Recent UK Central Government Accounting Reforms: Claimed Benefits and Experienced Outcomes

Focusing on the four most recent and highly publicized accounting reforms in UK central government, and utilizing discourse analysis of official publications, together with semi-structured interviews, this paper examines the basis on which these four reforms were introduced, the extent to which they are considered appropriate, and the reasons for the persistence of new public management (NPM)-inspired accounting reforms in UK central government. The findings indicate that each was promoted in a similar manner despite limited post-implementation evidence that the supposed benefits of preceding reforms had not been realized to the extent originally suggested. Given NPM's continued acceptance, these findings have international significance.