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This study investigates the influence of service, political, governance, and financial characteristics on municipalities' choices of four service delivery modes (in-house, inter-municipal cooperation, municipality-owned firm, and private firm)

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This paper examines how firms design performance measurement systems (PMSs) to support the pursuit of mixed strategies. In particular, we examine the implications of firms' joint strategic emphasis on both low cost and differentiation for their use of performance measurement and incentive compensation. Analysis of survey data of 387 firms shows that more than half of the sample to some extent or fully mixes strategic priorities, while strategic priorities resembling strategic archetypes (primarily low cost or differentiation) populate only 36 percent of the sample. Our analyses support that, as compared to archetypal strategies, pursuing mixed strategies elicits design of more comprehensive and complex PMSs that are aimed at balancing effort and decisions toward the multiple strategies pursued.

This study examines the relationships between stakeholders’ information needs, cost system design, and cost system effectiveness in local government, using a dataset of survey responses from 71 Dutch municipalities. Three cost system design characteristics are examined: (a) the complexity and (b) the inclusiveness of cost systems, and (c) their understandability for non‐financial internal users. These characteristics are shown to be only partly related to each other, and to differ in the extent to which they are related to the information needs of internal and external stakeholders, as well as to three cost system effectiveness characteristics.