Decentralisation and Management Accounting in Central Government: Recycling Old Ideas?

This paper examines the Next Steps development from both contemporaneous and historical perspectives. Specifically, it traces the reliance on a distinct model of management and accounting in Next Steps (1988) and its predecessors (FMI, 1982; and Fulton, 1968). This shows not only that there are a series of commonalities within the details of these various reforms of central government, over the past three decades, but also that these various reforms share foundations which are embedded in 'management thought' on best practice in the 1950s and 1960s. We identify contemporaneous studies in both management and management accounting which could have informed these reforms, and make suggestions for situationally specific means of improving management and accounting in central government.