Our history

Since 2012, an international team of academics (listed below) developed research on local government financial resilience, focusing on the roles played by anticipatory capacities, coping capacities, perception of vulnerabilities and shocks in the (financial) resilience of LAs (see our published research below). It has been noted that such organisational capacities shape responses to financial shocks.

Over the years our research was funded by CIMA and the University of Essex Impact Acceleration Account. In partnership with CIMA and CIPFA, we have co-produced the Governmental Financial Resilience Toolkit with practitioners in the UK to assist governments in measuring their financial resilience and building their capabilities to withstand shocks from (un)expected disruptive events/crises.

Financial Resilience - why?

The financial resilience of local authorities, defined as the ability to cope with crises that affect their finances and services, has now become a "watchword" for public employees in recent times.

Being resilient means having the ability to anticipate and react to a crisis, absorbing the shocks that potentially have important repercussions on public finances.

To be resilient, local authorities must be able to manage the pressures and grasp the stimuli deriving from their external environment, leveraging adequate organizational and financial conditions, as well as internal capacities. This toolkit helps explore various dimensions of financial resilience in relation to the (non)financial performance of an organization. It enables policymakers to better understand, and account for, the extent and influence of pre-existing crisis conditions, and the underlying capabilities, which inevitably impact how local authorities respond to significant unforeseen events, and how the responses affect local finances and services.

The assumption is that by reflecting on the capacities and organizational conditions that characterize local authorities in their daily life, it is possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses that allow an organization to be more or less prepared for uncertainties and unforeseen events, therefore to be more or less resilient or ... otherwise/differently resilient!

Our Publications

Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

The recent economic and fiscal crisis provides an opportunity for learning lessons of general and practical relevance about how governments face shocks affecting their financial conditions. This article draws on the resilience concept to investigate the organizational capacities that are deployed and/or built by local governments (LGs) to respond to such shocks, looking at their combinations and interactions with environmental conditions. The article presents the results of a multiple-case analysis of 12 European LGs across Austria, Italy and England. The analysis allows us to highlight and operationalize different patterns of financial resilience, that is, self-regulation, constrained or reactive adaptation, contented or powerless fatalism, that are the result of the interaction and development over time of different internal and external dimensions.

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Local government financial resilience: Germany, Italy and UK compared

With a practical tool-kit for local governments

The increased uncertainty, volatility and complexity under which local governments operate, coupled with recent shocks, starting with the 2008 financial crisis, but also including Brexit and the increasing influx of refugee migrants, have put great emphasis on governmental financial resilience, i.e., how governments cope with shocks affecting their finances. This report increases our understanding of local government financial resilience by presenting the results of a survey of local governments across Italy, the UK and Germany. Analysing the combination of internal and external resilience dimensions against the background of recent crises and across countries, the project not only sheds light on different performance enabling capacities but also helps to achieve a greater understanding of how local governments maintain or build resilience. The capacities, which also assist in keeping particular vulnerabilities in control, are specified in practical guidance linked to this report, a tool-kit for local governments to assess and develop their capacities in order to be better equipped to cope with disruptive events

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Governmental Financial Resilience: International Perspectives on How Local Governments Face Austerity

This volume provides a unique insight into the ways local governments have maintained financial resilience in the face of the significant challenges posed by the era of austerity. Taking an international perspective, it provides an enlightening and practical analysis of the different capacities and responses that local governments deploy to cope with financial shocks.

Moving beyond traditional approaches dealing with financial stress, the financial resilience perspective reveals a wider range of organisational responses and enables consideration of the dynamic role played by internal and external contextual factors.

The international case study approach allows for a comparative analysis of financial resilience in the context of different administrative and policy environments.By providing a unifying view of financial resilience, the importance of building resilience into organisational financial management is demonstrated, uncovering the relative effectiveness of different resilience building approaches.

This edited volume is a valuable source for practitioners and academics, as well as students of public policy, public management and financial management.

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How do governments cope with austerity? The roles of accounting in shaping governmental financial resilience

Studies on how accounting is involved in financial crises and austerity are limited. The context of austerity provides an interesting opportunity to explore the role of accounting in shaping governmental financial resilience, i.e. the capacity of governments to cope with shocks affecting their financial conditions. Based on a multiple case analysis of eight Italian municipalities, this paper explores how accounting contributes to the government capacities which are used to anticipate and respond to shocks affecting public finances. Municipalities cope with financial shocks differently; accounting can support self–regulation and can affect internally-led or externally-led adaptation. Different combinations of anticipatory and coping capacities lead to different responses to shocks. The findings can be useful for public managers, policymakers and oversight bodies for strengthening governmental financial resilience in the face of crises and austerity. The results provide evidence of the conditions, contexts, processes under which accounting becomes a medium which can support both anticipation of and coping with financial shocks, supporting cuts in some cases and resistance in the short run or driving long-term changes intended to maintain public services as much intact as possible. This highlights the existence of different patterns of governmental financial resilience and thus indicates ways of best preserving the service of the public interest.

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The research team

Here you can find the research team responsible for developing the theoretical framework and gathering empirical evidence that resulted in the evidence-based online version of Financial Resilience Toolkit. Please feel free to reach us.