Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate resilience to extreme weather events (EWE) in a sample of Italian local councils (LCs), impacted by flood disasters. Whether resilience as a concept is adopted by the affected councils and factors that promote or inhibit LC resilience are...

In our modern network world, ICT acts as a connecting and integratingmechanism. Information (data, knowledge)has become a core constellation in an open economy. The avalanche ofinformation supply however, has not keptpace with the use of information by decision-making bodies.Especially in the...

One of the five basic factors in the Lengyel-type pyramid model – institutions and social capital – is essential in the economic growth of the region. Economic success however, does not only depend on participants in the economy, but on social factors such as the roles played by...

This paper is an attempt to clarify and present the many definitions of benchmarking. It also attempts to explain the basic steps of benchmarking, to show how this tool can be applied by local authorities as well as to discuss its potential benefits and limitations providing a series of examples...

Considers the role of marketing in an increasingly profit‐oriented local authority. Discusses the problems involved when a public service espouses marketing principles, but concludes that only marketing can make most effective use of the scarce resources available to local authorities.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of Swedish integrated health care, their state of development and interdependence, and, furthermore, evaluate whether the theoretical framework used improves the comprehension of why integrated health care arrangements endure or...

Despite long‐standing legislation within the UK, women are still generally under‐represented at managerial level within organisations. One method of making a difference to this situation is the provision of positive action training and this paper summarises the arguments for and against...

Studies of management development (MD) can be pursued at company, sector or national levels. “Sector” studies of MD are quite rare, despite providing a potential natural “laboratory” in which a variety of approaches to MD can be studied. The research here was concerned with MD in local...

Purpose – The paper aims to provide better understanding of internal customer perspectives, i.e. the employees of local authorities (LAs) as a service provider in Malaysia. The research attempts to identify the contributing and the constraining factors affecting the quality of the services to...

Purpose – The research in this paper is aimed at re‐engineering existing approaches to the analysis of proposed developments in local authorities – from land pricing to planning permission – hence reducing the loss of revenue in councils, and nurture property development....