Programme de la conférence

Background:

Good governance is crucial for effective public administration, promoting accountability, transparency, and efficient service delivery. The North West Provincial Government has encountered ongoing governance challenges, such as financial mismanagement, unsatisfactory audit results, political instability, and inadequate oversight mechanisms. These issues have compromised service provision and eroded public trust.

Aim:

This study examines the key governance challenges facing the North West Provincial Government and explores possible strategies and reforms to improve accountability, efficiency, and service delivery.

Methods:

The study adopts a qualitative research approach, using secondary data sources such as academic literature, policy documents, government reports, and audit reports. A content analysis of reports from the Auditor-General, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), and the North West Provincial Legislature was performed to evaluate governance challenges and identify potential reforms.

Results:

The findings show that governance problems in the province are due to weak financial controls, limited capacity in institutions, and poor oversight. However, despite these challenges, efforts like better legislative oversight, stronger accountability measures, and training programs have shown no improvement.

Conclusion:

Despite ongoing governance issues, current reforms and oversight strategies present opportunities for progress. Addressing these challenges requires continuous political commitment, better financial management, and stronger institutional capabilities. Increased public involvement and transparency will be key to restoring public trust and achieving effective governance.

A growing number of FOI laws have been passed worldwide, but their enactment remains a challenge. Despite progress, the antecedents, conditions, and dynamics driving transparency institutionalization remain largely unknown. This article fills a gap by empirically examining institutionalization processes in Spanish municipalities under the 2013 Spanish Transparency Law. As it does not mandate formal structural changes, this law provides a compelling case to observe organic municipal responses to legal mandates. Using a sequential mixed-method approach, we surveyed compliance across 1,031 municipalities, followed by a questionnaire for transparency officers on implementation strategies. Additionally, we conducted 51 interviews with transparency technicians and 14 with provincial entities assisting municipalities. Our contributions are twofold: we identify sources of transparency implementation and analyze how institutionalization unfolds. We highlight factors and conditions that increase the likelihood of success, paving avenues for further empirical research. More broadly, our article contributes to debates on institutional implementation and strength.

Corruption is not only a matter of incidence but also of spatial distribution, with distinct patterns emerging across different institutional and economic contexts. This study explores how corruption risk varies spatially within Italy, a country that exemplifies the contrast between high-performing and low-performing economic areas. Using municipal-level public procurement data from 2007 to 2021 and Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), we identify non-random clusters of corruption risk that challenge conventional narratives. While Northern Italy exhibits localized corruption hotspots, the South shows more dispersed patterns, reflecting divergent institutional frameworks and market conditions. Our findings suggest that the spatial distribution of corruption at regional and sub-regional levels has distinct implications for governance, influencing institutional effectiveness and policy outcomes. This study contributes to the debate on anti-corruption strategies by highlighting the need for spatially differentiated approaches to tackling corruption.

Excellent leadership plays an important role for increasing employee satisfaction and better delivery of services to the people. Leadership styles also play a crucial role determining organizational performance, employee motivation, as well as service quality in the sphere of the public administration. Transformational leadership with its power to build perspective and inspire people, as well as providing them with individual attention have been continuously associated with the positive dynamics related to the workforce participation, satisfaction, and organizational-citizenship practices. Such leaders inspire the employees to overcome individual concerns and become innovative and share goals towards public service.

Although transactional leadership can be important in terms of supporting clarity of structure and performance pay, it can have fallen short of delivering the inspiring aspect needed to ensure long-term employee motivation and flexibility; especially within the environment of public institutions, where the nature of work can be complex and dynamic. Ethical leadership has also become another essential aspect, with the focus on justice, rectitude, and care about the living conditions in society. Studies indicate that ethical leadership nurtures and encourages trust, psychological safety and organizational citizenship attributes that considerably support the preservation of the confidence of the people and quality service provision.

The present study uses a mixed-methods design with the analysis of the previously published research papers and data collected among employees of the public sector to examine the impact of transformational, transactional, and ethical leadership styles on employee engagement, job satisfaction, and efficiency of providing services to the population. The study shall offer practical ideas available to policymakers as well as public administrators interested in undertaking leadership efforts that can improve the performance of their institutions, increase the welfare of their employees, and improve the confidence of the people in the institutions. The study would balance theoretical knowledge and practice and thus be helpful in the developing literature on the topic of leadership in public administration by providing suggestions on how to develop leaders who can address the modern challenges of governance and providing services.

Keywords: Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Ethical Leadership, Public Administration, Employee Engagement, Job Satisfaction and Public Service Delivery