ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on public sector organisations in the UK, which have, for many years, been subject to a wide range of accounting-driven requirements coming from a range of societal regulatory bodies. It explores the changing nature of New Public Financial Management (NPFM) and the steering mechanisms it encompasses, with particular emphasis on the UK situation, over time. Transactional inter-organisational steering mechanisms are more directional, more likely to have colonising intent and, therefore, more likely than relational inter-organisational steering mechanisms to be the subject of resistance strategies by public sector organisations. The Financial Management Initiative (FMI) in 1982 is often seen as a watershed event in the development of New Public Management (NPM) in the UK, although Zifcak traces its origins earlier, notably to the Fulton Report. Zifcak argues that Next Steps was an outgrowth of the FMI but was more robustly geared towards fundamental change.
