Chapter 8: Trends, Patterns, And Influencing Factors: Some Reflections

The previous national chapters portray a diverse and highly complex picture of public sector management and accounting change as well as an even more diverse set of factors which might have influenced the changes or their lack. In this chapter we try to engage with this diversity and yet at the same time suggest some trends, patterns and influencing factors which might help to make sense of this complexity. Inevitably, all forms of analysis of this sort will be a simplification of the empirical detail. However, we do not seek an all-encompassing general theory at the cost of abstracting from, or assuming away, the diversity and empirical richness of the individual national chapters. Rather, we attempt to provide a type of “middle range” theory (Laughlin, 1995) of the processes at work. In our view, both a sensitising, “skeletal” framework and a richness of empirical detail (the “flesh”—continuing the “body” analogy—to complement the “skeleton”) are essential if we are to learn from the diversity of national experiences with new public financial management (NPFM) reforms. In venturing into this potential minefield, we are in the fortunate position of being able to draw upon earlier attempts to explain public sector management and accounting change, notably those by Klaus Lüder (1992; 1994) and Christopher Hood (1991; 1995). Lüder’s contingency model is an attempt to provide a framework for comparative research in public sector accounting. Hood is concerned with what he terms “new public management” (1995, p. 93), which he sees as encompassing both management and accounting change. Both authors focus on contextual factors which might lead to change or explain “variations” in the degree of change. This chapter shares their concern for context but seeks to develop further our understanding of the underlying processes that lead to change or resistance. Understanding processes, we would argue, provides a powerful way to appreciate a “middle range” theory of trends, patterns and influencing factors in processes of NPFM reform.