Implementing cost accounting in Saudi higher education: Drivers, progress, and resource implications

There is a growing concern about the lack of skilled municipal employees who can deliver essential services to under-resourced local communities in South Africa. However, coaching and mentoring appear underutilized to train municipal employees to improve service delivery to local communities. The study aims to investigate whether coaching and mentoring could capacitate municipal employees whose performance appraisal reveals a lack of skills to provide essential services. A cross-sectional research design was adopted to conduct a survey. The target population comprised 265 municipal employees, and a stratified random sample of 115 employees completed a questionnaire. The employees held positions of general managers, general assistants, and administrators, with varied years of experience. Cronbach’s Alpha indicated an overall high 0.8 questionnaire reliability score.
Using a quantitative method, responses from municipal employees were collected to examine their perceptions of the influence of training and development on employee performance and service delivery. Hypotheses were tested using the bivariant inferential statistical tests of correlation (r) and Chi-square (χ2). The results indicated that training and development were more likely to improve employee performance. Furthermore, the results showed that trained employees were more likely to improve service delivery. In particular, coaching and mentoring could be used to improve performance. Therefore, the study found that the municipality was not providing employees with relevant training and development to enable them to address poor service delivery. Finally, the study recommends that the municipality invests in training and development to enrich employees with new skills and knowledge to improve the quality of service delivery.

The size of the public sector is an important tool in public governance. Public sector size may fuel both economic growth and political influence over the economy.
By compiling and processing data from different sources of public accounts the paper aims at mapping the development of key financial indicators for the Norwegian central government sector during the transition period from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. The data enable us to give measures of the size of the public sector alone and compared to the overall economy.
It is found that the sector started its continuous growth before politicians deliberately started to increase the sector’s size of the total economy. The paper also finds that an increase of the public sector often, but not always, reflects political economy regimes. Persistent growth in public finances as a tool for economic policy making did not take place before the introduction of the social-democratic regime in 1935.
The paper also concludes that economic growth started before the growth in the public sector, suggesting that public sector growth might as well be a result of economic growth or vice versa.

The aim of this current study was to analyze recent development of talent management among public service managers in Malaysia. The study brings understanding on talent management and broader human capital issues within Malaysia context by analysing the comprehensive literature. Government of Malaysia is emphasizing on development of talent in the public sector, as it is the most significant resource for the public service. The study found that the government has invested in various programs and initiatives to develop and produce key talented human capital within the public sector. However, despite the initiatives taken by the government, Malaysia is still short of talented people and struggling to develop talent, and talented skilful people are leaving. The study also indicated that year after year increasing number of graduates are being produced at the public universities, but the education system is not producing the right skilful individuals for the particular position or task, resulting in talent mismatch. Another key issue is the incapability to retain talented people that led to poor innovation and creativity within the country. Is key issue is part of the factors discussed in the 10th and 11th Malaysia Plan, and is a concern, as it plays a role in preventing the progress of Malaysia in achieving a developed nation by 2020. As one of the key aspirations of Malaysia is to enrich public service in Malaysia as a citizen centre that is having talented human capital. The study revealed that there is a need for in-depth quantitative and qualitative further research to discover new insights on talent management and retain talent among the public sector managers in Malaysia.