Accountability in the Ghanaian local governance structure: probing the role of external auditing

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.

Innovative marketing has given rise to practitioners’ and scholars’ attention in the 21st-century market. Given this, social media marketing has become the order of the day when accessing modern tools for marketing communication. However, the adoption of this innovation comes with its associated challenges, particularly, from a developing country perspective. Against this background, this study sought to examine the inhibitors characterized in the application of social media channels as an innovative tool for advertising and communication among SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Ghana. For study results to be achieved, a quantitative research approach with a questionnaire of 650 was distributed among managerial staff of the fashion industry in the central part of Ghana of which 512 respondents were duly received and correctly filled for data processing and analysis. Results from the partial least square structural equation method (PLS-SEM), showed that despite the importance of innovation, lack of managerial skills/marketing expertise, perceived cost, regular systems/links upgrade, and financial constraints are significant inhibiting factors affecting the application of social media as advertising and communication tools among SMEs in developing economy. Interestingly, the findings further showed that ’company’s size’ as well as ’availability of social media channel/tool’ significantly control for the outcome variable (internet/social media) as a marketing communication tool.

Acknowledgment
This work is supported by Tomas Bata University in Zlin through; IGA/FaME/2019/002: The role of the institutional environment in fostering entrepreneurship, and further supported by IGA/FaME/2020/002 and IGA/FaME/2019/008. The authors are thankful to Prof. Jaroslav Belás, Prof. Boris Popesko, and Prof. Miloslava Chovancová for their guidance towards developing this manuscript.