Accounting & NPM in UK Local Government - contributions towards accountability

Despite its size and economic importance, accounting in UK local government is still relatively under-researched. Two important developments which have emerged in recent years across the whole public sector are governance and New Public Management. It is timely to study the contribution which local government accounting makes in this changing context. Governance has proved a particularly contentious concept to define. This study has attempted to understand governance from the participants’ perspective and consequently a grounded theory methodology has been used. The empirical research comprised four UK local authority case studies over a twelve month period. The grounded theory developed makes two important contributions to our knowledge of accounting and NPM in relation to governance and accountability in local government. These are the relative importance of accountability rather than governance per se to participants, and the more significant contribution to accountability made by budgeting practices rather than NPM practices such as performance indicators, contracting out of services and Best Value studies. The reasons for these findings are explored and theorised in the paper, using Bourdieu's concept of habitus