Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal: Volume 11 Issue 3

Men in white coats … men in grey suits: New public management and the funding of science and technology services to the UK Government

Rebecca Boden, Philip Gummett, Deborah Cox, Kate Barker

The technology of so‐called new public management (NPM) in the UK encompasses a broad range of approaches to the reform of public services based loosely around notions of…

Pushing budgets down the line: ascribing financial responsibility in the UK social services

Sue Llewellyn

Budgets are too aggregated, they hold too high a level in the organizational hierarchy, and they are not owned by individuals; therefore they cannot track the consequences of…

Understanding the evolution of government financial control systems

Edward Olowo‐Okere, Cyril Tomkins

A classic paper on the development of governmental financial control systems argues that such developments occur within the framework of a three‐stage model of evolution. This…

Structure or agency? Discourse or meta‐narrative? Explaining the emergence of the financial management initiative

Brendan McSweeney, Sheila Duncan

Considers why different explanations of the same event can be produced and discusses the characteristics of a good explanation. It identifies and analyses a wide range of…