In praise of accountability through ‘inadequate’ technologies of government: Accounting, wish-lists and local responses to public sector reforms

Following a summary of research in the Performance Management Cluster, Geraldine will give a short presentation on this working paper.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature on New Public Management by exploring how and why a set of accounting practices, which were perceived as ‘inadequate’ by a number of local users, maintained a powerful role as these users engaged with and responded to the enactment of policies and reforms promoted by the central government with the intention of achieving higher levels of efficiency and accountability.