PurposeThis paper aims to explain why public sector performance reporting that emphasises external accountability may turn out differently from the official stated aims.Design/methodology/approachUsing a comparative case method, two different accountability innovations are examined using framing and overflowing ideas.FindingsThe accountability reports became bureaucratic communications between the reporting and central agencies. The reports were transformed because the performance reporting produced a number of overflows and reduced the importance of broad audiences (e.g. citizens). These overflows resulted from the central agency reformers' preoccupation with cost cutting opportunities and the reporting agencies' presumption of the reformers' real purpose. In the resulting interactions, the accountability purpose ended up being mostly reduced to disclosure of traditional input and output measures and some insignificant stories designed to avoid public criticism of the accountability reform but also to hinder others in identifying objects for cost cutting.Research limitations/implicationsTo conduct international comparative research is logistically challenging, but provides the best chances of understanding the systemic aspects of accountability reforms that contribute to the reforms' observable and perplexing outcomes. Ideally, it would be interesting to study such reforms over their full lives; however, they may be longer than the researchers' careers.Practical implicationsAccountability purposes are disturbed by classical cost cutting thinking. Thus, despite many ostensibly good ideas of creating transparency for the public, other stronger forces may severely hinder such accountability developments. Concepts of framing and overflowing may be used to better understand the outcomes of accountability innovations; this can be extended beyond the public sector.Originality/valueProvides useful information on why public sector performance reporting that emphasises external accountability may turn out differently from the official stated aims.
This paper analyzes how performance auditing affects the auditee in different and sometimes unexpected ways. On the basis of a detailed case study of the Danish Ministry of Transport's encounter with performance auditing we argue that performance audit is a practice that generates multiple effects and that some of these effects can be characterized as a reconfiguration of the organizational identity of the auditee. In this process, accountabilities are reformulated and reallocated which sometimes lead to ‘blame games’ and strong feelings of discomfort. We draw on actor‐network theory and a narrative approach to study how performance audit reports produce narratives that picture new possible identities that the auditee in question must take into consideration. We argue that auditee identities are partly shaped by relations to ‘significant others’, such as the National Audit Office, the politicians and the press who all give accounts of who the Ministry is and ought to be. Furthermore, we argue that accounting and management information systems are enrolled as important ‘nonhuman’ actors that enable the suggested identity positions.
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