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Recent UK Central Government Accounting Reforms: Claimed Benefits and Experienced Outcomes
Author(s) -
Stewart Elaine,
Connolly Ciaran
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
abacus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.632
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-6281
pISSN - 0001-3072
DOI - 10.1111/abac.12222
Subject(s) - accounting , government (linguistics) , central government , economics , management accounting , political science , public economics , business , public administration , local government , linguistics , philosophy
Focusing on the four most recent and highly publicized accounting reforms in UK central government, and utilizing discourse analysis of official publications, together with semi‐structured interviews, this paper examines the basis on which these four reforms were introduced, the extent to which they are considered appropriate, and the reasons for the persistence of new public management (NPM)‐inspired accounting reforms in UK central government. The findings indicate that each was promoted in a similar manner despite limited post‐implementation evidence that the supposed benefits of preceding reforms had not been realized to the extent originally suggested. Given NPM's continued acceptance, these findings have international significance.