BENCHMARKING
AND THE ROLES OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
This paper considers management accounting in the public
sector “at the margins” (Miller, 1998). The illustrative example is
benchmarking, a burgeoning practice in the UK public sector, elements of which
derive from familiar calculative processes.
Benchmarking is claimed to be locatable within the domain of management
accounting (Chenall and Langfield-Smith, 1998; Elnathan et al. 1996; Holloway
et al. 1999). Such claims appeal to the
“imperatives of accounting” (Burchell, 1980, p.9); benchmarking is interpreted
as an extension of the accounting ‘craft’. Management accounting is undergoing
a period of reflexive self-doubt (Johnson and Kaplan, 1987), driving new
developments (not always new ideas) in an effort to maintain territory (Miller, 1998). Pragmatically motivated, management
accounting seeks legitimation within its broad community and within itself.
Such claims are made notwithstanding the
recognition that benchmarking in the public sector operates as a form of
political and organisational control (Burchell et al., 1980). Emerging substantive theories of
benchmarking suggest that, used as a management tool, benchmarking invariably
becomes conflated with the predilection for performance monitoring in the
public sector (Ball et al. 2000). Benchmarking
is frequently defensive (Bowerman et al., forthcoming). Guthrie et al. (1999) simply add it to a constellation of
calculative processes which operate as part of a wider ‘new public management’
agenda. Thus, benchmarking is serving
at least two roles in management accounting in the public sector. Yet issues of what benchmarking is, whether its (claimed) functions and rationales
represent anything new, and where it is appropriately located as a practice are
unresolved.
Further
roles for benchmarking in management accounting are discerned. It has a role in justifying and legitimising
actions – it has a comfort factor. Permitting
some comfort for those with a vested interest in the ‘accounting mission’
(Burchell et al., 1980), benchmarking has a distinctly rational flavour,
aligning it, potentially, with a new managerial discourse of ‘flexible
rationalism’ (Abrahamson, 1997). In
such a role, benchmarking might link management accounting to a cluster of
managerial innovations, and ultimately to a new wave of technological
innovations. This rhetoric might
legitimate elements of political discourse.