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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/09513559710156742. When citing the article, please cite: Bill Doolin, Stewart Lawrence, (1997), “Managerialism, information technology and health reform in New Zealand”, International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 10 Iss: 1/2, pp. 108 - 122.

The motivation for this paper is to better understand the strengths and limitations of quantitative performance measures in a changing environment. The context is one of organisational change and innovative management. Using a case study approach, the paper presents a history of organisational change and focuses on attempts to drive and assess efficiency through performance measures in a public hospital‐based pathology laboratory. The various financial and non‐financial performance measures used in the laboratory are presented. A discrepancy between accounting reports and laboratory management analyses of costs is reported. The notorious difficulties of costing health services are examined through the dispute that arose about whether the mean cost‐per‐test was increasing or decreasing over a three‐year period. Competing representations of performance are analysed. Whilst the case study looks at a New Zealand example, many of the pressures facing pathology services are typical of medical laboratories worldwide. General issues of performance measurement are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the social aspects of supervising students’ research of accounting practice. It attempts to demonstrate that accounting practice and accounting research share a common characteristic – they are both forms of social practice.

The paper is written as a personal reflection and confession. It follows a tradition in the social science literature of academics engaging in auto-ethnographic self-reflection. It is presented as a series of dialogues between the academic and the students.

The tensions between the experienced teacher and the students raise questions about the extent of involvement of the academic in the students’ work. Each project involves social interactions which affect the nature of the supervision required and provided. Positivistic approaches may give strict guidance in the form of accepted rules and conventions, but for social scientists who recognise that research, like practice, is socially constructed, outcomes are often uncertain.

It is a personal reflection on specific research projects, and so there are no conclusions about supervision in general.

The intent is to capture the uncertain development and outcome of research projects. The uncertainty may be typical of supervisor/student experiences.

Though examples of auto-ethnographic self-reflection may be found in the social science literature, there are few, if any, in the accounting literature.

The resurgence of interest in public sector accounting has been evident in the significant growth of the literature concerning both developed and developing countries. Literature reviews in the area, however, have only focused on the former thus leaving a gap which has been overlooked for some time. This paper begins to respond to this lack in the literature by critically assessing research on public sector accounting and financial management in developing countries. The paper elaborates the various views expressed by writers in the field and also identifies omissions in terms of themes, methodologies, and methods. In particular, we argue that most of the mainly non‐empirical studies in the literature have been influenced to a very large extent by development economics thinking (including theories the relevance of which have been significantly questioned in that discipline). We conclude by offering some suggestions for future research in the area.

This paper aims to extend the literature on public sector reforms in less‐developed countries in the Pacific. It seeks to examine the roles of accounting and control systems in the reforming of two public sector organisations in Fiji: a process that was demanded by international financial agencies. The impacts of the reforms on the local population are also considered.

The case study method is employed. The empirical evidence is interpreted using Laughlin's, and Greenwood and Hinings's frameworks. The empirics are used to flesh out the skeletal model with specific cultural and political issues particular to Fiji.

Empirical evidence from two public sector organisations in Fiji that underwent structural reforms is used to illustrate the difficulties of transformation; and how the Fijian people's needs were not met for the purpose for which the organisations were established.

Although this study is limited to two public sector enterprises in Fiji, it provides valuable insights into one country's public sector enterprises, and offers a platform for similar studies in other countries.

The case studies show the limitations of the introduction of private sector managerialism into state‐sector organisations. There are implications for state sector organisations in Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific.

The paper adds to the literature of developing countries. There are cultural and political influences specific to Fiji that trigger resistance to change from public service values to commercial business norms. Such cultural and political influences may not be so pertinent in western industrialised countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the role of institutional entrepreneurs who use accounting technology to accomplish change within a privatised telecommunications company.

The case study method is adopted. The authors draw on recent extension to institutional theory that gives greater emphasis to agency including concepts such as embeddedness, institutional entrepreneurs and institutional contradiction.

As part of the consequences of new public management reforms, we illustrate how institutional entrepreneurs de-established an older state-run bureaucratic and engineering-based routine and replaced it with a business- and accounting-based routine. Eventually, new accounting routines were reproduced and taken for granted by telecommunications management and employees.

As this study is limited to a single case study, no generalisation except to theory can be made. There are implications for privatisation of state sector organisations both locally and internationally.

The paper makes a contribution to elaborating the role of institutional entrepreneurs as agents of change towards privatisation and how accounting was used as a technology of change.

This paper examines the progressive exertion of external managerial control over New Zealand pathologists as the country’s New Public Management health reforms were implemented during the 1990s. Perspectives on professionalism, and its role in the effective use of resources, are discussed as part of the examination of this shift in decision‐making power from pathologists to external management. Our analysis, based on a range of archived and interview data collected over the period 1997‐2000, suggests that publicly unacceptable compromises in pathology service quality were risked by the pursuit of tight bureaucratic and free market controls over pathology practice. The paper concludes with suggestions for a health professional control model facilitative of maximal health gain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of empowerment practices within the disability support service (DSS) sector in New Zealand. The DSS framework is designed as part of the public sector reform process to promote empowerment for people with disabilities so that they can lead independent lives in their communities.

Taking a qualitative and interpretive approach to fieldwork, this research seeks the actual lived experiences of the disabled as recipients of services offer by the state.

The empirical evidence suggests that a concept such as empowerment can be problematic, because it can be perceived as a manipulative strategy where empowerment principles may be only notionally applied when services are offered by following managerialist principles.

This paper adds to the understanding on relationships between service design, resources, and empowerment practices. Implementation of empowerment principles, however, depends on resources to create a support structure at the community level and an atmosphere where there is choice and flexibility for people with disabilities to access essential services.