Abstract EN:

Confronted by the growing diversity in the nature of the actions that fall under their domain, as well as by the stagnation in, or increasing rarity of, their resources, local communities and townships are being called upon to meet new challenges that are, at one and the same time, political, economic and socio-cultural. Given this context, they must, of necessity, adapt themselves and undergo transformation. The accomplishment of such change requires that these organisations develop new managerial techniques, most particularly: management control systems. The specificities of local communities and townships, most particularly their precise types of financing, when linked to public accounting rules and regulations, demand management control structures that cannot be arrived at by the simple transposition of techniques used in the private sector. The question thus poses itself as to how, exactly, an instrumental transplantation can be effected. A study "in vivo," taking its departure from the responses of a hundred local communities and townships to an investigation by questionnaire, should permit the establishment of what the present state of affairs actually is.