In the name of accountability ‐State auditing, independence and new public management

Abstract

This article investigates the role of the state auditor in Alberta. An analysis of the Office of the Auditor General of Alberta's annual reports shows that the role of the Office has significantly changed to promote and encourage the implementation in the public sector of a particular type of accountability informed by new public management. The authors argue that the Office has increased its power to influence politicians and public servants about the merits of its specific understanding of what accountability should be. However, as the Office becomes more powerful, it also becomes more vulnerable to complaints about a lack of independence from the executive. Indeed, the Office is now so closely associated with new public management that we believe that it is difficult for the Office to sustain the claim that it is able to provide independent assessments of public-sector administration.

Public sector management accounting in emerging economies: A literature review

“…Previous studies on NPM and MA changes have demonstrated a drastic change in views on the role of the state and MA models (in the sense of a wider governance model) suitable for the public sector to deliver services to citizens. Two of the most influential models of governance are traditional public administration and NPM (Broadbent & Guthrie, 1992;Gendron et al, 2001). Traditional public administration-led management control focuses on compliance, regularities, maintenance and control (also described as the Weberian state, see Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011).…”

“…From this perspective, the autonomization of public units and their exposure to market discipline are thought to be a better vehicle than centralized bureaucratic arrangements for delivering public services. The central theme of NPM is to make managers accountable, by allowing managers discretionary authority to reach their performance targets, and then measuring, monitoring and reporting on performance indicators in order to determine whether the intended outcomes have been attained (Gendron et al, 2001;Morales et al, 2014). Nevertheless, recent studies show that NPM under neoliberalism has eroded values typical to the traditional public sector by offering room for business-like practices, including forms of manipula-tion, and thus damaging processes of democratic control; moreover, its scope has been extended from public service delivery to state administration (Morales et al, 2014).…”

“…The NPM doctrine spread initially to rich countries and later to EEs in different shapes and forms, whilst retaining core principles such as cost savings, market discipline and autonomization of public entities (Gendron et al, 2001;Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000). Several reasons are cited in the literature for the NPM shift in the public management control model.…”

“…Several reasons are cited in the literature for the NPM shift in the public management control model. These include the changing agendas of the right-wing parties of Thatcher and Reagan, a response to fiscal stress and the macroeconomic policies adopted by governments during that period, the public perception of accountability, the role of business schools, accounting and management consulting firms in popularizing managerial ideology, and so on (Broadbent & Guthrie, 1992;Gendron et al, 2001;Hood, 1995).…”

“…Given the distinct shift in development discourses and the role of the state over the past two decades (Broadbent & Guthrie, 1992Gendron et al, 2001), this paper focuses particularly on exploring transformations in the public sector and how they intertwine with MA practices in EEs.…”