This study examines Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-reporting practices by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Austria and New Zealand (NZ). While SDG-reporting is improving in both countries, the improvement is more pronounced in Austria. The quality of disclosures in both countries remains low; however, Austria continues to outperform NZ. The findings suggest that Austria's integrated SDG governance framework, characterized by greater co-ordination and stakeholder engagement, is associated with more comprehensive disclosures in contrast to NZ's decentralized SDG-reporting approach. This highlights the importance of cross-government alignment and institutional support. Larger, more profitable SOEs disclose more while high government ownership does not lead to better disclosures. This suggests that national governments are hesitant to instrumentalize their SOEs in implementing the UN Agenda 2030. The findings demonstrate how governance arrangements and organizational capabilities influence SDG-reporting in the public sector and are of interest to policy-makers in countries with the same or similar regulatory contexts. This study investigates Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) related reporting by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Austria and New Zealand (NZ). Using a comparative longitudinal analysis of 304 firm-year observations across 38 SOEs over eight years (2017-2024), the study explores SDG-reporting trends, organizational drivers, and reporting quality interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory. Findings show that SDG-reporting is improving, and it is influenced by a centralized approach to adoption and implementation. Larger and more profitable SOEs with more women representation on boards disclose more, whereas higher government ownership correlates with weaker reporting, suggesting a need for greater policy support. This study extends legitimacy theory, conceptualizing SDG-related legitimacy as a continuum with intermediate stages rather than a simple symbolic-substantive dichotomy and demonstrating that progression toward substantive integration is not automatic. This research therefore offers a comprehensive assessment of SDG-reporting quantity and quality, revealing how legitimacy-oriented disclosure practices, shaped by institutional contexts, influence SDG-reporting.
This article has implications for public managers and governance innovators seeking to transform locked public systems. The author introduces the 'liberating principle': an aspirational ordering principle, with historical precedent but a novel complexity-science grounding, that releases a living system's self-healing capacity and enables simultaneous value co-creation across the institutional ecosystem. Extending the liberating structures tradition from micro-interaction to systemic level, and responding directly to the challenge of locked issues in public governance, the liberating principle shows how a single reframing of institutional identity-through renaming, rebranding, or governance philosophy-can initiate the systemic transformation that sequential management strategies cannot produce. Four cases from public practice illustrate its operation and its implications for enabling leadership in complex governance systems. Dit artikel heeft implicaties voor publieke managers en bestuurlijke vernieuwers die vastgelopen publieke systemen willen transformeren. De auteur ontwikkelt het bevrijdende principe: een aspirationeel ordeningsprincipe, met een historische traditie maar een nieuwe complexiteitswetenschappelijke onderbouwing, dat het zelfherstellend vermogen van een levend systeem vrijmaakt en gelijktijdige waardecocreatie binnen het volledige institutionele ecosysteem mogelijk maakt. Door de traditie van liberating structures uit te breiden van micro-interactie naar systeemniveau, en door direct in te gaan op de uitdaging van vastgelopen vraagstukken in het publieke bestuur, laat het bevrijdende principe zien hoe een enkele herframing van institutionele identiteit-via naamgeving, herpositionering, of bestuursfilosofie-de systemische transformatie kan initi & euml;ren die sequenti & euml;le managementstrategie & euml;n niet kunnen bewerkstelligen. Vier casussen uit de publieke praktijk illustreren de werking ervan en de implicaties voor enabling leadership in complexe bestuurssystemen. Public governance systems face a persistent paradox: the more intractable a challenge, the more elaborately it is managed-yet the more stubbornly it resists transformation. Drawing on complexity science and public management theory, this article argues that the dominant fixing paradigm is structurally insufficient for living, complex systems. It develops the liberating principle: an aspirational ordering principle-building on a longer governance lineage but newly grounded in complexity science-that releases the self-healing capacity of a public system and installs simultaneous value co-creation as the new systemic norm. The liberating principle extends the liberating structures tradition from the level of micro-interaction to the level of the attractor landscape of the system as a whole-providing the systemic orientation that makes productive disruption durable. Four cases from public practice demonstrate three forms of institutional anchoring. Implications for governance theory and enabling leadership are discussed.
This study offers actionable guidance for public sector accountants, financial managers, and standard setters involved in developing citizen-oriented financial reports. Drawing on IPSAS-based financial statements from a German federal state, it demonstrates how popular reports can reconcile objective transparency requirements with citizens' subjective information needs. For practitioners at the national and subnational levels, the findings indicate that reports should clearly present revenues, expenditures, debt and personnel costs and link them to major services such as education, infrastructure, and environmental protection. Reports should place less emphasis on presenting technically complex balance-sheet items that citizens find difficult to interpret. Moreover, the results highlight the need for multi-channel dissemination and layered 'core-plus' or 'core and more' reporting structures to reach diverse citizen groups. Internationally, the results suggest that standard setters (for example IPSASB, national accounting boards) could strengthen comparability and accountability by issuing recommended practice guidelines for popular reporting, fostering consistent approaches to citizen-oriented public sector communication. The extent to which citizens-as taxpayers and service beneficiaries-use general purpose financial statements (GPFSs) remains a subject of debate. Popular reporting has become increasingly important in light of the need to make financial information more citizen-oriented. However, a gap persists between objective information needs, which ensure transparency, and subjective information demands, which reflect individual interests. This study seeks to bridge the gap by focusing on popular reports (PRs). Using IPSAS-based GPFSs of the German federal state of Hesse, the authors empirically examine citizens' information needs and demands through three studies: Study 1, which includes interviews with seven citizens' representatives; Study 2, which involves interviews with 40 citizens; and Study 3, which includes a survey of 368 citizens. The findings revealed overlaps and differences between objective needs and subjective demands, providing insights into how PRs enhance transparency and engagement across diverse citizen groups.
This article contributes to both institutional economics and public financial management (PFM) reform by identifying the institutional mechanisms through which PFM improves governance. Rather than treating governance as a uniform country characteristic, it shows that governance gains are driven by the control-audit chain, linking internal expenditure controls, internal audit, external audit, and legislative oversight. This provides a theoretically grounded explanation for why some PFM reforms generate stronger governance outcomes than others. The findings also challenge conventional reform sequencing by demonstrating that strengthening budget execution controls yields greater governance improvements than prioritizing upstream transparency and budgeting reforms. Regional evidence shows that governance returns are particularly strong in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), offering guidance for targeting reform investments. The proposed control-audit chain framework provides finance ministries, supreme audit institutions, and development partners with a practical tool to diagnose accountability weaknesses and prioritize reforms with the greatest governance impact. This article investigates institutional mechanisms within public financial management (PFM) that shape governance outcomes. Leveraging 185 national PEFA assessments across 103 countries, the authors show that governance quality is most strongly tied to the integrity of the control-audit chain. Disaggregated analysis reveals that internal expenditure controls, internal audit, and external audit with legislative follow-up operate as an integrated accountability mechanism that predicts governance measures across all six Worldwide Governance Indicators, including control of corruption, government effectiveness, and rule of law. Significant regional heterogeneity was revealed, with the PFM-governance association substantially larger in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). This suggests that execution-stage accountability acts as a binding constraint in weaker institutional environments. These findings, robust to panel and cross-sectional specifications, offer crucial policy implications for targeted PFM reforms by identifying precise institutional practices and proposing the control-audit chain as a core theoretical mechanism.
