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Seeks to explain the survival of the Local Education Authority (LEA) as an organizational form despite the significant reform of UK education that created a hostile environment for them.

Adopting a historical perspective and drawing on neo‐institutional sociology, analyses the structuration of the educational field and the survival strategies of three LEAs, from 1988 to the mid‐1990s. The evidence base is some 100 semi‐structured interviews conducted between 1993 and 1997 with local education officers, head teachers and members of Boards of Governors.

The paper shows that LEAs have been able to continually transmute structures and reproduce social systems that secured their continued and major involvement in education. Coping strategies were designed that reduced their own bureaucracy, built partnerships and new patterns of coalitions with schools, and discouraged a broadening of the organizational field.

Although the evidence comes from just three LEAs, survival strategies appear to have been adopted across the country, but there may be regional variations that could be further explored. In addition, parents were not interviewed, and issues of parent power and the nature of relationships between parents and other participants in the organizational field would be fruitful areas for future research.

In practice the system of education remains dominated by the producers of education, although the head teacher has more and the LEA less power than previously.

The historical perspective offers an understanding of institutional context by focusing on changes over time and generates insights on how organizations behave and develop.

June Pallot was a very warm, kind person with an infectious, bubbly laugh. We last spoke on 5th October 2004, one month before she passed away. I still remember her warm, friendly voice from that last conversation. Behind this warm persona, there was a first class mind, an outstanding intellect. We met the way many academics do – I was an anonymous reviewer of her work and I was impressed by its quality and the thoughtfulness of her responses to the issues raised. Subsequently, we met when June Pallot was on a visit to Scotland with her husband, Graeme Craigie, a New Zealander of Scottish descent. June Pallot visited me at Stirling, where I was then professor of accounting. We had a very detailed discussion of governmental accounting, in which her depth of knowledge was impressive. We became so engrossed in this discussion that June almost forgot that Graeme was waiting patiently for her in the car park.

Defines critical accounting in the context of the 1998 APIRA conference. Discusses papers presented at the conference which extend the debate in this area – theory and methodology; societal dimensions; organizational dimensions; and, engagement, evaluation and change.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) possesses an inherent duality, as it has been described as a carrier of institutions (i.e. the BSC is a “management ideology” or “mode of thinking”) and a flexibly interpretive boundary object at the same time. This study examines how this inherent duality of the BSC may influence the unfolding rationales surrounding its implementation and use.

Empirical support for this investigation is gathered from an in-depth field study. The focal firm is a Brazilian electricity distribution company that transitioned from state to private ownership under hyper-regulation, and whose holding company experienced strategic and structural changes.

The study identified a misalignment between the characteristics of the firm (e.g. organizational logics) and the perceived BSC features. This misalignment initially produced tensions and institutional logics complexity for the organization forcing the BSC implementers to rationalize it to provide meaning regarding its implementation in the firm. The findings also show why and how the promoters of the BSC conducted its “strategy of translation” in order to disentangle and reassemble both the material and symbolic components of the BSC to facilitate its implementation and use. It was found that promoters of the BSC engaged in contextualization work, which featured two main actions: a combination of coupling and selective decoupling and a change of meaning.

This paper advances current understanding of the process of the unfolding rationales surrounding management accounting innovations (e.g. the BSC). The study shows that the BSC unfolds in more complex, time-related and simultaneous ways than has previously been reported in the literature. Moreover, the paper contributes by explaining how the management's rationales, relating to their historical understanding, perception of legitimation needs and social skills, contributed to the continuous unfolding of the BSC. In addition, four potentially interesting areas for further research were identified.

This paper presents the results of a survey of the use of the balanced scorecard in New Zealand companies. The top 40 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE40) were chosen as the survey population. A 62.5% response rate was achieved. One hundred percent of respondents indicated that they have knowledge of the balanced scorecard. Sixty‐one percent and 65% of the respondents reported that they use a balanced scorecard at organisational and divisional level, respectively. The results indicate that financial performance measures continue to dominate non‐financial measures in terms of importance. In addition to further developing the literature on the balanced scorecard, the research provides opportunities to investigate balanced scorecard implementations in New Zealand in more depth.