The aim of this study is to examine the institutional context during the emergence of New Public Management (NPM), which created pressure on public sector organizations to implement performance management systems (PMSs), such as the balanced scorecard (BSC). Drawing on Granlund's framework ( 2001) and Giddens' (1979) structuration theory, we engage insights from a longitudinal case study of an Italian local authority to show how managers exercise agency before the mandated implementation of the BSC. This analysis suggests a re-interpretation of Granlund's ( 2001) factors of inertia (human, institutional and economic) in terms of balance among the three factors, and inclusion of a historic and culturally specific perspective. The findings also encourage a broader consideration of the agency of managers in a public entity before the design and enhancement of a NPM tool.

In the last two decades, the adoption of new public management (NPM) practices in the public sector has increased as public sector organizations seek to improve efficiency, effectiveness and public accountability. We present case study findings of a NPM initiative to implement balanced scorecard (BSC) performance measurement systems in two Italian public sector organizations. This study considers the question of whether the BSC development process can be effectively translated into the public sector context. Our findings highlight the importance of aligning the development of performance management systems with a greater understanding of the internal and external environment of public sector organizations. Our results further emphasize the significant role of emergent stakeholders and management culture for the success of NPM performance management initiatives.

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While universities have fulfilled a central role in education, their multifaceted amalgamations of economic, political, judicial and epistemological relations of power have been paid little attention by accounting historians. This study examines the role of accounting in the power/control relationship between the Papal State and an eighteenth–nineteenth century Italian University using a Foucauldian episteme of disciplinary power and governmentality. Our findings show a separation of accounting from the exercise of education or the reproduction of a meticulous grammatocentric and panoptic system for human accountability (Hoskin and Macve, 1986, 1988; Carmona et al., 1997). However, this work reveals how supervised education gradually became a more refined tool of Christian morality, along with papal control of the institution and its expenses

This article provides insights into organizational and accounting changes at Saint Anna's Hospital in Ferrara (Italy). These changes were driven by a wider environmental change which occured in 1598 when the Dukedom of Ferrara was devolved to the Papal State. This brought about an institutional and political shift that affected the overall society and its main institutions, including the hospital. Research material was drawn from State and private archives, including the original sixteenthcentury accounting books, statutes and organization manuals. The article adds to the sparse literature on accounting practices in non-Anglo-Saxon countries in under-researched centuries. More specifically it provides an internal perspective on understanding the definition of responsibilities among organizational levels as well as accounting development within Saint Anna's Hospital both before and after an episode of significant institutional change.