Management Accounting Change and New Public Management in Local Government: A Reassessment of Ambitions and Results — An Institutionalist Approach to Accounting Change in the Dutch Public Sector

Dutch municipalities and provinces, denoted here as local government, have seen a succession of changes in their management accounting systems and have also introduced other changes related to New Public Management (NPM) in the last twenty years. This paper examines accounting changes, such as the introduction of accrual accounting, output and outcome budgets and performance measurement, from an institutionalist point of view. The paper presents experiences of 23 politicians and professional managers with the various changes over a period of fifteen to twenty years. The interviewees, just like various researchers in the field of NPM, were critical of the accounting changes and their effects. However, several of them also made clear that, seen over the long run, the changes did have some effects that they liked and seem to be in line with the ‘ideals’ presented in NPM literature. The paper suggests that an institutionalist perspective is helpful for studying change processes in organizations and for observing factors and developments that might not be noticed when a more functional and short‐term perspective is adopted.