Purpose – The starting point for the paper is an assessment of the impact of a 1993 special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, which provided an interdisciplinary analysis of the pursuit of accountable management reforms in the UK public sector. From this assessment, the...

Purpose – This article aims to focus on one of the most intriguing issues related to the public sector reforms: the accountability systems. In particular the paper aims to deal with the relationships between accounting-based reforms, forms of accountability, and people-changing or...

Purpose – This paper seeks to extend the analysis of performance management regimes by Bouckaert and Halligan to other countries in order to contribute to the developing theory of forms and challenges in public sector performance management. Design/methodology/approach – The state of...

Purpose – Accounting and regulators are an integral part of new public management (NPM) across public sectors. This article aims to look at one of their potential drawbacks by investigating how a policy was deemed as a failure by regulators because of its limited financial controls....

Purpose – Reform of local political management continues to be part of the international agenda for change as governments seek to create the conditions for better performance in local government. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of changes in political management upon the...

Purpose – Using an organizational justice framework, this paper aims to examine survivors' attitudinal and behavioral correlates to downsizing in Chinese state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted one qualitative study involving personal interviews...

Purpose – There have been profound changes in the Portuguese national health system (NHS), instigated under the influence of managerialism and the new public management (NPM) “philosophy”. These changes have been in line with what has happened in other developed countries. At the beginning...

Purpose – The starting point for the paper is an assessment of the impact of a 1993 special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, which provided an interdisciplinary analysis of the pursuit of accountable management reforms in the UK public sector. From this assessment, the...

Purpose – This article aims to focus on one of the most intriguing issues related to the public sector reforms: the accountability systems. In particular the paper aims to deal with the relationships between accounting‐based reforms, forms of accountability, and people‐changing or...