For more than thirty years public management and accounting theories and practice have been strongly influenced by the search for efficiency, heralded by the New Public Management and similar public sector modernization movements. Public administrations have focused their attention on economy, efficiency and effectiveness, looking for cost containment, matching resources and goals, output maximization or input minimization. Even the wave of development of performance measurement and management tools have mainly emphasized the importance of short-term efficiency, often without worrying too much about their ability to ensure public administrations’ responsiveness in the face of unexpected events and crises
