Securing Institutional Legitimacy or Organisational Effectiveness? A Case Examining the Impact of Public Sector Reform Initiatives in an Australian Local Authority

Abstract

The article considers the impact of a major initiative (the National Competition Policy) and pieces of legislation (the Local Government Act and the Local Government Finance Standards) on the internal practices of a large Australian local authority. A theoretical framework is developed using new public management (NPM) and neo-institutional theory literatures to explain the findings. A case study approach was applied to collect the data for the research. The findings reveal that the National Competition Policy 1993, the Local Governemtn Act 1993 and the Local Government Finance Standards 1994 mainly have brought about significant changes to the organisation's internal management control processes such as financial reporting, budgeting and performance appraisal. These changes brought in appeared to be coincidentally similar to NPM ideals. Furthermore, senior managers (such as the chief executive and divisional heads) played a major role in implementing new accounting technologies (the activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard type performance measurement system). These exploratory findings will have some value to both public sector managers and policy makers.Public sector reform, New public management, Local government; Public sector accounting, Australia