analyze factors of budget management quality and internal audit to financial statement quality in ministries and agencies. Research in public sector especially for government is rare as the data may not be available.

Comparing institutional-level bibliometric research performance indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems

The present study is an evaluation of three frequently used institution name disambiguation systems. The Web of Science normalized institution names and Organization Enhanced system and the Scopus Affiliation ID system are tested against a complete, independent institution disambiguation system for a sample of German public sector research organizations. The independent system is used as the gold standard in the evaluations that we perform. We study the coverage of the disambiguation systems and, in particular, the differences in a number of commonly used bibliometric indicators. The key finding is that for the sample institutions, the studied systems provide bibliometric indicator values that have only a limited accuracy. Our conclusion is that for any use with policy implications, additional data cleaning for disambiguating affiliation data is recommended.

Setting the agenda for social science research on the human microbiome

The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.

Globalization and Nigeria’s Economic Development—A Study of the Interconnectedness

Globalization, like many other concepts in the social sciences, has a variety of definition as there is no single definition for it. It is one of the few phenomena for which there is no accurate timestamp. Waters’ (1995) definition of globalization is used through the course of this work. Globalization is therefore defined as a social process in which the constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements recede in which people become increasingly aware that they are decreasing, and people act accordingly. Development, according to Todaro (1981), is a multi-dimensional process involving the reorganization and reorientation of the entire economic and social systems. Economic development is thus, the process in which a nation improves the living standard of its people as well as their political, social well-being. The research methodology employed for this work was exploratory methodology which is targeted at satisfying researcher’s desire about specific social phenomenon. Also, secondary sources of data and data collection were used. Secondary sources are secondhand information in which has been used by other people other than the researcher himself. The secondary sources of data collection used are library and historical works, published data, internet sources, government and public sector research. Modernization theory was also adopted in shedding more light to work. Modernization theory refers to a radical paradigm that is based on the bipolarity, from a pre-modern or conservative culture to an industrial or Western society. The product of this research concludes that there is interconnectedness between globalization and economic development in Nigeria, which in turn increases the rate of unemployment and hinders democratic development in Nigeria. Globalization was discovered to be the root cause of massive unemployment rate in Nigeria and the hindrance to democratic development in Nigeria. Globalization has an unequal relationship between developed and developing countries. While developed countries benefit massively from globalization, growing/undeveloped countries do not profit. Globalization, through its various symbols (World Bank, United Nations, and International Monetary Fund) and policies put in place by these symbols have negatively affected Nigeria and affected her development both politically and economically. Also, globalization, through colonization, the industrial revolution, Structural Adjustment Programme, privatization and commercialization, devaluation of the currency and so many unfavorable conditions put in place by the international financial institutions that represent globalization have furthered increased unemployment rate in Nigeria. It was also discovered that unemployment negatively affects democratic development in Nigeria as it causes social vices and criminal activities, electoral violence ethnic and religious intolerance, political corruption and poor living standard where the people lose faith in the government.

Increasing interoperability for research clouds: CS3APIs for connecting sync&share storage, applications and science environments

Cloud Services for Synchronization and Sharing (CS3) [14] have become increasing popular in the European Education and Research landscape in the last years. Services such as CERNBox, SWITCHdrive, SURFdrive, PSNCBox, Sciebo, CloudStor and many more have become indispensable in everyday work for scientists, engineers, educators and other users in public research and education sector. CS3 services are currently too fragmented and lack interoperability. To fix this problem and interconnect storage-, applicationand research services a set of interoperable interfaces, CS3APIs [10], has been developed. CS3APIs enable creation of easily-accessible and integrated science environments, facilitating cross-institutional research activities and avoiding fragmented silos based on ad-hoc solutions. In this paper we introduce the CS3APIs and its reference implementation, Reva [16].

ІНТЕГРАЦІЙНІ ПРОЦЕСИ В ІННОВАЦІЙНОМУ ПІДПРИЄМНИЦТВІ УКРАЇНИ

The article considers the problems and conditions of promotion of innovations in the innovative activity of industrial enterprises in the conditions of European integration. Research objectives are the analysis of the current state of innovative development of Ukrainian industrial enterprises and the identification of specific innovation strategies with relevant examples in domestic and foreign markets. Alternatives of innovation strategies for enterprises with relevant examples of specific enterprises and the use of marketing tools are described. The main research methods are used: general scientific – analysis of state and regional statistics, market surveys and forecasts, generalizations, analogy, data synthesis, hypothetical method and special – media monitoring, benchmarking. To solve the problems of promoting innovative products in Ukraine, a special algorithm is substantiated and proposed, which includes monitoring public spending on research and development, establishing feedback from the public sector research to industry, solving intellectual property problems and tax incentives, solving acute research problems. personnel through the creation of regional and state university associations, identification of priority areas such as support for eco-innovation, promotion of clean technologies, creation of centers of competence in industrial structures, integration of industrial entrepreneurship into the European Research Area. It was summarized that for the formation of the innovative policy of industrial enterprises, it is recommended to use a marketing approach, which provides for the preliminary formation and design of a new product based on the results of modern marketing research in order to promote innovative products to regional and foreign markets. It was emphasized that the promotion of innovative products is one of the most important areas of activity of industrial enterprises and a very important indicator of the state of the country’s economy as a whole.

NPD, Design and Management for SME’s

It is generally acknowledged that small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) contribute significantly to a country’s economic performance. It is also generally acknowledged that it can be problematic to provide effective, public sector research, development and innovation support for SME’s given their size and diversity. It is also considered that vertical cooperation with customers and suppliers is more effective in new product development (NPD) for SME’s than horizontal co-operation with research institutions and government agencies. This paper discusses how higher education institutions (HEI’s) engaged in design research, can effectively support SME’s in NPD by actively participating in the design process whilst simultaneously working with SME’s to facilitate the development of knowledge networks local to specific SME’s, by acting as an intermediary. A number of design support schemes and specific SME, NPD projects undertaken by the author are used to advocate a participatory intermediation role for HEI’s in supporting NPD for SME’s.

Ambidexterity and Public Organizations: A Configurational Perspective

A general assumption in public sector research is that public organizations have to be efficient and innovative to overcome challenges such as demographic changes and digitization. This argument has been discussed in light of ambidexterity theory, for example. However, only little public sector research has focused on “how” public organizations reach ambidexterity. We take this question into account and focus on design and leadership conditions that are necessary or sufficient for ambidexterity. More precisely, the main question of this article is: Which combination of leadership and design conditions plays a role for ambidexterity in public organizations? We theoretically rely on the concept of ambidexterity, collected data in Belgian public cultural centers, and analyzed the data via the set-theoretic method Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). We can conclude from our analysis that six different combinations of design and leadership conditions were found to be sufficient for ambidexterity in our dataset. What is more is that public organizations combine design and leadership conditions of both structural and contextual ambidexterity to balance simultaneously exploitation and exploration. Hereby this article provides new theoretical and empirical insights and offers opportunities for further ambidexterity research in public organizations.

Public sector financial support for late stage discovery of new drugs in the United States: cohort study

ObjectiveTo determine the extent to which late stage development of new drugs relies on support from public funding.DesignCohort study.SettingAll new drugs containing one or more new molecular entities approved by...

Transforming the public sector: 1998–2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of public sector research in the 1998–2018 period.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the extant literature of this era to study the theorisation of, and the findings of, public sector research.FindingsThis is a vibrant field of a study in a wide range of study settings and with many interdisciplinary studies. The influence of new public management is pervasive over this period. There are numerous instances of innovations in study settings, in key findings and the approach taken by investigators.Research limitations/implicationsThis is not a comprehensive review of all literature in this period.Practical implicationsThis study also explored the relevance of academic research of this era to policymaking by governments.Originality/valueThis paper offers a distinctive critique of theorisation of public sector accounting research. It reveals the dominant theoretical reference points in use during this period and observes the increasing tendency for theoretical pluralism to investigate complex study settings.

Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis

This Special Issue is based on papers initially presented at the ‘Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis’ Conference at the Centre for Not‐for‐profit and Public‐sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, UK in 2018. The public sector consists of organizations that are owned and operated by government; organizations that exist to provide goods and services for a country's citizens. What is particularly distinctive about such organizations, and what makes them different from businesses, is that they are (or, at least perhaps, should be) not‐for‐profit. In addition, they frequently have wide social and cultural goals that are central to what they do. They are pervasive in most societies. Yet, it is argued, they face crisis on a number of fronts: in terms of the influence of potentially inappropriate, business‐like new public management ideas related to performance management and the embracing of related accounting and budgeting approaches; and in terms of the impact of austerity, following the Great Recession in 2008. In such a context it is suggested that public sector governance, accounting, and accountability systems are heavily involved. The papers included in this Special Issue present an opportunity to reflect on aspects of this crisis in terms of how it connects with accounting systems and accounting changes. Key arguments of these papers, and overarching themes of this Special Issue, are explored in this editorial.

Impact of government policies on private R&D investment in agricultural biotechnology: Evidence from chemical and pesticide firms in China

China has put in place a series of policies to support private companies to engage in biotechnology research. This study uses data from a survey of 103 major agribusiness firms in the agricultural chemical and seed industries in China to evaluate the impact of government policies on private R&D investment in biotechnology. The results show that firms with positive profit expectation, public R&D subsidies, R&D collaboration with universities/research institutes or state-owned enterprises are more likely to embark on biotechnology research activities. Past patenting activity, R&D subsidies and collaboration with public sector research increase firms' biotechnology R&D investment while firms already selling genetically modified products and firms that are state-owned spend less on R&D. Our findings suggest that government policy does have an important impact on firms' biotechnology R&D investment.