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The purpose of this paper is to explore the recently increased use of the word “investment” in the public management discourse. In particular, it examines the implications of this for accounting and public governance. It asks, is that discourse simply concerned to account for “investment” in the efficient provision of public goods and services? Or does it also seek to hold governments, and government agencies, to account for the results they achieve and, more broadly, for their investment in, and stewardship of, the capacity to do so in the future?

The paper draws on a range of literature as well as speeches made by both New Zealand politicians and officials to track the emergence and evolution of a discourse in respect of “an investment approach”. As such, the analysis represents a diachronic approach for, as Jäger and Meyer (2009) note: “To identify the knowledge of a society on a topic, the analyst has to reconstruct the genesis of this topic” (p. 46).

The initial adoption of “an investment approach” occurred in the context of attempts to gain a clearer focus on, and accountability for, the results of government interventions. Subsequently, a broader, and arguably more classic, conception of public investment has involved a developing focus on changes to the nation’s economic, social and environmental capitals. Both approaches provide significant practical challenges for accounting and the continued relevance of the accounting profession.

The paper points to an urgent need to engage the accounting profession in debates that extend beyond the adoption of accrual accounting for the control of inputs and the provision of outputs. It is suggested that a future research agenda should focus on how models of well-being, and the public capitals that enable well-being, might be better accounted for and monitored.

This paper provides an insight into the emergence, spread and ultimate fading of the use of the word “investment” in the public policy discourse in New Zealand. However, it also places that process in a wider development that is focusing on citizens’ well-being. In so doing, it also highlights the challenges for the accounting profession created by the investment turn – whether relating to investment in operational activities or in public capitals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutional factors that impact on the integration of the formal model of performance management in New Zealand's public service and the model, or models, in use within different agencies and at different levels within those agencies.

The research involved semi‐structured interviews with managers within three agencies of New Zealand's central government as well as a review of their external accountability documents and internal management reports. These data were then interpreted in the context of new institutional sociology. In particular, the institutional carriers identified by Scott (2001) Scott were used to map the characteristics within each agency that support more or less integration, and common use, of performance measures.

It is concluded that an integrated framework of performance objectives, that drops down from the Government's priorities, to Ministers' purchase of goods and services, to managers' objectives at each layer of the agency, does not always exist. Institutional arrangements that emphasise regulative controls are more likely to result in the decoupling of nationally defined frameworks from those used locally by operational managers. Conversely, institutional arrangements that emphasise culturally and cognitively based controls are more likely to support tight coupling of performance management frameworks and practices.

While much has been written about public sector management and what has been referred to as “the New Zealand model”, this has largely been concerned with the management of the public sector as a whole. This research provides an empirical insight on management practices within individual public sector agencies.

This chapter details a practice-based investigation of a 19th-century astronomical device known as ‘Janssen’s apparatus’. It questions traditional narratives of linear technological advancement and ‘sole inventor’ to reframe the historical artefact as a site which makes visible a network of technological knowledge interconnecting astronomy and visual culture. Approached from this perspective, the Janssen artefact is reframed as an ‘intersite of knowledge’, exploring how the various know-how contained within the device is located across disciplines rather than within a single field. Originally developed to calculate the Astronomical Unit during the 1874 Transit of Venus, Janssen’s apparatus failed in its endeavour as a measuring instrument, but its motion mechanism was successfully adapted into early cinema technologies. This chapter applies praxis through the development of a prototype artwork and the concept of ‘techne’ as speculative means of understanding how this mechanism was transferred from astronomy to the Western cultural realm. It proposes that the development of the apparatus was partially gleaned from moving image techniques already in use within 19th-century visual culture. The development of the prototype artwork is discussed in relation to the specific timing mechanism of the Janssen apparatus and how it establishes its own ‘intersite of knowledge’ relevant to its contemporary context. Finally, this chapter elaborates on how witnessing the Janssen mechanism in motion provided unique insight and how creating a dialogue between historical and contemporary apparatus facilitates a reconsideration of how galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] and other host institutions that contain artefacts might share their hidden stories.

This exploratory study aims to contribute to theory extension regarding the unique factors that characterize performance evaluation in the public sector.

The chapter reviews the Public Sector and the Interpretation literatures and develops a framework that introduces the concept of interpretation asymmetries, and then uses two case studies and a survey applied to both South American and European public managers to illustrate and analyze propositions derived from the framework.

Public agencies and managers are not assessed by their activities and outcomes but by how the general public may come to interpret and perceive them. Public officers – besides getting their organizations’ job done – struggle to show the truth of their organizations and preserve their organizations’ legitimacy due to the conditions of interpretation asymmetry and the dynamics of politicization prevalent in the public domain.

This study was designed to be exploratory and fundamentally oriented to theory extension. As such, the findings and conclusions are tentative and require further research.

Governments, public officers, politicians, and researchers would benefit from going beyond usual considerations of information asymmetries and start paying attention to, understanding, and managing interpretation asymmetries.

This chapter contributes to the increasing research on the intersection of performance management and the public sector, and provides new concepts that enhance our understanding of the dynamics of assessment in environments prone to politicization. While prior research has been mainly focused on agent’s dysfunctional responses to performance measures, this chapter illustrates functional behaviors through which agents aim to increase the dimensionality and integrity of principals’ interpretations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative’s (NEITI) ineffectiveness in delivering public accountability to Nigerian citizens. Although this failure is recognised in prior literature, the authors contend that NEITI’s role is obscured by one-sided links to external factors.

The conceptual framework presented in this study is built around Dillard and Vinnari’s (2019) distinction between different accountability systems and Brown and Dillard’s (2020) complimentary insights on the technologies of hubris and humility. The analytical framework draws from Grant and Keohane’s (2005) modes of accountability, which the authors use to articulate conflicting accountability demands (to-whom and for-what) of NEITI’s operating relationships. Combined, the authors analyse official documents, media, reports and interview responses from members of NEITI’s National Stakeholders Working Group.

This study surfaces a variety of intersecting interests across NEITI’s operational relationships. Some of these interests are mutually beneficial like that of Donors and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Others run counter to each other, such as NEITI’s relationship to the Presidency which illustrates a key source of NEITI’s ineffectiveness. In discussing these interests, the authors articulate their connection to NEITI’s design as an accountability system and its embedded limitations.

The authors provide incremental understanding of prior insight regarding NEITI’s ineffectiveness by drawing attention to its fundamental design as an accountability system and its failure to deliver public accountability. To illuminate these failures, the authors also map NEITI’s competing accountability demands – the nexus of accountability – to demonstrate the complex socio-political reality within which NEITI is expected to operate. The authors posit that NEITI’s ineffectiveness has as much to do with NEITI itself, as it does with external factors like the quality of information disclosed and the unique Nigerian context.