This paper starts with the assumption that local authorities, under the new public management, may use job sharing as part of an equal opportunities policy in order to attract and retain experienced and professional employees. Data collected from 32 councils in England and Scotland have shown...

With continuing pressures for transparency, accountability and value for money, measuring the performance of public sector organisations is attracting increasing academic and management attention. However, little attention appears to have been paid to the performance information needs of...

Purpose – Local authorities use events and festivals within their region to help achieve a diverse range of economic and social objectives. However, the success of these events, which can take up a substantial amount of the tourism, leisure or arts and cultural budget is rarely assessed in a...

Purpose – Seeks to draw together a number of separate but, arguably, inter‐related themes which are present for those involved in “sense making” within and across public and third sector agencies or organisations. Design/methodology/approach – Uses a case study approach of one...

Purpose – To understand the effects of the best value regime on the public provision of recreation at the level of the leisure centre. Design/methodology/approach – A strategic auditing device is applied to 87 leisure centres to investigate the strategic variables of environmental stability...

Purpose – Since the early 1990s there has been a growth in local authorities of risk management. However, despite a range of different strategies, initiatives and practices the issue of financing the risks to which authorities are exposed has remained problematic. The traditional dependence on...

Purpose – The aim of this study is to identify the methods used by providers to evaluate their food services and identify elements of their service that would benefit from adopting a benchmarking system. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews were conducted with 26 food services...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to investigate how two New Zealand local authorities have engaged with their duty under the Local Government Act 2002 (the Act) to foster community participation in decision making, specifically with regard to costs and funding of local authority...

Purpose – More than six years have elapsed since the much‐heralded Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (hereafter also referred to as the “Act”) came into force. The Act had been prompted by concern at the lack of progress made in the sphere of racial equality despite the existence of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of voluntary extended performance reporting (EPR) by Italian local authorities (LAs) by exploring the patterns of financial and non‐financial disclosure and the factors affecting those patterns. More specifically it aims to...