Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms adopted by cities to control the provision of externalized public services and to explore the determinants of such control choices. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the results of a multiple case study based...

Purpose – The issue of accounting change, why and how accounting evolves through time and within specific organisational settings, has been addressed by an important body of literature. This paper aims to explain why, in processes of accounting change, organisations confronting similar...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the new public management (NPM) literature by investigating how politicians and managers perceive their relationships and respective roles during the accounting cycle and using multiple cases of Italian local government (LGs)....