English Resilience in the Face of Austerity

Public value, institutional logics and practice variation during austerity localism at Newcastle City Council

“…If the central government was serious about local power, how could it deprive local government of the means to pay for policies? Not only did it cut funding extensively but central government policy also created over 160 new burdens on local government, with an estimated value of £11.5 billion, many of them unfunded (Jones 2017). Austerity localism meant that the democratically elected central government stymied the functioning of democratically elected local governments.…”

Local government strategies in the face of shocks and crises: the role of anticipatory capacities and financial vulnerability

“…The impact can be direct, such as eroding tax bases, or indirect, e.g. due to natural disasters or changes in government policy (see Jones et al, 2017). Although the question of whether there exist objective criteria that define when an event can be perceived as a 'triggering' event in terms of a crisis or shock, or whether the existence of a crisis or shock is determined by individual perceptions still seems to be open for debate (see Drennan et al 2014, p. 14 ff.…”

“…Much of the literature that has explored governmental responses to the global financial crisis shows that governments across the globe have been hit to varying degrees by the financial crisis, and that some have responded with only incremental, yet others with more fundamental, measures (see Kickert, 2012;Kickert et al, 2013;Peters, 2011). In addition, case studies of LGs in Germany, Italy as well as the UK have highlighted that changes in regulations such as taxation limitations and devolvement of tasks, or cuts to public expenditure (Barbera et al, 2017;Jones, 2017;Papenfuß et al, 2017) can have unexpected and long-lasting effects on the LGs' finances, and F o r P e e r R e v i e w impact on public managers' perceptions and elaboration of ensuing response strategies. In line with these findings, it may be expected that when public managers perceive a stronger intensity of external shocks, this will translate in stronger responses, both in terms of incremental adaptation and buffering (bouncing back) and of more radical transformations and repositioning (bouncing forward).…”

Risk Perception, Accounting, and Resilience in Public Sector Organizations: A Case Study Analysis

“…The resilience pattern could be different between municipalities, its depending on how the shock has been perceived (Du Boys 2017) or other characteristics like organizational features and capacities, as well as the characteristics of the external environment (Barbera et al 2017(Barbera et al , 2020. In fact, in other studies, municipalities appeared to be a common set of anticipatory and coping capacities (Jones 2017). Barbera et al (2017) call for further studies about the internal and external determinant of resilience in public sector organizations, and in particular the role of accounting in supporting the development of resilience capacity.…”