Community welfare organisations (CWOs)¹ perform an important role in society. They are founded on religious or social values that are given expression through their mission statements. In undertaking their work, many command significant economic resources. While the literature shows an increasing use of performance reporting by CWOs, little is known about the processes through which performance reports are developed and deployed. This thesis attempts to fill this lacuna by investigating the structure and process of, and rationale for, performance reporting by a CWO. The research was undertaken through a single organisation case study of performance reporting in a large, multi-service CWO. The study employed an interpretive methodology, which was informed by Strategic Choice Theory, using data that was obtained through interviews, observation of meetings and document analysis. The study found that performance reporting by the organisation was extensive, being undertaken within two distinct but related frameworks: a voluntary system that had been developed within the organisation, and a mandatory system of external reporting. It concluded that performance reporting was essentially the strategic response of a decidedly purposeful, voluntary organisation that chose to operate in a highly regulated welfare system. The contributions to knowledge from this thesis arise from a comprehensive explanation of practice, and a demonstration of the applicability of Strategic Choice Theory to understanding organisational behaviour in a CWO. ¹ See Appendix 1 for a definition of the term Community Welfare Organisation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1374549 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

Community welfare organisations (CWOs)¹ perform an important role in society. They are founded on religious or social values that are given expression through their mission statements. In undertaking their work, many command significant economic resources. While the literature shows an increasing use of performance reporting by CWOs, little is known about the processes through which performance reports are developed and deployed. This thesis attempts to fill this lacuna by investigating the structure and process of, and rationale for, performance reporting by a CWO. The research was undertaken through a single organisation case study of performance reporting in a large, multi-service CWO. The study employed an interpretive methodology, which was informed by Strategic Choice Theory, using data that was obtained through interviews, observation of meetings and document analysis. The study found that performance reporting by the organisation was extensive, being undertaken within two distinct but related frameworks: a voluntary system that had been developed within the organisation, and a mandatory system of external reporting. It concluded that performance reporting was essentially the strategic response of a decidedly purposeful, voluntary organisation that chose to operate in a highly regulated welfare system. The contributions to knowledge from this thesis arise from a comprehensive explanation of practice, and a demonstration of the applicability of Strategic Choice Theory to understanding organisational behaviour in a CWO. ¹ See Appendix 1 for a definition of the term Community Welfare Organisation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1374549 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

All provincial departments are required to report on pre-determined objectives in terms of Section 40 of the Public Finance Management Act, read in conjunction with Section 5.1.1. of the Treasury Regulations. The purpose of this study was to establish the challenges faced by the Limpopo provincial departments in reporting pre-determined objectives to the Auditor-General. Reporting pre-determined objectives has been a challenge over the past financial years and this is evident in the Auditor-General‟s reports, in which departments continued to receive qualified audit reports (Auditor-General Reports, 2008-2011). The introduction of the Framework for Managing Programme and Performance Information by National Treasury, as well as Government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation by the Presidency, was intended to specifically address this challenge faced by departments (National Treasury, 2007 & The Presidency, 2007). The literature review revealed that performance management is fundamental to enhancing organisational performance. In this study, a qualitative research approach was used to collect and analyse data. Key findings of the study were that management should prioritise strategic planning, performance reporting, monitoring and evaluation to enable it to be in a position to make a determination as to whether what was planned by the department was realised. It is of paramount importance that performance reporting is on top of the agenda at management meetings. / MA (Public Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

All provincial departments are required to report on pre-determined objectives in terms of Section 40 of the Public Finance Management Act, read in conjunction with Section 5.1.1. of the Treasury Regulations. The purpose of this study was to establish the challenges faced by the Limpopo provincial departments in reporting pre-determined objectives to the Auditor-General. Reporting pre-determined objectives has been a challenge over the past financial years and this is evident in the Auditor-General‟s reports, in which departments continued to receive qualified audit reports (Auditor-General Reports, 2008-2011). The introduction of the Framework for Managing Programme and Performance Information by National Treasury, as well as Government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation by the Presidency, was intended to specifically address this challenge faced by departments (National Treasury, 2007 & The Presidency, 2007). The literature review revealed that performance management is fundamental to enhancing organisational performance. In this study, a qualitative research approach was used to collect and analyse data. Key findings of the study were that management should prioritise strategic planning, performance reporting, monitoring and evaluation to enable it to be in a position to make a determination as to whether what was planned by the department was realised. It is of paramount importance that performance reporting is on top of the agenda at management meetings. / MA (Public Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

New Public Management and increasing calls for public sector transparency and accountability drive public sector leaders to do more with less. One place these leaders can turn to make the organizational, program, and process improvement needed is its workforce, its people. This resource, its human capital, is increasingly recognized as a driver of organizational performance and success. Public sector leaders need the learning and accountability provided by human capital performance measurement and reporting to improve service efficiency, effectiveness, and impactfulness. This study examined recent research to see if there were common human capital performance indicators and performance reporting systems that could form the basis of standardized measurement and reporting. What was found was, while no standardized indicators or systems are in place, there is a good foundation with some initiating steps having been taken. Common groupings or themes of human capital indicators were uncovered including ones addressing organizational strategy impact, talent management, engagement & wellness, and workforce awareness. A balanced scorecard approach was often used as the performance reporting method to deliver these indicators. Maturity in both the human resources profession and performance reporting, along with further research, is needed to advance the concept of a common human capital performance indicators and performance reporting system. / Graduate

Congressional reporting requirements are an integral part of congressional oversight. These oversight-reporting activities are an important element of the concept of a legislative-centered public administration (Rosenbloom, 2000) "derived from the major discussions, decisions, and actions taken by Congress with regard to federal administration." This dissertation first describes the development of congressional reporting requirements by presenting selected agency cases. Based on these cases, common themes are identified that help in understanding the requirements and the problems associated with congressional reporting. The dissertation then makes specific recommendations for enhancing reporting requirement activities (e.g., tracking, monitoring and feedback) as part of the congressional oversight process. A proposed management approach to improve the congressional oversight process to build a legislative-centered public administration is presented at the conclusion of the dissertation. The dissertation process used a research approach that included selected cases, interviews with key individuals in the reporting process and analysis of data, including databases maintained by the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate. The dissertation is composed of three parts with two chapters in each part. Part I covers background information about congressional reporting requirements, the objectives and approach used in writing the dissertation, and the key theoretical literature that underpins the discussion of congressional reporting requirements. Part II of the dissertation discusses management and growth of reporting requirements. Part III of the dissertation discusses ways to gain control of congressional reporting requirements and increase their usefulness. The dissertation concludes that there is little evidence to indicate that congressional reporting requirements are being systematically managed in a way that achieves the objective for which they are created. The most serious substantive shortcoming is the lack of an institutional process to support and encourage discussion between Congress and the agencies preparing reports to provide for feedback and to identify reporting requirements that are no longer necessary. A comprehensive and systematic management approach is needed and a proposed management approach is discussed. Comprehensive and systematic management will bring about greater collaboration between congressional committees and their agency partners in an enhanced legislative-centered public administration. / Ph. D.

BACKGROUND: Faculty members in higher education participate in a diversity of scholarly activities. Feedback performance and data on these academic contributions must be tracked for multiple formative and summative purposes including faculty development, promotions, and annual reporting requirements. However, this data are frequently not captured, primarily because most teaching institutions have not implemented a system to effectively collect and report this data. PURPOSE: This thesis designed prototypes for an online performance analytics dashboard for Health Sciences faculty members, including researchers, teachers, administrators, leaders, and clinical educators. This project incorporated UCD (user-centered design) to focus on the end-users and seek to understand their needs and wants. METHOD: McMaster University was used as a case study for this Design-Based Research study. Dashboard preferences were gathered from literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, document analysis, focus groups and interviews. These findings informed the build of a dashboard prototype. Multiple iterations of end-user evaluation and prototype revisions were conducted to refine the design. A constructivist grounded theory approach was utilized to analyze qualitative data from focus group and interviews to generate theory. RESULTS: 25 key resources from the literature review were listed in an annotated bibliography. 10 stakeholders were interviewed. Several McMaster policies and forms were reviewed. 18 faculty members reviewed the dashboard and provided feedback. Qualitative data from focus groups and interviews revealed 4 main themes pertaining to dashboard needs. CONCLUSION: By designing prototypes, this study revealed several requirements and considerations for the construction of a faculty performance dashboard. The dashboard must be customizable, dynamic, organized by user groups, and include specific requirements for the relevant faculty roles. The quality, governance and weighting of data in the dashboard must be considered. Notably, the implementation of this solution would enhance faculty learning and assessment, data reporting and faculty development in the Health Sciences. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Background and research issue: The financial result in a non-profit organization is of secondary importance when the organization is missing a purpose to make profit. Instead, the organization’s work to accomplish its mission is of greater importance for the stakeholders. The annual report is a significant document for the organization in strengthening the accountability to its stakeholders. Previous research in the non-profit field argues that the non-profit sector meets difficulties in being accountable to a range of stakeholders and in measuring the organizations performance in terms of output and outcome. Furthermore, previous literature in the non-profit field have focused on understanding the performance measurement practices of non-profits. Less explored is how non-profits use performance measures and if the measures give any essential value. Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to generate detailed knowledge about and compare how Swedish non-profit organizations report their performance in the annual report to strengthen the accountability to their stakeholders. Method: The study is based on a qualitative method. Through a multiple comparative case study, primary data were used based on semi-structured interviews with six non-profit organizations and secondary data based on the organizations’ annual reports. Empiricism: The empirical evidence shows that four performance perspectives were reported by the majority of the associations, which was as follows: input, output, capacity and inter-organizational networks. Result: The results of the study show that the majority of the organizations report the more traditional measures input and output in their annual report. There is therefore a clear connection between the performance measures that the organizations report and the accountability that the study has identified, a functional accountability. The results of the study also show that there is still a challenge in reporting performance regarding outcome and public value. Accordingly, the results highlight difficulties for non- profit associations to design tools to measure these two perspectives that are connected to a social accountability towards stakeholders. / Bakgrund och problemformulering: Ideella föreningar kanliksom vinstdrivande företag vara bokföringsskyldiga och omfattas av olika regelverk för hur den löpande bokföringen ska avslutas. Då dessa föreningar saknar ett vinstsyfte blir det finansiella resultatet mindre intressant. Ett resultat kopplat till hur föreningen verkar för sitt ändamål blir istället av vikt för organisationens intressenter. Genom att organisationer mäter och rapporterar om sin prestation legitimerar de sin verksamhet och stärker redovisningsansvaret gentemot sina intressenter. Tidigare forskare menar att den ideella sektorn möter svårigheter i att stärka redovisningsansvaret gentemot flera intressenter och i att mäta faktisk prestation i form av resultat och effekter. Prestationsmätning har dominerats av normativa argument för vad organisationer bör inkludera i sin mätning av prestation, vad för mått de ideella organisationerna faktiskt använder och huruvida måtten tillför någon nytta är mindre studerat. Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att generera detaljerad kunskap om och jämföra hur ideellaföreningar redovisar sin prestation i årsredovisningen för att stärka redovisningsansvaret till sina intressenter. Metod: Studienär baserad påen kvalitativ metod. Genom enkomparativflerfallsstudieanvändes dels primärdata i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex ideella föreningar, och sekundärdata i form av föreningarnas årsredovisningar. Empiri: Studiens empiri visar på att fyra prestationsperspektiv redovisades av majoriteten av föreningarna, vilket var följande: insatser, verksamheten som skapats av insatserna organisationen fått, kapacitet samt nätverk. Resultat: Studiens resultat påvisar att majoriteten av organisationerna redovisar de mer traditionella måtten insatser och verksamheten som skapats av insatserna i sin årsredovisning.Det förekommer därför en tydlig koppling mellan prestationsmåtten som organisationerna redovisar och det redovisningsansvar som studien identifierat, funktionellt redovisningsansvar. Studiens resultat påvisar även att det kvarstår en utmaning i att redovisa prestation gällande resultatet av aktiviteterna samt åstadkommande av samhällsnytta. Därmed belyser resultatet svårigheter för ideella föreningar att utforma verktyg för att mäta dessa två perspektiv somär kopplade till ett socialt ansvar gentemot intressenterna.

The aim of this thesis is to problematize how and under what conditions organizational performance is constituted in the practices of performance auditing and accounting. Organizational performance disclosure is a world-wide phenomenon for enabling accountability relationships in large organizations regardless of the societal sector they operate in. In constitutive accounting literature, there is a well-established notion that accounting and performance auditing enable “government at a distance” by representing organizational actions and results of those actions, i.e. by constituting performance.  Accounting and performance auditing have been regarded as “technologies of government” that make government from spatial and temporal distances possible by linking political and programmatic ambitions, i.e., the will of a superior, to everyday organizational conduct. However, whereas many previous studies of accounting and performance auditing as technologies of government focus on the discourses over the technologies of accounting and performance auditing, this thesis focuses its analysis on the operationalization of these technologies in local organizational settings. By studying the constitution of performance in the practices of accounting and performance auditing this thesis contributes by problematizing that which supposedly makes government at a distance possible. The thesis is based on two case studies of performance audit and two case studies of performance reporting. On the basis of these papers, the thesis studies the constitution of performance in performance auditing and accounting. Whereas the constitution of performance may seem stable and unproblematic at the level of discourse, this thesis suggests that constituting performance is a complex process of social construction that requires significant organizational efforts and that the ability of accounting and performance auditing to connect political and programmatic ambitions to daily organizational conduct cannot be taken for granted. The thesis suggest that once we acknowledge that performance is a socially constructed representation of organizational actions and begin to pay attention to how performance is constituted in local organizational settings, we can find new ways of addressing the ongoing challenge of constituting performance in accounting and performance auditing and increase our understanding about the ability of these practices to enable government at a distance. / <p>At the time of doctoral defence the following papers were unoublished and had a status as follows: Paper nr. 2: Manuscript; Paper nr. 3: Manuscript; Paper nr. 4: Manuscript</p>