Resource Accounting and Executive Agencies

Executive agencies have had several years' experience of the introduction and development of accruals based accounting systems. Senior agency managers therefore provide an authoritative source of information on the problems that could follow from introducing it more widely across government. A survey of senior managers revealed that, despite major improvements in accounting information systems, agencies still face difficulties in implementing accruals accounting. Government departments also seem unlikely to accept easily the switch from cash accounting to accruals accounting without extensive training. The effort and resources required for this should not be underestimated.     

Accounting practices and professional power dynamics during a crisis

This paper examines how changes in accounting practices during a crisis can affect organisational dynamics between hospital managers and clinicians. Our theoretical framework applies a multi-dimensional concept of power (Hardy, 1996) – which distinguishes power over resources, processes and meaning – to a longitudinal case study of a public university hospital during a budgetary crisis. Based on interviews with managers and clinicians, three successive time intervals with distinct power constellations are identified. Initially, we identify a pre-crisis phase where management formally controls resources, which seems to have limited effects on clinician dominance because managers lack ‘processual power’ and ‘power of meaning’. Next, an implantation phase emerges whereby the introduction of mandated budget cuts triggers shifts in the distribution of power, such that managers acquire power by securing the collaboration of clinicians – a phenomenon which has tangible benefits in terms of enabling budget compliance and increased service provision. Finally, the third phase may be conceptualized as a fiscal pressure regimen whereby, when budgetary pressures intensify further, management's newly gained ‘power of meaning’ is eroded because management are now seen to pursue unrealistic demands. Drawing on research insights gleaned during each phase, our analysis contributes to extant literature in at least three ways. First, we present novel findings regarding the impact of crises-related applications of accounting practices on intra-organisational power constellations. Second, our work highlights how accounting practices help shape the understanding of crisis, which, in turn, impacts the distribution of organizational power and influences intra-organizational patterns of collaboration. Third, we find that awareness of the meaning power of accounting practices can help shape strategic action in crisis situations.     

Diverse management practices— a study of clinical managers

This article examines whether changes in the governance of public hospitals in Norway have affected the perceived practices of operational managers. A study involving a survey of and interviews with clinical managers in Norwegian hospitals has shown that managers considering themselves highly involved in management control practices. The managers' perception of their control activities was related to such institutional pressures as budget deficits, as well as to contextual variables such as department size. This article shows that clinical managers also use accounting information for purposes other than simply being accountable for meeting budgets.     

Loose coupling in asset management systems in the NHS

This paper aims to identify whether the components of a loose-coupled system were present in the asset management systems of the National Health Service (NHS) in Wales and, if so, whether this had a negative impact. By utilising a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with senior officials at two NHS Hospital Trusts together with the findings of a survey of all of the Hospital Trusts in Wales, we conclude that the asset management system of the NHS in Wales exhibits the features of a loosely coupled system with detrimental consequences. Where information on capital assets has been required below board level, lower management relies on local systems, while the information for senior managers and political leaders relies on the management accounting system and ad hoc enquiries. The result has been an impairment of the ability of lower management to reconfigure capital assets which leads to the nation's health service underperforming.     

Executive Agencies, Performance Targets and External Reporting

Since 1988, the role of Next Steps executive agencies has been crucial in delivering central government services. Agencies were established to improve service delivery, with changes being supported by an increasing focus on quantification. The Government argued that performance measures and targets are vital in supporting management in planning and controlling the operation of an agency, and that they are also important in providing a basis for reporting to those outside its immediate management—an aspect of discharging accountability. This article discusses the connections between targeting and reporting performance in agencies and, through an empirical study of business plans, corporate plans and annual reports, shows the extent of such linkages. The article provides evidence that key targets in planning documents of agencies provide a useful platform for external reporting, although improvements can still be made.     

Budgeting for legitimacy: The case of an Australian university

This paper reports a case study of budgeting at an Australian university to understand how accounting is involved in processes of legitimation. The university had been much enlarged and diversified in its educational offerings through a series of mergers. A response to the changes on the part of the vice-chancellor was to introduce a new budget system borrowed from the institutional environment. The intent was to convey to a key funding agency and to staff that the newly merged entity would be governed appropriately. We analyze a set of sequential and interlinked processes in which these aspirations were challenged repeatedly by senior academic and administrative staff. Finding the budget system to be inconsistent with their values and expectations for the university, staff undermined it through patterns of under- and over-spending. We show how these behaviors jeopardized the vice-chancellor’s efforts to legitimate the organization’s financial management practices for a key funding agency. A core contribution of our paper is to analyze empirically the importance of the institutional demands that an organization’s internal constituents may make of its accounting practices. We argue that managers, staff and other internal constituents should be seen as significant legitimating agents. We show how attention to their demands becomes all the more relevant when budget and accounting systems for internal use are loosely coupled from those used for external reporting. In such circumstances, conflicting demands by internal and external constituents may not be dealt with through the development of separate and compartmentalized systems. This makes it problematic to assume that adoption of accounting systems from an institutional field will result in a steady-state of organizational legitimacy.     

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Most of the management accounting activity in local government has traditionally been thought of as being confined primarily to the requirements of budget preparation and budgetary control. The budget is generally recognised as being at the heart of planning, decision-making and control and yet there have been many examples of the limitations in conventional budgeting and budgetary control practices being pointed out. It might have been expected that the period of consistent financial stringency faced by local government from 1979 onwards would have quickly exposed any limitations and brought about changes. In reality it seems that the management accounting and budgeting practices in local government responded surprisingly slowly to the financial pressures and it is only with the relatively recent introduction of the 'private sector' philosophies of devolved management and market testing that widespread developments in management accounting have begun to occur. Many of these developments are still evolving and because of this it seemed inappropriate at this stage to attempt a cross-sectional survey of current practices. This paper therefore concentrates on the position in two specific local authorities and examines the current DSO accounting practices. In addition, the analysis undertaken by one of the authorities of the steps needed to implement internal trading accounts for financial support services is discussed and the interesting experimental attempt by one of the authorities to introduce zero base budgeting for a major service is also examined.     

A study of the coordination of mission,objectives and targets in U.K. executive agencies

The growth of executive agencies (agencies) in the U.K. public sector has been rapid. While the first agency was established as recently as 1988, by September 1998 over 75 per cent of civil servants were working in such organizations. They were created to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of central government services. The efficacy of a rational management model was promulgated and the need to plan and control the performance of agencies, as a basis for performance improvement, was articulated. This led to a greater focus on targeting and measuring performance. This paper provides an outline of the case for, and potential problems of, the use of a highly rational model of management in the public sector, with its focus on quantification. Through an empirical analysis of 48 planning documents, it identifies the degree to which the mission statements, objectives and targets in the Corporate and Business Plans of agencies are coordinated, or linked, in a rational manner. The main finding of the research is that although significant gaps exist, the planning documents of executive agencies appear to be more coordinated in terms of their use of objectives and targets than was evident in earlier research in other parts of the public sector.     

企业类全国会计领军(后备)人才培养项目效果研究——基于问卷调查的分析与建议

2005年12月财政部启动全国会计领军(后备)人才培养工程。全国会计领军(后备)人才培养工程从启动至今一直受到社会各界的广泛关注。7年来项目效果如何,是值得研究的重要课题。我们基于对企业类全国会计领军(后备)人才培养项目学员的问卷调查,进行了项目效果的跟踪研究。研究结果表明:企业类全国会计领军(后备)人才培养项目达到了预期效果,培养和造就了一批精通业务、善于管理、熟悉国际惯例、具有国际视野和战略思维的高素质、复合型会计人才,并且发挥了会计领军人才在强化会计职能、宣传会计政策、组织继续教育、研究实务问题等方面的组织推动和辐射作用。同时,本文根据问卷调查针对企业类全国会计领军(后备)人才培养项目需要进一步改进的地方,提出了一些改进建议。     

A Special Breed?– A Longitudinal and Cross‐Sectional Study of Norwegian Budgeting and Financial Civil Servants

Abstract: This paper focuses on civil servants in the central Norwegian civil service whose main tasks are budgeting, supervision and accounting. The main research questions are: (a) What is their typical demographic profile? (b) How has their demographic profile changed over time? (c) What are the effects of having budgeting, supervising and accounting as a main task on civil servants’ attitudes and behaviour? The main findings are that they have a specific profile. There are significant differences between ministries and central agencies as well as changes over time and also marked differences with other civil servants regarding their attitudes and behavior.     

Performance Information, Accountability and Executive Agencies

The growth of executive agencies in the UK has been rapid. The first agency was established in 1988 and, by October 1997, over 75% of civil servants were working in such organizations. They were created to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of central government services. Accountability was widened, and an emphasis was placed on the need to develop performance measurement and performance reporting systems. This article discusses the importance of performance information for accountability by agencies, and, through a time-series study of annual reports, examines changes over time. While highlighting the increasing use of performance information in external reporting, the article identifies significant weaknesses.     

The role of structure and agency in management accounting control change of a family owned firm: A Greek case study

This study seeks to understand the changes in management accounting controls in a large Greek company (pseudonym: FA), with a focus on understanding the role of structure and agency in this change. In order to do this, we have employed a critical realist philosophy, pioneered by Roy Bhaskar (Bhaskar, 1979; 1997). We believe that the empirics of the case, the time span under consideration, and our theoretical approach provide us with a unique opportunity to explore the role of structure and agency in changing management accounting controls within the case firm. Our analysis revealed that changes in management control practices in FA were a function of different interacting structural conditions as mediated through human agency. This paper contributes to the debate about how to conceptualise agency and structure in management accounting control change (Kilfoyle and Richardson, 2011). Our analysis also demonstrates that the ‘dualism’ approach to agency and structure will result in a better analysis of management accounting control changes within firms.     

The diffusion of management accounting innovations in the public sector: a research agenda

There have been numerous studies of the transformation of the public sector. This paper has a different focus: the dissemination and adoption of management accounting practices within the new public sector. The aim of the paper is explore the manner and means of diffusion, the obstacles to adoption and to establish a research agenda. The paper discusses findings of a survey on diffusion sent to public sector financial managers. The results of the survey indicate, inter alia, that adoption of accounting innovations by public sector organisations is largely affected by government influence. This study has interesting findings, but also points to the need for a new research agenda on the diffusion of management accounting practices in the public sector.     

Management accounting and corporate governance: An institutional interpretation of the agency problem

Challenging the dominant economic agency theory of corporate governance with a new discourse drawn from institutional theory, the paper analyses how management accounting is implicated in corporate governance. The proposed institutional theory of agency links the micro-institutions of the organization that are informed by the practices of management accounting with external institutional players and stakeholders. The paper identifies emerging narratives in which the management accounting profession has recognised a distinctive, post-Enron set of sensibilities. Although techniques drawn from strategic management accounting can be adapted to embed better corporate governance practices, the institutional theory of agency identifies tensions between the heroic CEO narrative and the routinization of strategy implicit in strategic management accounting.     

Top executive dismissal,ownership and corporate performance

This paper evaluates the empirical relationship between top executive turnover and firm performance. Based on a sample of the 460 largest UK listed companies during the period 1990–1998, we establish an inverse and robust statistical relation between the probability of a management change and a firm's performance: top executives are fired for poor performance. This can result from internal monitoring of management by the board or block share holders. Second, the data indicate that only very poor levels of performance affect significantly the turnover likelihood: corporate performance must fall dramatically to force a senior executive job separation. Third, the likelihood of managerial turnover for poor performance has not changed over time: today's senior managers face the same disciplining effects as those senior managers in earlier years. Finally, there seems to be no evidence that managerial stock ownership, measured as the proportion of ordinary shares owned by top managers, enables them to become entrenched.     

Managerialism and Profession‐Based Logic: The Use of Accounting Information in Changing Hospitals

The hospital sector has undergone significant management reforms over the last decades. These reforms include more use of accounting information. This paper focuses on the kinds of logic that guide clinical managers’ perception of their management control practices when including accounting information in decisions. A survey study was undertaken among clinical managers, and it was completed by interviews to go deeper into the management control processes in three large hospitals in the middle and northern parts of Norway. We found that there is a triangle of logic which may change and form different patterns, according to different contexts and variations in professional background.     

Managerial incentives,capital reallocation,and the business cycle

We argue that when managers have private information about the productivity of assets under their control and receive private benefits, substantial bonuses are required to induce less productive managers to declare that capital should be reallocated. The need to provide incentives for managers to relinquish control links executive compensation to capital reallocation and managerial turnover over the business cycle, rendering them procyclical if expected managerial compensation increases when more managers are hired. Moreover, capital is less productively deployed in downturns because agency costs make reallocation more costly. Empirically, we find that both CEO turnover and executive compensation are remarkably procyclical.     

Profits and losses from changes in fair value,executive cash compensation and managerial power: Evidence from A-share listed companies in China

According to optimal contracting theory, compensation contracts are effective in solving the agency problem between stockholders and managers. Executive compensation is naturally related to firm performance. However, contracts are not always perfect. Managers may exert influence on the formulation and implementation of compensation contracts by means of their managerial power. As fair value has been introduced into the new accounting standards in China, new concerns have arisen over the relationship between profits and losses from changes in fair value (CFV) and levels of executive compensation. In this study, we find that executive compensation is significantly related to CFV. However, this sensitivity is asymmetric in that increases to compensation due to profits from changes in fair value (PCFV) are higher than reductions to compensation due to losses from changes in fair value (LCFV). Furthermore, we find that managerial power determines the strength of this asymmetry.     

Change management in government

Since the days of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, the American public's regard for the competence of public agencies and the value of the services they perform has steadily declined. During that time, innovations in management practice and thinking have mostly originated and been tested in the private sector. But recent events, such as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the engulfment of New Orleans, have demonstrated how essential it is for public agencies to be well run, too. Unfortunately, few public administrators have a background in change management, and a variety of factors-such as civil service rules, political considerations, and the limited tenures of agency heads-have combined to make true reform a rare event. These facts of public life may never go away. But some agency leaders have figured out how to court important stakeholders, rededicate staffers to an agency's true mission, undertake reform so comprehensively that resistant elements are unable to subvert it, and lay the groundwork for next steps clearly and systematically. Consultant Frank Ostroff has studied turnarounds at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Government Accountability Office, and Special Operations Forces-the fast-response, clandestine arm of the military. From these examples and others, he has distilled five principles that underlie successful change efforts: Improve performance against agency mission; win over external and internal stakeholders; establish a road map; recognize the connections among all the organizational elements; and be a leader, not a bureaucrat. Change programs that follow these principles are more likely to survive when leadership changes hands.