Management Control Under Post-NPM: Replacing Performance Evaluation With Trust-Based Management

Abstract

This article focuses on explaining management control under post-new public management (NPM). Drawing on the lessons from a case study, the article aims to advance the discussion of what post-NPM, as a new governance innovation, is and what problems practitioners encounter when they try to engage in post-NPM–oriented governance. The study reports the transformation of both management and control at the Swedish Public Employment Service Agency (PES) with the help of the framework of enabling and coercive control. The case study demonstrates how practitioners encountered problems when trying to balance enabling practices with hierarchical accountability. In the case of PES, the study shows how the organization failed to find this balance and how the problem with reduced hierarchical accountability gradually shifted the calculative practices and slowly reimposed performance measures, result-orientation, and hierarchical control. The article contributes to the contemporary public sector accounting discussion on how and to what extent we can move beyond NPM, both empirically by following a public organization's attempt to engage with post-NPM, and theoretically by theorizing post-NPM as a new government innovation and placing greater emphasis on how accounting practices need to adapt to a post-NPM–oriented governance.