Legitimating change in the public sector: the introduction of (rational?) accounting practices in the United Kingdom, Italy and Austria

Noel Hyndman, Mariannunziata Liguori, Renate E. Meyer, Tobias Polzer, Silvia Rota, Johann Seiwald and Ileana Steccolini

Public Management Review, 2018, vol. 20, issue 9, 1374-1399

Abstract: This paper explores the deployment of rhetorical legitimation strategies during public-sector accounting reforms by investigating how organizational actors justify related changes in the central governments of the United Kingdom (UK), Italy and Austria. The study shows that changes are largely legitimated (and rarely delegitimated) by key actors, with authorization strategies dominating. Country differences and actors’ professional backgrounds also impact upon the use of legitimation strategies, with those from an accounting background and working in the UK being more likely to justify change in terms of rationalization and normalization. Italian and Austrian actors more frequently resort to authorization strategies to explain accounting change.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2017.1383781 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpxmxx:v:20:y:2018:i:9:p:1374-1399

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpxm20

DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2017.1383781

Access Statistics for this article

Public Management Review is currently edited by Stephen P. Osborne

More articles in Public Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().