ABSTRACT

The UK public sector in the past 20 years has seen rapid developments in management control and changing notions of public accountability. The fact that what used to be called public administration is now more often referred to as public sector management, or even New Public Sector Management (Hood, 1991) semantically demonstrates a real shift in focus from more traditional conceptions of administration as being based on ‘probity and propriety’ to the assessment of ‘policy and performance’ (Stewart and Ranson, 1988, p. 19).