TY - JOUR

T1 - Intellectual heritages of post-1990 public sector accounting research

T2 - an exploration

AU - Bruns, Hans Jürgen

AU - Christensen, Mark

AU - Pilkington, Alan

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the thoughtful and generous encouragement of this project by the Late Kerry Jacobs. The paper has also benefited from comments and critiques offered through its presentation at the 2017 16th Biennial CIGAR Conference, Porto; the 2018 Public Management Research Conference, Singapore; and, the ESSEC Business School Cross Discipline Research Seminar series. Mark Christensen also acknowledges financial support for this project from ESSEC Business School. The insightful and encouraging advice from two anonymous reviewers and AAAJ Editor Distinguished Professor Lee Parker are also gratefully acknowledged. Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the thoughtful and generous encouragement of this project by the Late Kerry Jacobs. The paper has also benefited from comments and critiques offered through its presentation at the 2017 16th Biennial CIGAR Conference, Porto; the 2018 Public Management Research Conference, Singapore; and, the ESSEC Business School Cross Discipline Research Seminar series. Mark Christensen also acknowledges financial support for this project from ESSEC Business School. The insightful and encouraging advice from two anonymous reviewers and AAAJ Editor Distinguished Professor Lee Parker are also gratefully acknowledged.

PY - 2020/11/4

Y1 - 2020/11/4

N2 - Purpose: The article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity. Design/methodology/approach: The study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective. Findings: The analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries. Research limitations/implications: Criteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed. Practical implications: A matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research. Originality/value: By extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.

AB - Purpose: The article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity. Design/methodology/approach: The study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective. Findings: The analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries. Research limitations/implications: Criteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed. Practical implications: A matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research. Originality/value: By extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.

KW - Bibliometric analysis

KW - Disciplinary branching

KW - Multi-disciplinarity

KW - New public management

KW - Public sector accounting

KW - Structural knowledge groups

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087176749&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1108/AAAJ-08-2018-3644

DO - 10.1108/AAAJ-08-2018-3644

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85087176749

VL - 33

SP - 2077

EP - 2110

JO - Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal

JF - Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal

SN - 0951-3574

IS - 8

ER -