The Italian Corporate Law Reform introduced a compulsory independent external auditor. In the past, only listed companies were required to be audited by external auditors, while non-listed companies were audited by the Board of Statutory Auditors regulated by the Italian Civil Code. The reform separated the responsibilities of administrative and financial auditing: statutory auditors were left in charge of administrative auditing, while financial auditing was assigned to external auditors, leaving a selected number of companies with the possibility of keeping the statutory auditors in charge of financial auditing as well. An empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of companies, aimed at assessing whether external auditors -compared to statutory auditorsgenerally granted a higher quality of auditing. To assess the quality of auditing, the reliability of annual reports was considered, examining the discretionary accrual levels.

The literature on public value creation has grown significantly in recent years. However, how such generation of public value is linked to the interaction between individual and organizational capabilities, and the role played by leadership in such interaction, is still underexplored. This analysis of the congestion charge zone (Area C) implemented by the Municipality of Milan in Italy explores this issue and highlights the role played by the knowledge orchestrator who, by assuming different leadership roles at different times, strives to create value through knowledge mobilization. Leveraging from existing resources, the knowledge orchestrator captures knowledge from the external environment and promotes collaboration among individuals and institutions, so as to generate a new reconfigured stock of knowledge. These activities nurture the capacity of public organizations to collaborate, produce innovations, and more broadly contribute to public value creation.

The relationship between governments and Third Sector is an important subject of public administration studies which attribute nonprofit organizations (NPOs) the double function of welfare service delivery, andaccording to a participatory governance model -participation in policies' definition. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the comprehension of the NPOs' approach to addressing human needs through their services, in order to support new ways to promote the citizens' initiative.Through a qualitative services analysis, seven case studies have been assessed. Results suggest that NPOs' approach is characterized by the attention to individual as a whole, networking with other NPOs, and focus on users autonomy. To promote participatory governance models, some suggestions for policy-makers are highlighted.

The role to be played by multi-stakeholder partnerships in addressing the ‘wicked problems’ of sustainable development is made explicit by the seventeenth Sustainable Development Goal. But how do these partnerships really work? Based on the analysis of four sustainability-oriented innovation initiatives implemented in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and France, this study explores the roles and mechanisms that collaborating actors may enact to facilitate the pursuit of sustainable development, with a particular focus on non-profit organizations. The results suggest that collaborative innovations for sustainability contribute simultaneously to the fulfilment of different Sustainable Development Goals, reaching beyond their original intent, and that the value being created has the potential to reinforce such roles and mechanisms. These partnerships are prompted and managed by non-profit organizations that act as metagovernors of collaborative innovation processes as they play the roles of cultural spreaders, enablers, relational brokers, service provides, and influencers. These findings will help policy-makers and practitioners in the public and non-profit sector to identify and utilize emerging opportunities for value creation through collaborative innovation, and to better design existing and prospective collaborative efforts aimed at sustainable objectives, thereby supporting progress towards the implementation of Agenda 2030.

Purpose This paper aims to identify the possible sources of organizational decoupling and their effects in public universities, as they transition from cash to accrual accounting, by assessing the phases of the innovation assimilation process. Design/methodology/approach To assess the transition, the authors develop a framework that integrates the possible sources of decoupling with the phases of the innovation process. This framework is then applied to the analysis of six Italian public universities moving from cash to accrual accounting. Findings The results point to regulation gaps and adverse organizational conditions as the main culprits of decoupling behaviours in the production and use of information. Delays in the characterization of the legal framework and ambiguities in the definition of accounting standards by the regulator are the first barriers to an effective transition. The organizational barriers, instead, depend on lack of adequate skills, over-bureaucratization, limitations of the IT systems and organizational complexity. Such limitations generate hybrid accounting systems that jeopardize the informative function of financial reporting. Originality/value From a theoretical viewpoint, this paper contributes to a conceptualization of accounting innovations and reforms as processes whose impact depends on dynamics that arise and interact differently across phases. From a practitioner’s point of view, it highlights the factors that may produce adverse effects during the implementation process: these may be taken into account during planning, so as to develop the appropriate remedial actions.