THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION IN A REFORMING AREA: A STUDY OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of budgets and accounting information in the public sector tertiary education institutions in a particular context. The focus is especially put on how accounting information is interpreted and used by key decision makers in these organisations. The research agenda is of special interest since these institutions now face large reforming initiatives. Therefore, there is a need to do empirical work in order to capture the wider social context in which higher education institutions operate and where the new-style public sector now competes to provide services (Lapsley and Pettigrew, 1994; Lawrence and Sharma, 2002; and Saravanamuthy and Tinker, 2002). Norway has until recently been a hesitant reformer, and the large changes in the management of higher education were not introduced by the Norwegian Government until 2002/2003 when some of the elements included in the Bologna declaration passed through the Parliament. These changes follow the concepts and frameworks of the New Public Management (Hood, 1995), where performance audit schemes are to be implemented, and the focus is put on output control more than the traditional input focus. This study was conducted just at the time of the introduction of these new managerial reforms in Norway. The aim was to describe the institutions as they were at the edge of large reforming processes. The paper is organised as follows: First, the theoretical framework is outlined and the main concepts are discussed. Then the organisation and management of the higher educational sector in Norway are presented. The empirical study is described, and the findings are analysed according to the analytic framework. The main findings in this study are the loose coupling between the accounting information and the professional activities, the existence of communal value bases of control and the absence of interactive control processes in the institutions. In the last part of the paper, some theoretical perspectives and implications are discussed.