Institutionalising multiple accountability logics in public services: Insights from Australia

This paper reports on a field study of how a range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational forces shape the evolving rhetoric and practice of multiple accountabilities in public services. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective, we carried out a qualitative field study in the Australian Commonwealth Public Service involving semi-structured interviews, two focus group discussions, and the examination of internal accounting, management reports, and government archival records. The findings suggest that emphasis on conventional instrumental mechanisms and reporting tools, such as budgeting and accrual-based reporting, support managerial (instrumental) accountability through compliance logics. We conclude that an emphasis on public (relational) accountability through public dialogue is central to the public sector accountability debate, and that more attention needs to be paid to the question of how to balance the dual logics (instrumental and relational) in public services. The findings provide practical insights for public sector managers, policymakers and governments responsible for designing and implementing reforms, accounting tools, and accountability practices.     

Exploring de-facto accountability regimes in Muslim NGOs

This paper aims to deepen and advance our understanding of the de-facto accountability processes and practices within Muslim non-governmental organisations (NGOs). We employ a three-fold accountability framework of felt, imposed and adaptive accountability, supported by insight from the Islamic perspective to elucidate our empirical findings. We adopt this framework because it enables us to localise the notions of accountability, allowing a more complete understanding of the de-facto nature of Muslim NGO accountability to emerge within the context of religious ideals and between accountabilities that are externally imposed and those that are internally generated.     

Performance information use by politicians and public managers for internal control and external accountability purposes

Governance structures have changed fundamentally since the beginning of New Public Management inspired reforms. Particularly local public service delivery nowadays can be characterized as diversified and fragmented, leading to internal management and external accountability challenges for politicians as well as public managers. In this context the use of performance information is seen as a crucial element for effectively dealing with both issues. Nevertheless, empirical research considering different actors and contexts within one study is rare. The present paper fills this gap by applying a multi-theoretical perspective and testing hypotheses on the antecedents of performance information use by politicians and public managers for internal management as well as external accountability purposes in small- and medium sized local governments in Austria. The study results show that both groups use performance information to a greater extent within external accountability relationships than for internal management purposes. Results further illustrate that driving factors show similarities for both groups with reference to the latter mentioned purpose, while a more diverse picture is shown regarding factors impacting their use behavior toward citizens and supervisory authorities.     

Inter‐Organizational Cooperation Challenging Hierarchical Accountability: The Dominated Actors in a Municipal Joint Venture

New public management offers a number of solutions to the kinds of problems that public sector organizations experience. In taking an accountability perspective, this paper elaborates on how two of these – strict responsibility for performance, and inter‐organizational cooperation – may conflict. The setting for this study is a joint venture with a dominant municipality and six dominated municipalities as owners. The article examines how horizontal accountability processes may influence the dominated owners’ hierarchical accountability. The ability to account hierarchically for the quality of service within budgetary parameters is problematized, when dominated owners may dismantle their ability to demand horizontal accountability.     

ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE NONPROFIT SECTOR: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This paper clarifies the nature of nonprofit accountability by distinguishing between the substantive and processual understandings of the public interest. The major theories of the nonprofit sector are shown to imply that this sector's activities correspond to the public interest only in its processual understanding, but not in the substantive one. Policy and management implications of this argument are discussed.     

The Private Finance Initiative in the National Health Service: An Unhealthy Development in New Public Management?

New Public Management has expanded the role of the private sector in the provision of public services through 'contracting out' the supply of many public service inputs to the private sector. This paper examines the case of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which is of increasing importance in extending these inputs to include those of major capital assets, such as hospital buildings. Concerns arise as to whether this process does genuinely increase efficiency and accountability, and over the role of accounting in meeting the new demands being placed upon it, in the context of one of the most sensitive public services, that of health care.     

Governance Structures and Accountability in Primary Care

Organizations providing public welfare services typically have distinct accountabilities to several parties, and the accountability chains linking these parties are often administered through different governance structures. This article reveals that in primary care in England the accountability chains characterized by different governance structures result in inconsistent levels of accountability.     

Using Relational and Transactional MCSs to Manage the Delivery of Outsourced Public Services: Evidence from Twelve Cases in the USA

The successful management of the purchaser–provider relationship is essential for the effective delivery of public services, and entails the use of both transactional and relational approaches. We herein analyse the degree and complementarity of transactional and relational management control systems in the management of purchaser–provider relationships for the successful delivery of public services using evidence from 12 US case studies. We demonstrate that transactional and relational management control systems are controlled differently in order to improve contracting efficiency. We also show how a combination of these management control systems offers a framework for structured public accountability and service flexibility.     

Governance and Accountability: A Role for Social Accounts in the Sustainable School

Alongside formal systems of governance in secondary education there are important informal relationships of accountability among key stakeholders, organized around voluntary obligation in the public interest. Developing these accountabilities enhances sustainability. This article argues that social accounting, when firmly rooted in the values of the school community, can be a valuable tool in developing accountability and a practical means of enhancing sustainability.     

Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis

This Special Issue is based on papers initially presented at the ‘Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis’ Conference at the Centre for Not-for-profit and Public-sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, UK in 2018. The public sector consists of organizations that are owned and operated by government; organizations that exist to provide goods and services for a country's citizens. What is particularly distinctive about such organizations, and what makes them different from businesses, is that they are (or, at least perhaps, should be) not-for-profit. In addition, they frequently have wide social and cultural goals that are central to what they do. They are pervasive in most societies. Yet, it is argued, they face crisis on a number of fronts: in terms of the influence of potentially inappropriate, business-like new public management ideas related to performance management and the embracing of related accounting and budgeting approaches; and in terms of the impact of austerity, following the Great Recession in 2008. In such a context it is suggested that public sector governance, accounting, and accountability systems are heavily involved. The papers included in this Special Issue present an opportunity to reflect on aspects of this crisis in terms of how it connects with accounting systems and accounting changes. Key arguments of these papers, and overarching themes of this Special Issue, are explored in this editorial.     

New development: Mutual solutions to shaping public service delivery

There have been a number of developments in approaches to public service delivery in the UK, partly as a response to austerity measures, as well as a shift to new models of public sector, private and third sector provision. This article considers the development of public service mutuals—those organizations that have spun out of the public sector, and where employees of the new providers play a key role in shaping and delivering public services at local and national levels. The authors identify areas where further work is needed to better understand these new models and to consider whether the perceived benefits associated with traditional mutual models are applicable when applied to public service provision.     

The impact of an independent inspectorate on penal governance,performance and accountability: Pressure points and conflict “in the pursuit of an ideal of perfection”

This paper examines the impact of an independent Inspectorate on the enactment, of and accountability for, penal reform in the Australian State of Western Australia. Intended to improve system wide custodial outcomes through the introduction of a privately managed operator acting as standard bearer and innovator, the reform agenda was predicated on an overhaul of governance, performance, systems and reporting practices in the sponsoring department and the state's public prison network. Insights from three credos of imprisonment, theorizations of ‘hierarchical’ and ‘intelligent’ governance and accountability, the interplay of values in changing practice, and the ways in which inspectors establish particular inspection regimes, frame analysis of reform implementation and the inspection regime in action over a ten year period. Using archival material, this research examines how the Inspectorate, in making things auditable, altered perceptions and organizational realities of a network of actors. It is contended that the governance and accountability tensions inherent in managerialism, exemplified in its reliance on ‘neutral’ accounting technologies to incentivise, manage and monitor custodial outcomes, privilege instrumental hierarchical governance and accountability regimes that ignore the rehabilitative aspects of imprisonment. Further, conflicting publicly espoused and privately held values play vital roles in moulding performance in a penal setting, and are fundamental to changing outcomes in networks. The Inspectorate's public values and intelligent accountability regime resonate with the Department's policy objectives and public values, but are shown to have been initially inconsistent with network actors’ hidden private values. The research concludes that the appointment of an independent Inspectorate has facilitated the accountability of those responsible for prison quality and positively influenced the treatment of prisoners. A secondary concern is investigating conflicting propositions about the relative governance, performance and accountability of privately and publicly operated prisons.     

Contesting public accountability: A dialogical exploration of accountability and social housing

This paper analyses the interaction between neoliberal inspired reforms of public services and the mechanisms for achieving public accountability. Where once accountability was exercised through the ballot box, now in the neoliberal age managerial and market based forms of accountability predominate. The analysis identifies resistance from civil society campaigns to the neoliberal restructuring of public services which leads to public accountability (PA) becoming a contested arena. To develop this analysis a re-theorisation of PA, as a relationship where civil society seeks to control the state, is explored in the context of social housing in England over the past thirty years. Central to this analysis is a dialogical analysis of key documents from a social housing regulator and civil society campaign. The analysis shows that the current PA practices are an outcome of both reforms from the government and resistance from civil society (in the shape of tenants’ campaigns). The outcome of which is to tell the story of the changes in PA (and accountability) centring on an analysis of discourse. Thus, the paper moves towards answering the question – what has happened to PA during the neoliberal age?     

Joined‐Up Government and the Challenges to Accounting and Accountability Researchers

Abstract: Collaborative working between public sector bodies in the UK, sometimes involving partnerships with private sector and not‐for‐profit organisations, was promoted heavily by the Labour Government (1997–2010) under what is sometimes labelled ‘Joined‐Up Government’. The Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, elected in 2010, appears likely to continue to promote such policies. The objective of this paper is to raise awareness of what may be seen as an important and developing agenda in public services in which accounting and accountability researchers are barely visible. The paper reviews the meanings and motivations of joined‐up government and its development in the UK. A number of challenges are presented, including the need to refocus research from an entity to a network perspective; to assess whether joined‐up government delivers value‐for‐money services; to join the debate on the development of related accounting techniques; to seek precision in specifying accountability mechanisms and to adapt our research methods.     

Higher education

There is a growing interest in the use of marketing techniques and approaches in the management of the public services, as a result of changed perceptions of public services, and the developments in public service management in the last decade. This article discusses the nature of marketing and distinguishes strategic marketing from consumer marketing. The particular difficulties of marketing public services are considered. Specific development of marketing approaches in the civil service, local government, and the National Health Service are discussed. Finally, it is argued that the applicability of marketing concepts in the public services is limited because of the nature of the polity and the relationship between states and citizens.     

Public services and charities: Accounting,accountability and governance at a time of change

This special issue is based on a selection of papers initially presented at the conference on ‘Public Services and Charities: Accounting, Accountability and Governance at a Time of Change’ (Centre for Not-for-profit and Public-sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, January 2017). ‘Public services and charities’ is a distinctive grouping that includes organisations that are not-for-profit and often have wide social and cultural goals that drive mission and actions. These organisations operate in a very fluid environment. Expectations of the public at large and of government are changing; economic pressures bear down on them particularly acutely; performance metrics and a push for marketisation reflect a spirit of the age; ‘business practices’ are frequently afforded a reputation of being ‘good’ and applicable in all settings; while news reporting and social media often amplify any perceived shortcomings. The papers included in this special issue present an opportunity to reflect on some of the key changes taking place with respect to accounting, accountability and governance in this setting. Such opportunities to reflect can support evaluation of the stated objectives of implemented and proposed changes, and also help to inform policy making within government and elsewhere. Key arguments made in these papers, and the overarching themes of this special issue, are explored in this editorial.     

Reforming central government: An evaluation of an accounting innovation

This paper examines a significant accounting innovation in central government accounting – the introduction of Resource Accounting and Budgeting (RAB) in the UK. This innovation is studied through the lens of Rogers diffusion theory. The study setting is the Scotland Parliament. This research shows that, in the terms of diffusion theory, RAB can be classified as an accounting innovation. However, the implementation of RAB is problematic. While the reform of the UK central government system was initially sought as a mechanism to enhance democratic accountability, this paper shows that RAB does not connect with parliamentarians. The introduction of RAB flows as much from a managerial agenda as it does from the aim of democratic accountability.     

公共价值创造与政府会计改革研究

新公共管理理论自提出以来,对削减成本、提高效率等起到了重要的作用,但是难以反映政府提供公共服务的其他价值内涵。公共价值管理模式解决了新公共管理理论过于强调技术理性的缺陷,对政府活动、政策制定和服务提供产生重大的影响,政府会计作为信息收集、价值判断和管理矫正的重要工具,其改革应以公共价值为导向,充分发挥其在公共价值创造中的重要作用。     

HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTING AS AN INTERFACE ACTIVITY: THE HOME,THE ECONOMY AND GENDER

Accounting is an interface activity, an endeavour that allows objects and artefacts to attain value (in use or exchange) across the boundaries of different domains. Accounting achieves this transferability for objects; the concept of accountability does the same for people, as peoples' levels of accountability and responsibility are implicated in assessments of their value and in whether this value is recognised in different spheres of life. The focus of the paper is on accounting and accountabilities at home, through exploring their impact on the interfaces between gender, the home and the economy. This exploration is conducted through an analysis of instructional texts on financial management in the home. It is argued that practices of accounting and accountability are deeply implicated in gender relations, in the ideology of the home and in maintaining the separation between the private and the public realms of activity.