Abstract

Purpose– This paper follows how a Swedish municipality builds their management control infrastructure over 25 years – from the early 1990s to the middle of the 2010s; complemented by a revisit in 2023. The analysis builds on Power’s (2015) framework on “how accounting begins.” As such, it will show the process in which objects such as quality, competence, fairness and economy (1) start their journey as abstract policy objects – promises or dreams, but also as problems – that should be achieved by the municipal organization; (2) begin to take on more concrete forms as they become elaborated, activities are orchestrated and an increasingly stable infrastructure is built around them and (3) achieve multiplicity in ways that make the daily work of practitioners highly complex, leading them to engage in strategizing. This makes accounting continue: once this long and arduous process is worked through, when the infrastructure has stabilized, and the strategizing behavior is learned, this three-step process moves much faster.

Design/methodology/approach– This study is a longitudinal case study over 25 years in one municipal organization: the city of Stockholm – capital of Sweden. We begin in 1991, which is the approximate start of a shift in Stockholm from an old public administration model (Hood, 1991) toward NPM, and we end in 2016, with a post script 2023, when this shift has proceeded into something slightly new and different. Our research engagement with the city of Stockholm has been long-standing: since the early 1990s, we have been conducting five larger research projects on different aspects of management control (for example, the introduction of competition or the decentralization reform) and we have had continuous exchange with city officials and co-workers through workshops and participative observations. For the purpose of this study, we focus on the data from the five research projects and the reading of all budget documents and annual reports from 1991 to 2016.

Findings– The findings extend the framework by Power (2015) in a way that helps us understand how accounting continues. Accounting continues for three interrelated reasons: (1) because of the foundational work that is done over a long time, and according to Power’s (2015) model, where objects such as quality, competence and economy go from existing in abstract programmatic forms to more concrete technological ones around which activities can be orchestrated and where exercises involving learning and collaboration are key. (2) because such learning and collaboration allow practitioners – professionals and accountants – to engage in strategizing the system in different ways that make it functional. Such strategizing can be argued to be part of the broader infrastructure – not only the “highways” but also the shortcuts and scenic detours are part of it. (3) because such strategizing makes top managers and politicians think that the system works in rather unproblematic ways – they never see the struggles that go on “the lower levels” of organization. The argument of his paper is that the focus on the outside world and the interest to extend the system by incorporating more and more objects in programmatic forms that we see on the political level in the third period is a sign of further  iffusion by accounting: because the system seems to work so well, it can be extended to new parts of the world. And this is how accounting continues.

Research limitations/implications– From the empirical data, we have derived three periods, which can be seen as three phases of building the infrastructure. We see these periods as struggles to gain knowledge about what the organization should provide and an ongoing engagement to build an infrastructure that would support the delivery of the identified objects quality, economy, fairness and competence. These periods could, of course, be divided in different ways. However, as we interpreted the patterns in our data, this dividing of the data seemed reasonable.

Practical implications– In the first chapter of their book, Lapsley and Miller (2024, p. 4) provide a quote from 1983 by an NPM proponent. This proponent depicted the old public administration model, which institutions like, e.g. the NHS, were built upon, as “‘a mobile’: designed to move with every breath of air, but which infact never changes its position and gives no clear indication of direction.” Exactly the same thing can be said about the NPM-related infrastructure we have analyzed. Funck and Karlsson (2023) are obviously right when they argue that proponents of post-NPM movements echo the concerns of NPM proponents “back in the days.” We add to this by arguing that NPM has become what it was supposed to replace: a directionless mobile, maintaining status quo while allowing for strategic behavior (Caffrey et al., 2019). What we learn from NPM’s early days is

that no “radical rethinking” (Parker et al., 2023) or “imaginaries” (Funck and Karlsson, 2023) can change this: what is needed, for a real paradigm shift, is the introduction of new problems and new experimentation on the practical level. What remains, both from a practical and academic point of view, would be to discuss what constitutes “enough experimentation”? What can be introduced today that is as disruptive as the introduction of, e.g. tender documents, purchaser/provider models, profit units, etc. during the implementation of NPM? These questions might have to be answered – otherwise accounting will continue to perform as is.

Originality/value– We believe a relevant contribution with the paper is the longitudinal character of the method.

The development of digital tools has provided new and easier means for organisational collaboration and communication. These new technologies potentially can bridge across organisational boundaries, enabling new forms of coordination between functions with different interests. In schools, traditionally organisations characterised by a strong divide between managerial and professional interests, technologies could break down this division by bridging between these conflicting views. Based on a study of a technology introduced in three Swedish schools, which the authors refer to as the red–green (RG) matrix, they examine the potential for technology to transform the management–professional divide. The chapter shows that despite its managerial and professional aims, the RG matrix reinforced the boundaries rather than reducing those boundaries. It certainly transformed the professional–management boundary but in unintended ways.

This study found that the problem-solving capacity of a public organization can be understood in terms of the legitimacy of the formulated problems and solutions. Increasing the problem-solving capacity depends on not only the acceptance of problems and how to solve them but also on formal structures and processes. Sensemaking and framing are important keys to unlocking how legitimacy is built, and consequently, how problem-solving capacity is built in a complex organization. We contend that although governance theory recognizes complexity through concepts such as networks and multi-levelness, empirical research tends to downplay what complexity can entail, thus limiting the theoretical development and practical usability of governance theory. Using complexity as a sensemaking framework, we analyze how the top-tier managers of a capital understand the challenges and solutions of coping with rapid growth. We argue that although complexity theory is no panacea to unlocking the difficulties of public sector challenges, it can be a valuable guide to future research on governance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further develop a conceptual framework for analysing performance management systems (PMS). The framework aims to be useful for a rich understanding of a specific organisation’s PMS. At the same time, it should preferable be simple so that it could be used even in practice. The framework adds to earlier work by Malmi and Brown (2008), Ferreira and Otley (2009), Broadbent and Laughlin (2009), Bedford and Malmi (2015) and Johanson et al. (2001).

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is theoretical but has also been applied to a Swedish municipality. The purpose of the latter was to understand if the framework is feasible so far.

Findings – The authors hold that the framework in its present form is useful to use as an analytical tool even if it needs to be subjected to further development.

Research limitations/implications – The paper addresses an issue that is continuously changing. This means that the suggested framework may suffer from theoretical weaknesses in some respects. To balance between a theoretically deep and exhaustive framework and a framework that is simple enough to use is a tricky question that needs further investigation.

Practical implications – The ambition with the framework is that it shall be useful even in practice.

Originality/value – The need for further research in the PMS area has been emphasised by the above researcher but also by, e.g., Van Helden and Reichard (2016). They hold that the authors need rich European cases to improve the understanding of how PMS works. The authors hold that the present framework has the potential to meet the demands from Van Helden and Reichard.

This paper shows how sustainable and smart strategies can be implemented in cities and how these strategies influence, and are influenced by, performance measurement systems. Drawing upon the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, the authors present the case of Gothenburg in Sweden, where they interviewed the key actors involved in a new sustainability strategy. Translating strategy into performance measurement systems requires collaboration across organizational boundaries and considerations of financial goals and social and human aspects.

Budgeting has endured changes in management ideals, because it supports an instrumental rationality in which organizations should use their own resources to produce their own results. Budgeting depends on and enforces traditional and transactional systems based on predefined entities, such as single-purpose organizations and measurable outputs. This study investigates this issue and asks what types of entities budgeting needs, and where and when these entities can be negotiated and reconstructed. This study shows that budgeting and its reinforcement of traditional and transactional systems makes it difficult to proceed towards new management ideals based on cooperation, sharing, and responsiveness.

In this chapter, the development of financial sustainability and resilience in Swedish local governments is analysed. We analyse four Swedish municipalities, where we have interviewed top managers and co-workers. As a complement, we have examined the municipalities’ strategic plans, budget documents and annual reports. We also contextualise this analysis with other findings from local government research during this time, as well as with central government initiatives. In summary, we examine why Swedish municipalities in general remained strong after the financial crisis by showing how they strengthened their anticipatory and coping capacities over time – something that, in the cases of this chapter, was achieved before the 2008/2009 crisis in response to previous crises, rather than because of it. We also show that this is not the only reason. As Swedish finances were comparatively stable, and the problems of the banking sector relatively small, the financial shocks to the municipalities could be overcome relatively easily.