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This review paper explores the key challenges associated with effective inter-generational equity accounts in relation to the governance of public sector organizations and sustainable development transformations. Three different approaches to inter-generational equity accounting are evaluated and an outline for future research is provided.

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services.

The transformative potential of accounting-sustainability hybrids has been promoted and problematized in the literature. We contribute to this debate by exploring, theoretically and empirically, the role of accounting in shaping and reshaping sustainability practices. We develop a holistic framework which we use to analyse the governing and mediating roles of accounting-sustainability hybrids in the Environment Agency (of England and Wales) and West Sussex County Council. Our analysis identifies that local accounting-sustainability hybrids contribute positively to improving eco-efficiency, have some impact on eco-effectiveness, but limited bearing on social justice. Emerging assemblages of accounting-sustainability hybrids create capacity for wider sustainability transformations, particularly through their mediating roles. However, a number of factors combine to frustrate further sustainability transformations within these organisations and those they are charged with governing. These factors include the structural constraints of the accounting-sustainability hybrids, influenced by a relatively weak local sustainability programmatic and the pressing need to meet increasing service delivery expectations in a period of severe resource constraints.

Although organizations have embraced the sustainability rhetoric in their discourse and external reporting, little is known about the processes whereby management control systems contribute to a deeper integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. This paper addresses this gap and mobilizes a configuration approach to theorize the roles and uses of management control systems (MCSs) and sustainability control systems (SCSs) in the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. Building on Simons’ levers of control framework, we distinguish two possible uses of a MCS and a SCS—a diagnostic use and an interactive use—and we specify the modes of MCSs and SCSs integration. We rely on these two core dimensions to identify eight organizational configurations that reflect the various uses as well as their modes of integration of SCS and MCS. We characterize these ideal-type configurations, explain their impact on the triple bottom line, and describe which mechanisms allow organizations to move from one configuration to another. In so doing, we highlight various paths toward sustainability integration or marginalization within organizations. Finally, we explain how our framework can support future research on the role of MCS and SCSs in the integration of sustainability within strategy.

PurposeThis paper aims to set out several of the key issues and areas of the inter‐disciplinary field of climate change research based in accounting and accountability, and to introduce the papers that compose this AAAJ special issue.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides an overview of issues in the science of climate, as well as an eclectic collection of independent and inter‐disciplinary contributions to accounting for climate change. Through additional accounting analysis, and a shadow carbon account, it also illustrates how organisations and nations account for and communicate their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints and emissions behaviour.FindingsThe research shows that accounting for carbon and other GHG emissions is immensely challenging because of uncertainties in estimation methods. The research also shows the enormity of the challenge associated with reducing those emissions in the near future.Originality/valueThe paper surveys past work on a wide variety of perspectives associated with climate change science, politics and policy, as well as organisational and national emissions and accounting behaviour. It provides an overview of challenges in the area, and seeks to set an agenda for future research that remains interesting and different.

In this article, the authors examine the implementation of policy aimed to promote the role of organizational networks and distributed leadership in the establishment and consolidation of public service reform. In theory, leadership and networks should complement each other, with the less hierarchical logic of the network allowing leadership of change, distributed among network members, rather than led from a single organizational apex, to flourish. In practice, as a consequence of inherent bureaucracy, power differentials between network participants, and a strong centralized performance management policy regime, a relatively parsimonious form of distributed leadership is enacted, with the networks tending towards ‘managed partnerships’.

This paper uses a case study of an e-government partnership of ten local authorities to consider how governance structures, financial arrangements and performance management systems may promote or inhibit successful collaborative working. The case is considered within the contexts of continuing new public management reforms including the balance between formal performance measurement indicators imposed by higher authorities and the scope for dialogue in the development of performance management systems. The case supports a view that collaborative working can benefit from a governance structure supporting a consistency of objectives of the partners operating within similar political and regulatory environments. Externally imposed performance indicators are significant to the partner authorities but their influence does not exclude the possibility of more dialogue-driven performance management systems being developed within the partnership. Sustainability of the partnership is never assured and tensions develop as a result of developing priorities of individual authorities, the possibility of local government reorganisation and changing national policy initiatives.

This paper argues for research into the effectiveness of government strategies for a ‘carbon neutral public sector’. We review initiatives in three OECD countries: New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In all jurisdictions, government agencies have consistently stressed ‘leading by example’ as a rationale for adoption. ‘Direct mandate’ by the Prime Minister (NZ); ‘organic development’ from wider central government sustainability initiatives (UK); and a more ‘laissez faire’ approach by Australian Federal and State Governments, were identified as the general pathways leading to implementation. Our assessment indicates: a lack of understanding of the implementation process for carbon neutrality; a need to identify and critically examine the ‘offset threshold’ at which mitigation efforts cease and offsetting is adopted; an absence of any evaluation of the ‘leading by example’ rationale; a lack of inter-country comparisons; a gap in understanding the relationship with economic and social aspects of susta...

Over the course of the last twenty years there has been a growing academic interest in performance management, particularly in respect of the evolution of new techniques and their resulting impact. One important theoretical development has been the emergence of multidimensional performance measurement models that are potentially applicable within the public sector. Empirically, academic researchers are increasingly supporting the use of such models as a way of improving public sector management and the effectiveness of service provision (Mayston, 1985; Pollitt, 1986; Bates and Brignall, 1993; and Massey, 1999). This paper seeks to add to the literature by using both theoretical and empirical evidence to argue that CPA, the external inspection tool used by the Audit Commission to evaluate local authority performance management, is a version of the Balanced Scorecard which, when adapted for internal use, may have beneficial effects. After demonstrating the parallels between the CPA framework and Kaplan and Norton's public sector Balanced Scorecard (BSC), we use a case study of the BSC based performance management system in Hertfordshire County Council to demonstrate the empirical linkages between a local scorecard and CPA. We conclude that CPA is based upon the BSC and has the potential to serve as a springboard for the evolution of local authority performance management systems.

This study seeks to extend knowledge of care pathways through describing the conception and development of them within a children’s hospital. The care pathway was conceived by the nurse manager as a tool to improve care to children with minor injuries, and to their families. More specifically, it was developed as a tool to multi‐skill experienced nurses in a children’s emergency department to assess and treat children with minor injuries. It is argued that the conception of care pathways aligned with the purposes of the manager, and integrated rather than reflected national NHS policies. Prospective managers are not confined to developing care pathways as prescribed; the care pathway tool may be used for varying management initiatives.

This article considers the role of information and trust in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) ‘Pathfinder’ schemes in the social housing sector in England. It uses the work of Tomkins (2001) and a series of interviews with local authority PFI project managers to provide a critique of the structure of the pathfinder process. The authors conclude that the pathfinder process cannot provide information about willingness to trust and they suggest that this may be one of the reasons for the delay in the contractual signing of the first wave of these schemes.

Research and learning about sustainability accounting is very often focused on for-profi t, business organizations. This makes sense when we consider the historic role of corporations in generating wealth and their sometimes contentious impacts on environment and society. In contrast, this chapter argues that great potential in the public sector for advances in sustainability accounting and accountability is too often overlooked. The sheer scale and operational impacts of the public sector on our economy, environment and communities indicate an important agenda, in spite of the pressures on many public sector organizations (PSOs) to make effi ciency gains and/or cut services as governments reduce public spending in response to the recent global fi nancial crisis. For example, in New Zealand (NZ):The combined central and local government sectors consume approximately one fi fth of GDP. Collectively, central government is the country’s biggest employer, largest landowner, and consumes signifi cant proportions of resources. It has been estimated … that central government (including the police, defence force, health, universities, etc.) and local government consume some 2.6 billion KWh of energy per annum and release 0.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents per annum. 1,2In order to provide a richer context, measures on the public sector in the United Kingdom (UK) and NZ are provided in Table 11.1 .

It is the belief of the Directors of Commercial Group, the UK's largest independently owned business services company, that leaders can exercise choice and, in so doing, shape the identity of an or...

This paper reviews the promotion of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in the social housing sector in England to illustrate that public policy transfer to new sectors of the public services may be problematic. The first 'PFI pathfinder' schemes in housing were initiated in 1999, but most of these schemes were still under procurement in 2004. Interviews with local authority PFI project managers are used to identify some of the causes of delay in the completion of these schemes and PFI literature from other sectors is used to examine the transferability issues. The transferability of public policy is shown to be influenced by sector-specific factors and also by the structural features of PFI procurement.