Changing market values? Tensions of contradicting public management discourses

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 659-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mie Plotnikof
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Collaborative Governance ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Market Values ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
New Public

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address studies of New Public Governance (NPG) as a post-New Public Management (NPM) tendency. Although NPG is considered a contrast to NPM and its market incentives, it argues that the practices emerging in tensions of NPM and NPG discourses indicate not a clear-cut shift away from NPM, but rather changes that combine competition with collaboration and trust. Design/methodology/approach It offers a discourse approach to advance the theorizing and empirical unfolding of the tensions of contradicting, yet co-existing discourses of NPM and NPG and their effects in practice. Drawing on a case study from the Danish daycare sector, it investigates local collaborative governance initiatives that develop new quality-management methods. Findings The study elucidates how NPM and NPG discourses collide in local practices of public sector management within daycare. It shows that the discursive tensions between such value-laden practices indicate a changing marketization associated with collaboration and trust, yet also competition. Research limitations/implications To research it becomes critical to advance theoretical and empirical knowledge on the constitutive effects of such complex discursive tensions in public organizations. Practical implications To practice it becomes necessary to acknowledge and handle co-existing, yet contradicting management discourses, and not mistake their opposing values as necessarily distinct, but rather as entangled in practice. Originality/value The paper contributes with original findings that shed new light on colliding management discourses in practices and their effects within the public sector area of daycare.

scholarly journals Accounting and the post-new public management

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana Steccolini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Accounting

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context. Design/methodology/approach The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines. Findings NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research. Originality/value The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation.

scholarly journals New public management and the rise of public sector performance audit

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee D. Parker ◽  
Kerry Jacobs ◽  
Jana Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
New Public ◽  
Performance Audit ◽  
Performance Auditing ◽  
Strong Control

Purpose In the context of global new public management reform trends and the associated phenomenon of performance auditing (PA), the purpose of this paper is to explore the rise of performance audit in Australia and examines its focus across audit jurisdictions and the role key stakeholders play in driving its practice. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a multi-jurisdictional analysis of PA in Australia to explore its scale and focus, drawing on the theoretical tools of Goffman. Documentary analysis and interview methods are employed. Findings Performance audit growth has continued but not always consistently over time and across audit jurisdictions. Despite auditor discourse concerning backstage performance audit intentions being strongly focussed on evaluating programme outcomes, published front stage reports retain a strong control focus. While this appears to reflect Auditors-General (AGs) reluctance to critique government policy, nonetheless there are signs of direct and indirectly recursive relationships emerging between AGs and parliamentarians, the media and the public. Research limitations/implications PA merits renewed researcher attention as it is now an established process but with ongoing variability in focus and stakeholder influence. Social implications As an audit technology now well-embedded in the public sector accountability setting, it offers potential insights into matters of local, state and national importance for parliament and the public, but exhibits variable underlying drivers, agendas and styles of presentation that have the capacity to enhance or detract from the public interest. Originality/value Performance audit emerges as a complex practice deployed as a mask by auditors in managing their relationship with key stakeholders.

Co-Production as Seen From a Top Management Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 118-129
Author(s):  
Mette Vinther Larsen ◽  
Charlotte Øland Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Top Managers ◽  
New Public ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Public Organisations

This chapter addresses the ‘co-production turn' in public sector organisations from a top management perspective. The co-production turn is seen as a historical development from new public management to the concept of new public governance. Ideas on collaborative governance have been advanced as an answer to some of the challenges of the public sector in health services, caregiving, and social work. Current issues in welfare production in public sector organisations are seen as a result of the economic rationalisation ideas in new public management, and co-production has been theoretically advanced as a new way to involve citizens in the co-production of welfare. The co-production turn is explored as an emerging research field in this book, and in the current chapter, the authors explore how three top managers make sense of this concept when developing and implementing new strategies in their public organisations.

scholarly journals Heritage reporting by the Australian public sector

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 612-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peir Peir Woon ◽  
Bikram Chatterjee ◽  
Carolyn J. Cordery
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Reporting Requirements ◽  
New Public ◽  
Proposed Model

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the future development of heritage reporting in Australia. Public sector reporting of heritage has been a long-standing issue, due to shortcomings in (sector-neutral) for-profit-based financial reporting standards. Australia’s sector-neutral approach does not meet public sector users’ information needs. The authors develop a heritage reporting model to balance community and other stakeholders’ interests and address prior critiques. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews heritage reporting requirements in Anglo-Western Countries, and analyses commentaries and research publications. It evaluates the existing reporting requirements in the context of new public management (which focusses on information and efficiency) and new public governance (NPG) (focussing on balancing interests and quality). Findings The paper proposes an NPG-based heritage reporting model which includes indicators of performance on the five UNESCO (1972) dimensions and operational guidelines issued by UNESCO (2015). These are identification, presentation, protection, conservation and transmission. The proposed model is consistent with the notion of US SFFAS 29 (the standard for Federal entities). Not all heritage must be capitalised and hence attachment of monetary value, but detailed disclosures are necessary. Research limitations/implications The authors expect the proposed heritage reporting model to better serve users of heritage information compared to the present Australian Accounting Standards Board 116: Property, Plant and Equipment. Originality/value The authors’ proposed model of heritage reporting attempts to answer Carnegie and Wolnizer’s (1995, 1999) six questions, addresses decades of concerns raised in previous literature and provides a new perspective to heritage reporting based on NPG that should better serve users’ needs.

Performance auditing and neoliberal governmentality: future research directions

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarek Rana ◽  
Dessalegn Getie Mihret ◽  
Tesfaye T. Lemma
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
New Public ◽  
Concurrent Development ◽  
Performance Auditing ◽  
The Individual

Purpose This paper aims to interpret the role and professional issues of public sector performance auditing (PA) as a mechanism of neoliberal governmentality in the New Public Management (NPM) era by drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual lens to chart directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity to interpret PA against the background of neoliberal imperatives of public sector management. Findings As the growing emphasis on PA in recent decades can be understood as driven by the concurrent development of neoliberal and NPM rationalities, the relatively underexploited concepts of visibility and identity allow further inquiry into important PA issues. This paper identifies avenues for future research under the following three themes: the issue of visibility in neoliberal governmentality and potential for auditors-general to expand the domain of influence of National Audit Offices through the PA role; the potential for PA as a unified distinct specialisation; and the neoliberal idea of professional identity as the individual expert and its interplay with the potential emergence of PA as a distinct function within the accounting profession. Research limitations/implications This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future PA research. Key areas in this respect include the position and authority afforded to PA and the possibility of transformation in auditors’ conception of their professional worldview. Originality/value This paper charts direction for future research by interpreting PA using Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity that remain to be exploited in PA research.

scholarly journals New public management a re-packaging of extant techniques?

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-429
Author(s):  
Martin Quinn ◽  
Liz Warren
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Investment Project ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Public ◽  
Minimal Research ◽  
Similar Elements ◽  
Large Investment

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore, if, similar to other management initiatives, new public management may be a repackaging of already existent concepts. Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as an innovative way to manage public sector elements, new public management affected both the ownership and management of public sector companies, services and utilities. Minimal research has been undertaken previously, using historic archival sources of public entities, to explore if elements of the concept originated prior to the 1970s. Design/methodology/approach This research draws on archival records from a publicly owned electricity company, covering about three decades from 1946, during which a large investment project was undertaken by the company. This study draws on key tenets of what is today called new public management, examining prior research to ascertain if similar elements were present in the case organisation. Findings When reviewing the progress of the investment project, many of the key elements of new public management emerged, even during the early part of the project. Originality/value There is little historical research on the origins of new public management, and the findings here suggest that it may not be entirely new. While this does not at all invalidate existing research, it suggests that new public management may be to an extent a repackaging of previously extant techniques. This opens up possibilities for future historic research in terms of how and why it was repackaged, and also what was/was not repackaged.

scholarly journals Intellectual heritages of post-1990 public sector accounting research: an exploration

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (8) ◽  
pp. 2077-2110
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen Bruns ◽  
Mark Christensen ◽  
Alan Pilkington
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Accounting ◽  
Cumulative Knowledge

PurposeThe article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity.Design/methodology/approachThe study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective.FindingsThe analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries.Research limitations/implicationsCriteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed.Practical implicationsA matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research.Originality/valueBy extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.

Challenges in transitioning from new public management to new public governance in a developing country context

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 689-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wahed Waheduzzaman
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Service Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Public ◽  
New Public Governance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the transitional status of new public management (NPM) into new public governance (NPG) in a developing country context. Some authors, based on their research in developed countries, have claimed that NPM is dead. However, such claims have apparently ignored the transformational status of NPM in developing countries. This paper addresses that gap. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative method was used in this research. Public officials, elected representatives and local users who were responsible for public service management at local levels in Bangladesh were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires tailored to each group. The interview texts were then organised and analysed using NVivo software. Findings This research reveals that four public management elements comprising decentralisation, market-based services, efficiency and accountability, which are prerequisites for creating an appropriate environment for NPG, have not been established successfully in Bangladesh. This finding suggests that NPG may not be achieved without effective implementation of these elements through NPM practices. The study concludes that NPM needs to be practiced for more time in Bangladesh for the effective transformation of public management into public governance. Research limitations/implications Findings from this research will help public policy makers and researchers to identify barriers to and design the pathway for a smooth shift from NPM to NPG. Practical implications The findings of this research would help the Government of Bangladesh and international aid agencies to better understand the status of NPM and NPG in regional Bangladesh. Social implications The research findings may help identify barriers to enhancing participatory activities in a developing society. Originality/value Though NPM is an obsolete theory for developed countries, it needs to be implemented successfully in developing countries prior to the implementation of NPG.

scholarly journals Exploring past, present and future trends in public sector auditing research: a literature review

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgia Mattei ◽  
Giuseppe Grossi ◽  
James Guthrie A.M.
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
New Public

Purpose Public sector auditing research has changed rapidly over the past four decades. This paper aims to reveal how the field has developed and identify avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a structured literature review following Massaro et al. The sample comprises papers on public sector auditing published in accounting and public sector management journals between 1991 and 2020. Findings The present analysis highlights that academic research interest in public sector auditing has grown and become more diverse. The authors argue this may reflect a transformation of the public sector in recent decades, owing to the developing institutional logics of public sector reforms, from traditional public administration to new public management and now new public governance. Originality value This paper offers a comprehensive review of the public sector auditing literature, discussing different perspectives over time. It also outlines the various public sector reforms introduced over the period of the study. In reviewing the existing literature, the authors highlight the themes for future research and policy settings.

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