Purpose

Public financial management has been characterized by the implementation of several innovations and reforms that embrace different areas and scope. These reforms aim at expenditure rationalization and efficiency enhancement, as well as the improvement of accountability and performance. Despite research having already paid attention to these innovations and reforms, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats empirically faced by public sector organizations still need to be investigated. This editorial introduces the special issue by emphasizing on the lessons that can be learned from past reform experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

The editorial synthesizes some of the findings of the previous literature and evidences the necessity of both successful and unsuccessful stories, presenting a future agenda of research which emphasizes the use of case studies as a suitable method to get insights out of multiple experiences.

Findings

The four articles presented in this special issue, covering the topics of accrual accounting adoption, the use of financial statements by councilors, the use of performance information by politicians and the outsourcing of auditing in local governments, provide an overview of the efforts and challenges faced by public administrations by analyzing the influence of the institutional context, the relevance of political implications and their practical footprint.

Originality

In this special issue, four successful stories that touch upon multiple facets of public financial management in different country contexts are discussed, and they signal important takeaway messages for further reforms.

中文翻译：

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客座社论公共部门财务管理的大团圆结局和成功故事：一个教训的视角

目的

公共财政管理的特点是实施了多项涵盖不同领域和范围的创新和改革。这些改革旨在支出合理化和提高效率，以及改进问责制和绩效。尽管研究已经关注这些创新和改革，但公共部门组织在经验上面临的优势、劣势、机遇和威胁仍然需要调查。这篇社论通过强调可以从过去的改革经验中吸取的教训来介绍专刊。

设计/方法/方法

社论综合了先前文献的一些发现，并证明了成功和不成功故事的必要性，提出了未来的研究议程，强调使用案例研究作为从多种经验中获得见解的合适方法。

发现

本期特刊中介绍的四篇文章，涵盖了权责发生制会计的采用、议员对财务报表的使用、政客对绩效信息的使用以及地方政府审计外包等主题，概述了所面临的努力和挑战由公共行政部门通过分析制度背景的影响、政治影响的相关性及其实际影响来实现。

独创性

本期特刊讨论了四个涉及不同国家背景下公共财政管理多个方面的成功案例，它们为进一步改革发出了重要的信息。