Since Ghana gained political independence from British colonial rule in 1957, the country has had a number of administrative reforms that covered varied subjects, including ministerial restructuring, decentralisation, revision of schemes of service and pay and grading systems, motivation and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the back office efficiency savings made by English councils during the 2004 Spending Review (SR04) period in order to consider the relationship between service delivery, audit and inspection and, efficiency programmes in local government. It...

Local government is the second or third tier of government deliberately created to bring government to the grassroots population, as well as give its members a sense of involvement in the political process that controls their daily lives. Decentralization is a natural indispensable counterpart...

A number of internal and external pressures in UK local government have led to the examination of different options for internal organisation and management. A particular pressure has recently been the reorganisation of local government towards the creation of new unitary local councils. The...

The White Paper on Local Government in South Africa signals the intention to establish a performance management system for the sector. This paper suggests that current approaches to performance management, as used, for instance, in the UK public sector, would need substantial revision to be...

As monolithic corporations and public agencies seek ways of adapting to the demands of the next century many such institutions, while wishing to retain the benefits of belonging to an identifiable corporation, are recreating themselves as conglomerates of “loosely coupled businesses”. This...

Purpose – Following the introduction of the New Zealand Local Government Amendment Acts (1996, 2002), some significant changes have taken place in resource allocation and service design of local government organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of local...

Purpose – The Nordic narrative on local government highlights municipalities’ role in social consumption, a model, which is often considered a success story. The purpose of this paper is to apply Gerry Stoker’s (2011) theory on local government roles in society to critically analyse the...