Studying administrative reforms through textual analysis: the case of Italian central government accounting

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on public sector reforms by proposing textual analysis as a useful research strategy to explore how reform archetypes and related ideas are deployed in the parliamentary debate and regulations advancing reforms. Public Administration (PA), New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (GOV) can be depicted as three different archetypes providing characteristic administrative ideas and concepts and related tools and practices, which lead reforms. We use textual analysis to look into more than 20 years of Italian central government accounting reforms and investigate how the three administrative archetypes have evolved, intertwined and replaced each other. Textual analysis proves a useful tool through which to investigate reform processes and allows us to show that in neo-Weberian countries, such as Italy, NPM and GOV, far from being revolutionary paradigms, may represent fashionable trends that have not left significant traces in the practice and rhetoric of reforms. Points for practitioners In contexts based on civil law traditions, the introduction of new reforms appears to be slow and difficult, and is often more successful when it respects extant PA systems, which remain well rooted in the public sector. Decision-makers may want to keep this into consideration when proposing or implementing new changes. From an organizational point of view, this underlines the importance of reassuring civil servants and politicians of the consistency of the ‘new’ proposed models with those they have been accustomed to, and of using the traditional language of PA to explain and introduce new ideas and tools and make them more acceptable. However, this has to be balanced by an actual change in the old systems and routines, using continuity to bring about change and avoiding the re-enactment of merely formalistic approaches.

The power of language in legitimating public-sector reforms: When politicians “talk” accounting

“…This provides a sufficient time span to identify different patterns. Italy has a strong legalistic administrative tradition and has been often identified as a typical Napoleonic country and a medium-intensity adopter of NPM ideas (Hood 1995;Pollitt & Bouckaert 2011;Liguori, Steccolini & Rota, 2016;Arnaboldi et al, 2016). Being a civil-law country, Italy has always relied on laws and administrative acts to adopt reforms (Panozzo, 1998).…”

“…In this study, discourse analysis is used to investigate how politicians talked about and justified the introduction of accounting reforms. Several calls have been advanced to consider more closely the relationship between codified discourses and practice to improve our understanding of the discourse/practice dynamics within organisations (Llewellyn & Milne, 2007;Liguori et al, 2016). This study follows in these footsteps.…”

The role(s) of accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration

“…In this regard, the accounting literature has explored the effects of performance management systems (e.g., Lapsley , ; Ter Bogt and Van Helden ; Modell ; Liguori and Steccolini ) with a more interpretive and qualitative stance, therefore allowing an in‐depth reflection not only on the possible relationship between performance measurement systems, their antecedents and potential effects, but also on the myriad roles played by such systems in the public realm (see Steccolini ). Interdisciplinary accounting studies focus on these aspects and can provide a more nuanced view of such roles, which may be of particular interest and relevance in a context where multiple logics and rationalities (Humphrey and Miller ) are at play, hybrid arrangements become the norm for public service provision, and the logics underlying public services become increasingly blurred and ever‐changing (e.g., Parker ; Hyndman et al ; Wiesel and Modell ; Liguori et al ).…”

Accounting and the post-new public management

“…Second, drawing on institutional and discursive theories, other studies have looked at a multiplicity of logics as a source of hybridization, seeking to understand the roles of accounting in shifting logics and discourses, or in providing a medium among competing and conflicting logics and discourses. The traditional public administration logic has been replaced by the NPM logic (eg., Hyndman et al, 2014: Liguori et al, 2017Parker, 2012;Wiesel and Modell, 2014). Alternatively, the professional logic underlying public services has been described as becoming blended, or as resisting, managerial and market logics (eg., Wiesel et al, 2011;Bracci and Llewellyn, 2012;Currie et al, 2015;Rautiainen and Jarvenpa, 2012;Rautiainen et al, 2015).…”