People at the school-organisation level and within schools (e.g., responsibility centre managers), were obliged to change their operational modes and make some efforts, real or symbolic, to monitor and reduce expenditure, and to introduce other management control mechanisms linked, inter alia, to accounting. Although the veneer of business sector structures and processes met the expectations of rational management, giving schools the outward appearance of having adopted a more formal management control and accountability than previously existed, what has emerged is evidence that “the consequences of accounting do not necessarily have a close and automatic relationship with the aims in the name of which it is introduced” (Hopwood, 1984, p.185). It was apparent, largely due to financial resource constraints, that the management control systems did not, to any significant degree, influence internal decision-making. The major portion of school expenditure was subject to incremental budgeting and, further, BoTs tended to adopt a passive rather than a proactive decision-making role.
In the normative mode, if an organisation was implement comprehensive budgeting, it needed to debate its objectives and priorities much more explicitly than in an incremental budgetary process (see, for example: Broadbent, Laughlin & Willig- Atherton, 1994; Edwards, Ezzamel, Robson & Taylor, 1996). There was in this situation little evidence of strategic planning and required budget expenditures. Although the school charter was developed in consultation with the local community and other stakeholder groups, it was apparent that in the budgeting process little cognisance was taken of the charter, within the sample of schools. Basic principles, rather than formalised and prioritised objectives, appeared to drive the financial planning process. For many schools, financial planning tended to focus on the more immediate concern of financial survival (i.e. maintaining a balanced budget or minimising deficits) rather than output budgeting for future needs. This was indicative of the budgeting process being undertaken within the “private sphere” (Broadbent et al., 1994, 本文来自辣.文~论^文·网原文请找腾讯3249.114 reduced opportunity, by external agencies, the BoTs and professionals within schools, to change the underlying values of schools.
It was apparent that accounting had came to play a role associated with the softer rationalities of economic efficiency and accountability, different rationalities from the Government’s perspective of economic efficiency. From the theoretical insights of institutional theory, and specifically, organisational response to legitimacy and change, such differences between practice and a rational-technical model of accounting are not unexpected. If, in the operational mode, the utilisation of accounting-based technologies and practices was to satisfy external demands, then the adoption of rational-technical accounting technologies and practices in the internal decision-making process need not occur, unless these are specifically required and enforced. Thus there was evidence of accounting becoming increasingly symbolic, and having ceremonial and legitimising roles (Burchell et al., 1980, p.18). This seemed to suggest that the new official structures reflected the myths of their sociopolitical environments instead of the demands made for systems of rational management in practice. The internal systems of SBFM existed mainly for external legitimacy, and largely to satisfy BoTs and Principals’ needs to discharge their statutory duties.
Although accounting has played a part in the move to school-based management, there is some doubt about whether it was very significant, other than “for purposes of external legitimation” (Markus & Pfeffer, 1983, p.209). Nevertheless, some accounting was implicated in the structures and processes that challenged the status quo from the late 1980s but, perhaps, only because it reported the flow of financial resources that affects all aspects of school operations.
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