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(Dys)functionality of intentions or outcomes? Performance funding of Danish schools

Morten Lund Poulsen (Department of Business Development and Technology, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark)
Per Nikolaj Bukh (Aalborg Universitet, Aalborg, Denmark)
Karina Skovvang Christensen (Department of Economics and Management, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 26 April 2022

Issue publication date: 10 January 2023

304

Abstract

Purpose

This paper studies how performance funding of education is perceived by principals, teachers and administrative staff and management. The dysfunctionality of performance measures often reflects how the measures prevent an organisation from achieving its goals. This paper proposes that perceptions of dysfunctionality can be analysed by separating the perceptions of the programme's intentions, of the school-level actions and of the outcomes for students.

Design/methodology/approach

Following a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, school management, staff specialists and top management in a large Danish municipality when outcome-based funding was introduced.

Findings

The performance-funding programme affected teaching by changing educational priorities. Different perceptions of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes fuelled diverging responses. Although the performance measure was generally considered incomplete, interviewees' perceptions of the financial incentivisation and the dysfunctionality of actions depended on interpretations of the incentivisation and student-related outcomes of the programme.

Research limitations/implications

Dysfunctionality can be contested; the interpretations of the intention of a performance-funding programme affect the perceived dysfunctionality of reactions. Both technical characteristics of funding schemes and administrators' and principals' mediating roles are essential for the consequences of performance funding.

Originality/value

The paper examines conditions for dysfunctionality of performance measures. We demonstrate that actions can be perceived as dysfunctional because of a measurement's intentions, actions themselves and the actions' outcomes. Further, the paper illustrates how the reception of performance funding depends on how consequences are enacted based on educators' interpretations of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge comments received at a research seminar at Örebro University School of Business, 15 January 2021, at the International EIASM Public Sector Conference, 27–28 September 2021, at the 11th EIASM Conference on Performance Measurement and Management Control, 15–17. September 15.-17. 2021 and at the Nordic Accounting Conference, Copenhagen Business School, 11–12 November 2021. The authors are also grateful for the valuable comments from Hans Englund and three anonymous referees.

Citation

Poulsen, M.L., Bukh, P.N. and Christensen, K.S. (2023), "(Dys)functionality of intentions or outcomes? Performance funding of Danish schools", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 267-294. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2020-5034

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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