This article contributes to the literature on public sector reforms by proposing textual analysis as a useful research strategy to explore how reform archetypes and related ideas are deployed in the ...parliamentary debate and regulations advancing reforms. Public Administration (PA), New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (GOV) can be depicted as three different archetypes providing characteristic administrative ideas and concepts and related tools and practices, which lead reforms. We use textual analysis to look into more than 20 years of Italian central government accounting reforms and investigate how the three administrative archetypes have evolved, intertwined and replaced each other. Textual analysis proves a useful tool through which to investigate reform processes and allows us to show that in neo-Weberian countries, such as Italy, NPM and GOV, far from being revolutionary paradigms, may represent fashionable trends that have not left significant traces in the practice and rhetoric of reforms.
Points for practitioners
In contexts based on civil law traditions, the introduction of new reforms appears to be slow and difficult, and is often more successful when it respects extant PA systems, which remain well rooted in the public sector. Decision-makers may want to keep this into consideration when proposing or implementing new changes. From an organizational point of view, this underlines the importance of reassuring civil servants and politicians of the consistency of the ‘new’ proposed models with those they have been accustomed to, and of using the traditional language of PA to explain and introduce new ideas and tools and make them more acceptable. However, this has to be balanced by an actual change in the old systems and routines, using continuity to bring about change and avoiding the re-enactment of merely formalistic approaches.
: NPM has been generally regarded as an administrative reform for which resilience and consequences have been mainly investigated at a country level. Although accounting played a central role in NPM ...reforms over the last decades, how accounting change actually took place, and through what organizational dynamics, has been under‐investigated. This paper adopts a new perspective, archetype theory, and looks into how intra‐organizational dynamics (values, interests, power, capabilities) combine with reform processes to influence the outcome of accounting change. Evidence from Italian (disruptive process) and Canadian (sedimented process) municipalities shows that radical change is associated with specific configurations of intra‐organizational dynamics.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on strategies and “spoken discourses” used to construct legitimation around change at the individual level. Comparing changes in financial accounting, ...budgeting and performance management at two government levels (Westminster and Scotland), it explores the use of legitimation strategies in the implementation of accounting change and its perceived outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on semi-structured interviews, six legitimation/delegitimation strategies are used to code the transcribed data. Patterns with the perceived outcomes of change are explored.
Findings
Changes introduced to enhance “rational” decision making are often received as pushed by some source of authority. Regardless of the interviewees’ background and level, the results suggest that for radical accounting change to embed, it is necessary for it to be perceived as rational, rather than merely driven by authorisation-based pressures. Conversely, incremental change is associated with modest legitimation via rationalisation and delegitimation based on pathos and rationalisation.
Research limitations/implications
The study deals with actors’ legitimation strategies and perceptions of change. These may not correspond to actual substantial change. Taken-for-granted ideas often remain “under the radar”, therefore care must be taken in interpreting the results. The focus of the empirical study is on the UK, therefore conclusions are restricted to this context.
Originality/value
Existing studies struggle to explain organisations’ heterogeneity and practice variation; this study sheds light on how individual legitimation, which may lead to different organisational results, occurs. Differences in how actors interpret changes may be based on their position (central vs devolved administration) and on their ownership of the changes.
Purpose There has been limited research on why football clubs contribute to charity. This paper examines how football clubs and their charitable conduits report information when discussing their ...connectedness. In addition, it explores reasons why, and the extent to which, football clubs support altruism via such charitable vehicles. Design/methodology/approach Case studies of four major football teams (Manchester City/Manchester United in England and AC Milan/Inter Milan in Italy) are discussed, with formal reports of the clubs and their associated charitable conduits being analysed. Findings Boundaries between the clubs and their charitable conduits are frequently blurred. Evidence suggests that acknowledging the co-existence of different factors may help to understand what is reported by these organisations and address some of the caveats in terms of autonomy and probity of their activities and reporting practices. Research limitations/implications The research uses case studies of four major ‘powerhouses’ of the game and their associated charitable spinoffs. While this is innovative and novel, expanding the research to investigate more clubs and their charitable endeavours would allow greater generalisations. Practical implications The study provides material that can be used to reflect on the very topical subject of ‘sportswashing’. This has the potential to input to deliberations relating to the future governance of the game. Originality/value The paper explores relationships between businesses and charities/nonprofits in a sector so far little investigated from a charitable accountability perspective. It suggests that motives for engaging in charitable activity and highlighting such engagement may extend beyond normal altruism or warm-glow emotions.
Although legitimacy is critical when attempting to introduce new practices in the nonprofit charity sector, little is known about individual processes of legitimation within such organizations, and ...how legitimacy emerges and interacts with perceived external pressures. This article investigates how charity organizational actors (using rhetorical arguments) linguistically legitimate/delegitimate new practices as a means of facilitating internal and external legitimacy. The study explores, as an example of organizational change in its early stages, newly-introduced accountability and reporting practices emanating from the current Charity Statement of Recommended Practice in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. The findings show that external regulative and cognitive pressures can be assessed and legitimated as something rational and reasonable in cases where organizational actors perceive the change as “exploitable.” Moreover, they provide evidence of how different interpretations can foster implementation and action (or trigger inaction) and affect the introduction of business-like practices in the nonprofit sector.
Purpose
This paper explores how performance-management systems are understood and framed through the use of rhetoric and language within universities, where not-for-profit, charitable goals are (or ...should be) central. It addresses the issues of: how strategic rhetorical frames are used by university actors; and how these relate to actors' primary frames and reactions to performance-management practices. The study focuses on the case of UK universities, taking into consideration both old and newer institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a case-study approach, relying on 28 interviews with key-academic actors involved in the design and implementation of university performance-management systems in four UK universities.
Findings
The research highlights the important effect of primary frames over the strategic frames that are mobilised to achieve desired outcomes or individual advantage. In Business disciplines, the consistency between actors' primary frames and managerial and performance-management tools introduced into universities makes such disciplines a fertile ground for these practices to be embraced. This is not the case with Natural Sciences.
Practical implications
While framing a new practice consistently with existing/prevailing primary frames may be a winning strategy in the short term, in the long term, those tasked with introducing new practices should consider that the prevalence of a certain view of the world has the potential to hamper innovation and learning.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to advance our understanding of the interaction between individual primary and strategic frames, as well as academic staff's reactions and interpretations of performance-management practices in universities as knowledge-intensive, not-for-profit organisations.
How single organizations manage the process of change and why only some of them are able to actually reach radical change are central questions in today’s theoretical debate. The role played by the ...process of change and its dimensions (namely, pace, sequence and linearity), however, has been poorly investigated. Drawing on archetype theory, this paper explores: (i) whether a specific pace of radical change exists; (ii) whether different outcomes of change are characterized by different sequences of change in key-structures and systems (iii) how the three dimensions of the process of change possibly interact. As an example of organizational change the study takes into consideration processes of accounting change in three departments of two Canadian and two Italian municipalities. The results suggest the supremacy of the sequence of implemented changes over the other two dimensions of the process in order to achieve a radical outcome of change.
Language can play an essential role in shaping how accounting reforms and the information around them are communicated and legitimated. However, scant consideration has been given to study what ...happens when politicians are the decision makers of accounting changes. This paper explores the political use of language by investigating how the Members of Parliament discuss about public-sector accounting reforms, and deploy different rhetorical strategies to legitimate or de-legitimate them. Through the analysis of Italian parliamentary debates in the 1990s and 2000s, this study highlights how the use of language can facilitate the exercise of power by deploying arguments rhetorically dominated by authorisation and moralisation strategies. The rhetorical arguments brought forward allow politicians to disguise their loss of power in favour of the European Union, depicting their actions and proposals as necessary and/or in favour of the public interest.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on strategies and “spoken discourses” used to construct legitimation around change at the individual level. Comparing changes in financial accounting, ...budgeting and performance management at two government levels (Westminster and Scotland), it explores the use of legitimation strategies in the implementation of accounting change and its perceived outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on semi-structured interviews, six legitimation/delegitimation strategies are used to code the transcribed data. Patterns with the perceived outcomes of change are explored.
Findings
Changes introduced to enhance “rational” decision making are often received as pushed by some source of authority. Regardless of the interviewees’ background and level, the results suggest that for radical accounting change to embed, it is necessary for it to be perceived as rational, rather than merely driven by authorisation-based pressures. Conversely, incremental change is associated with modest legitimation via rationalisation and delegitimation based on pathos and rationalisation.
Research limitations/implications
The study deals with actors’ legitimation strategies and perceptions of change. These may not correspond to actual substantial change. Taken-for-granted ideas often remain “under the radar”, therefore care must be taken in interpreting the results. The focus of the empirical study is on the UK, therefore conclusions are restricted to this context.
Originality/value
Existing studies struggle to explain organisations’ heterogeneity and practice variation; this study sheds light on how individual legitimation, which may lead to different organisational results, occurs. Differences in how actors interpret changes may be based on their position (central vs devolved administration) and on their ownership of the changes.
Purpose - The issue of accounting change, why and how accounting evolves through time and within specific organisational settings, has been addressed by an important body of literature. This paper ...aims to explain why, in processes of accounting change, organisations confronting similar environmental pressures show different outcomes of change.Design methodology approach - Drawing on archetype theory, the paper analyses the case of two Italian local governments. Comparative case studies were carried out, reconstructing a period of 15 years.Findings - Although confronted with similar environmental pressures, the two cases show two different patterns of accounting change, where only one case is able to finally reach radical change. Accounting change can be prompted by external stimuli, but, once the change is prompted, the outcomes of the change are explained by the dynamics of intra-organisational conditions.Originality value - The study contributes to accounting change literature by adopting an approach (i.e. archetype theory) that overcomes some of the limitations of previous studies in explaining variations in organisational change. Through this, the authors are able to explain different outcomes and paces of accounting change and point out the intra-organisational factors also affecting them in the presence of similar environmental pressures. A specification of the theoretical framework in a particular setting is also provided.
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