Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303

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Accounting, Organizations and Society

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The logics of budgeting: Theorization and practice variation

in the educational field q
Mahmoud Ezzamel a,b, Keith Robson a,⇑, Pam Stapleton c,1
a
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 9EU, UK
b
IE Business School, Pinar 15-1B, 28006 Madrid, Spain
c
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester M15 6PB, UK

a b s t r a c t

This paper examines the introduction of budgeting practices in situations where institu-
tional logics are competing. The empirical cases, studied in two phases in the 1990s and
in 2011, explore tensions that emerged between the new business logic, prevailing profes-
sional logic, and governance logic in the education field. We analyze the theorization of
budgeting practices and their performative effect on cognition in organizations. We argue
that competing logics in a field impact upon budgeting practices and theorization of the
meanings attributed to budgetary outcomes. Our study contributes to the understanding
of accounting in processes of institutional change, and the further development of neo-
institutionalist theory by attending to the sources of practice variation and their relation-
ship to competing logics. We advance four tentative theoretical propositions concerning
the impact of multiple logics upon budgetary practices.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

‘‘In general, we need more studies that connect institu-

q
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the School of
Management, University of Innsbruck, November 2007, the Management
Accounting as Social and Organizational Practice Workshop, HEC Paris,
April, 2008, the Anderson School of Management, University of New
Mexico, May 2008, and the EIASM New Directions In Management
Accounting: Innovations In Practice And Research Conference, Brussels 15–
17 December 2008. Thanks to participants at those presentations, and to
Albrecht Becker, Phil Bougen, Chris Chapman, David Cooper, Fredrik
Ellbring, Royston Greenwood, Michael Habersam, Silvia Jordan, Michael
Lounsbury, Karen Patterson, Alistair Preston, Bob Scapens, Joni Young, and
two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and criti-
cisms. This paper was an outcome of two studies on local management of
schools funded by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
(CIMA). We acknowledge this financial support and also the invaluable
help we received from our informants in three English Local Education
Authorities.
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0) 29 20875514; fax: +44 (0) 29
20874419.
E-mail addresses: ezzamel@cf.ac.uk (M. Ezzamel), RobsonK@cf.ac.uk
(K. Robson), pam.stapleton@mbs.ac.uk (P. Stapleton).
1
Tel.: +44 (0) 161 306 3454; fax: +44 (0) 161 275 4023.
tional change to variation in the content of organiza-
tional practices.’’ (Lounsbury, 2001, p. 53)
Many writers working with neo-institutionalist theory
(NIT) have bemoaned the lack of research upon organiza-
tional micro-practices as counterweight to the focus upon
cognitive, normative and regulative macro-structures
(Hirsch, 1997; Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997; Lawrence,
Suddaby, & Leca, 2009a; Leblibici, Salancik, Gopay, & King,
1991; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Reay, Golden-Biddle, &
GermAnn, 2006; Schatzki, 2001; Zucker, 1991). This
micro–macro dualism could be criticized for overlooking
the importance of the duality of structure (Giddens,
1984), but nonetheless the gap identified in research
motivated by NIT is important in the sense that often the
micro-foundations of institutional theory are rarely expli-
cit (Lawrence & Roy Suddaby, 2006; Powell, 2008, p. 276)
and issues of agency occluded (Battilana, 2006; Battilana
& D’Aunno, 2009; Cooper, Ezzamel, & Willmott, 2008;

0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2012.03.005
282 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Seo & Creed, 2002;
Thornton & Ocasio, 2008, p. 103). Moreover, a recent strand
of research has begun to question the focus of much empir-
ical research in NIT upon the ‘diffusion’ of unitary practice
throughout an organizational field with the result that
variations in organizational practice have been marginal-
ized or even assumed away (Kraatz & Zajac, 1996;
Lounsbury, 2001; Strang & Meyer, 1993; Westphal, Gulati,
& Shortell, 1997). This research has drawn attention to the
importance of understanding the reasons for variation in
organizational practices and calls for linking institutional
change to such variation (Lounsbury, 2001, 2007;
Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007; Orlikowski, 2000). Particu-
larly given the general interest in theorizing accounting
as practice (Ahrens & Chapman, 2007; Ezzamel & Hoskin,
2002), there is a paucity of research of this type in the
organizational NIT, and even more so in the accounting lit-
erature informed by NIT (Lounsbury, 2008).
In this paper, we address the first research lacunae by
focusing upon micro practices of institutional change
(Powell, 2008) and accounting at a processual level in the
context of broader shifting institutional logics (Lounsbury,
2007; Reay & (Bob) Hinings, 2005; Reay & Hinings, 2009;
Thornton & Ocasio, 1999, 2008). We are concerned to ex-
plore tensions, and consequences of those tensions, be-
tween logics competing in the field of education. This is
in the context of the entry of a new and dominant business
logic introduced into schools in England and Wales in the
1990s. We explore the enactment of regulatory reforms,
at the level of practice, on institutional change in the orga-
nizational field of primary and secondary education in the
UK; specifically, the emergence of new budgeting practices
that colonized schools and occasioned a process of theori-
zation, diffusion and variation in organizational practices.
Since 1991 education organizations in the UK have adapted
to new templates of governance and ‘management’
(Greenwood & Bob Hinings, 1996, p. 1022) in response, lar-
gely, to governmental regulations. Many of the recent leg-
islative reforms to the funding and management of schools
have imposed a new set of budgeting techniques, dis-
courses and ideals on institutional organizations that had
not seemed at ease with prevailing professional logic, that
is, with existing values, assumptions and identities associ-
ated with the teaching profession. A business logic of edu-
cation reform has generated new accounting technologies
and practices in schools and municipal authorities with
their own professional logics of practice (Edwards et al.,
1998; Gunter & Forrester, 2010).
The paper is also concerned with the second lacunae in
institutional studies of accounting. As accounting tech-
niques have entered more fully the management of educa-
tional organizations, our research provided the
opportunity to study variation in organizational practices
via our focus upon instances of theorization, performance
and diffusion, and connecting institutional change to logics
in the educational field. This theme (Barley & Tolbert,
1997; Greenwood & Hinings, 1996; Leblibici et al., 1991;
Munir, 2005) has received even less attention in account-
ing research on institutional change (Lounsbury, 2008). In
accounting, researchers have explored how actors invent
and articulate institutionalized expectations concerning
organizational strategies and procedures of budgetary
practices, emphasizing that the process of institutionaliza-
tion is infused with power and interest within the organi-
zation and its field (Abernathy & Chua, 1996; Covaleski &
Dirsmith, 1988; Covaleski, Dirsmith, & Michelman, 1993;
Oakes, Townley, & Cooper, 1998). Studies of the isomorphic
pressures on financial reporting and management control
practices have been conducted (Mezias, 1990), emphasiz-
ing the importance of institutions and cross-national pres-
sures to the understanding of accounting growth and
regulation (Covaleski, Dirsmith, & Rittenberg, 2003; Hunt
& Hogler, 1993). Others have considered the role of the
state and the importance of legitimacy in understanding
the rise and functioning of accounting and the accounting
profession (Carruthers, 1995). Finally studies have shown
some of the instability of organizational field (Vamosi,
2000), the role of fashions and fads (Carmona & Gutiérrez,
2003; cf. Abrahamson, 1991), and heterogeneous re-
sponses by organizations to institutional pressures
(Brignall & Modell, 2000; Ezzamel, Robson, Stapleton, &
McLean, 2007; Modell, 2001).
Much, though not all, of the above research has been
marked by a focus upon such issues as convergence and
stability (Lounsbury, 2007, 2008). Recent interest in ‘man-
agement accounting change’ has promised a more dynamic
frame of reference, though up till now that model of
change has not been clearly defined (Burns & Scapens,
2000). However, with intellectual support to the endeavor
of understanding ‘management accounting change’ our
study draws more readily upon developments in the neo-
institutional frame of reference and the impact of a new
institutional logic upon an organizational field; institu-
tional change in the field of education. In so doing we seek
to link new field-level regulations and their cultural logics
to the theorization and enactment of new organizational
practices (Oakes et al., 1998), and their intertwining with
existing logics and institutions (Greenwood, Suddaby, &
Bob Hinings, 2002; Jepperson, 1991; Powell, 2008).
The research site of the study focuses upon the inter-
vention and development of accounting practices that
accompanied the Local Management of Schools initiative
(henceforth LMS), and in the process examine practice
variations in and unanticipated consequences of institu-
tional change, (Greenwood et al., 2002). We explore the
impact of new accounting practices on actors’ cognition
and how specific actions, associated discourses and effects
emerge in organizational arenas with previously well-de-
fined normative (professional) institutional logics as a re-
sult of the introduction of new institutional (business)
logics relayed by accounting technologies. We note how,
in the accounting process of rendering activities visible
and thus ‘thinkable’, i.e. influencing cognition, those prac-
tices stimulate new actions and new problems of the per-
formative roles of accounting technologies.
The 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA henceforth) and
the associated Local Management of Schools initiative were
the primary instruments (‘precipitating jolts’, Meyer, 1982)
in the ‘new accounting’ for educational organizations,
though these regulations were just one aspect of a central-
izing and marketizing proclivity of the UK Conservative
governments during the 1980s and 1990s (Edwards,
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Ezzamel, & Robson, 1999). The 1988 ERA is the most com-
prehensive example of education reform through the intro-
duction of accounting and management techniques and
practices. The ensemble of administrative changes intro-
duced by the LMS and the 1988 ERA clearly reflected the
changing environment of schools. While these in turn can
be analyzed as cultural and ideological changes in the
school environment (Edwards et al., 1999), in this paper
we consider the way in which the changes in the environ-
ment of schools diffused into and interacted with the extant
logics of practice in schools in the practices of budgeting.
The paper is organized as follows. The next section of-
fers an overview of the connection between institutional
logics and institutional change, emphasizing in particular
theorizing, performance and cognition as key concepts.
These constructs form the core concepts of our examina-
tion of the impact of accounting in the UK educational sys-
tem. This is followed by a description of the research sites
and methods. The case study section examines the institu-
tional processes that operated upon the field of education
in the UK during the 1990s, focusing in particular upon
theorization and diffusion. To explore accounting diffusion,
logics and practice variation, we examine two parallel as-
pects of budget calculation: the ‘new’ problem of budget-
ary shortfalls (over-spends) associated with the
budget allocation and school staff expenditures, and the
accumulation by schools of seemingly ‘excessive’ levels of
budget under-spends (surpluses or ‘carry forwards’). Our
research questions how it is that budgetary practices can
give rise to these variations and the role of competing
institutional logics in these variations. Our concern is to
explore how fields with multiple logics enable institutional
change. How do actors accommodate new logics and prac-
tices when their field has hitherto been structured by older
logics? What roles do budgeting practices play in facilitat-
ing change? In the final section we comment on the tenu-
ous nature of re-institutionalization and the processes
through which organizational actors alter their institutions
and practices (Ezzamel, 1994; Jepperson, 1991; Morgan
and Willmott, 1995). We draw out four research proposi-
tions from our study as the focus for future work in the
area.
Conceptualizing institutional change: practice variation,
logics and theorizing
Institutional theory and the problem of institutional
change have formed a complex relationship. As Dacin,
Goodstein, and Richard Scott (2002, p. 45) have noted:
‘‘Institutional theory has often been criticized as being
largely used to explain both the persistence of and the
homogeneity of phenomena’’,
yet, in their view:
‘‘. . .this focus did little to tap the full potential or power
of institutional theory’’.
Indeed, we agree that there are no particular reasons to
assume that neo-institutional theory has no place in the
analysis of changing practices:
283
‘‘Institutional theory neither denies nor is inconsistent
with change. On the contrary, many institutional
accounts are about isomorphic convergence, which
implies movement from one position to another.’’
(Greenwood et al., 2002, p. 59).
To address these problems, neo-institutional theory has
in the recent past begun to attend more closely to mecha-
nisms, processes and phases of institutional change (Barley
& Tolbert, 1997; Dacin et al., 2002; Greenwood & Hinings,
1996; Greenwood et al., 2002; Leblibici et al., 1991; Oliver,
1992; Parush, 2009; Scott, 2001; Scott, Rueff, Mendel, &
Garonna, 2000; Zilber, 2002, 2008). This attention has in
turn promoted a closer attention to the development of
the everyday practices that establish, sustain or disrupt
institutions, the ‘micro-foundations of institutional theory’
(Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Powell, 2008). For while, as
Dacin et al. (2002) and Greenwood et al. (2002) acknowl-
edge, isomorphism implied one kind of change progres-
sion, as Munir (2005, p. 93) argues:
‘‘It is with non-isomorphic change, however, that insti-
tutional theorists have traditionally run into problems.
(Leblibici et al., 1991; Scott, 1987).’’
Yet examples of the analysis of practice variation exist.
As Ansari, Fiss, and Zajac (2010, p. 71) note, several studies
have explored how changes in the implementation process
may follow different points in the diffusion process. Indeed
since Tolbert and Zucker (1983) first suggested that insti-
tutional forces will overcome technical requirements lead-
ing to convergence over time, more studies have emerged
both to record and conceptualize practice divergence and
variation. Kraatz and Zajac (1996) highlighted the phases
of local divergence that can occur in the diffusion of orga-
nizational innovations. Westphal et al. (1997) have showed
how variation in a practice can be shaped by the stage of
adoption. Early adopters of TQM showed more willingness
to customize their TQM practices in pursuit of technical
gains, than later adopters, who displayed greater concern
to correspond to norms of ‘quality practice’ in their field.
Weber, Davis, and Lounsbury (2009) have revealed how
Stock Exchange practices (their ‘vibrancy’) were influenced
by the coercive or the mimetic origins of the exchange.
Institutional logics
One approach to conceptualizing institutional change
and practice variation is through the notion of institutional
logics (Friedland & Alford, 1991). A key assumption of insti-
tutional logics is that ‘‘interests, identities, values and
assumptions of individuals and organizations are embed-
ded within prevailing institutional logics’’, leading to what
has been referred to as problems of embedded agency
(Thornton, 2008, p. 103; see also Battilana, 2006; Battilana
& D’Aunno, 2009; Cooper et al., 2008; Garud et al., 2007;
Seo & Creed, 2002). An institutional logics approach aims
articulate the link between the notion of broader institu-
tional orders with issues of individual choices, theorization
and sense of self (identity). The concept of institutional
logics is a way of understanding how actors’ selections
are conditioned by specific frames of reference that inform
284 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
the sensemaking, the vocabulary of motivation and the
identities that actors bring to situations. A logic is under-
stood to consist of linked material (practices) and symbolic
(meanings) elements that work together to constitute a
particular type of institutional order. Society is conceived
of as arrays or systems of institutional logics that shift,
compete and interact. However, what is perhaps most sali-
ent to our study is the value an institutional logics frame
brings to understanding how institutional change is
accomplished by individuals who contrast, switch or com-
bine categories from different logics in a specific field. In
this way our intention is to further an understanding of
the mechanisms by which logics and budgeting practices
work through individual actions to achieve, gradually and
even painstakingly, institutional changes and variations.
The issue of variation is especially pertinent where non-
isomorphic change may occur in respect of one set of insti-
tutional logics (the cultural symbols and material practices
that shape decision making and provide meaning to actors’
social reality in a field) being challenged by another. As
Reay and Hinings note:
‘‘All organizational fields consist of competing institu-
tional logics (Hinings, Greenwood, Reay, & Suddaby,
2004) that are resolved at least temporarily.’’ (2005, p.
354).
As new logics dominate a field, organizations and actors
accommodate or adjust practices (and accompanying
norms) as the other technologies and practices associated
with the new logic are introduced (Kitchener, 2002; Reay
& Hinings, 2005; Thornton & Ocasio, 1999, 2007), and
rivalries may occur (Thornton, 2004).
Lounsbury (2001) attends specifically to the links be-
tween practice variation and conflicting logics. In a study
of the appointment of college and university recycling
staff, Lounsbury (2001, p. 30) indicates how ‘‘heterogeneity
in organizational practices is institutionally shaped’’, as
differences in institutional processes impact diffusion,
resulting in variation in organizational adoption of prac-
tices. Institutional processes are occasioned by broad-field
level actors such as government agencies, in our case the
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE hence-
forth) and LEAs, trade associations, and social movement
organizations. Marquis and Lounsbury (2007), and Louns-
bury (2007) link change processes to the co-existence of
competing logics in a field. Lounsbury (2007) revealed
how organizations followed diverse investment ‘trust’ log-
ics that dominated the field at different points in time, in
different geographical locations (New York and Boston) of
US mutual fund banking. As products for investment trust
markets developed, Lounsbury shows how:
‘‘the spread of a new practice is shaped by competing
logics that generate variation in organizational adop-
tion, behaviour and practice’’ (Lounsbury, 2007, p. 290).
This, we suggest, can be the source of variation as orga-
nizational actors engage or resist new practices, discover
anomalies or puzzles in the practice, problematize these
anomalies and develop different answers to them by inter-
preting and theorizing them (Powell, 2008, p. 277; Ruef &
Scott, 1998; Scott et al., 2000). In this way the practices
that emerge in a complex field are not mere reflections of
individual institutional logics.
Although studies of institutional change have shown
how new logics can assume dominance, at the micro-level
of practice there are relatively few studies that show how
transition is followed where rivalries between logics per-
sist. Do competing logics have any role in the emergence
and prevalence of practice variations? This we see as one
motivation for our study. In our study, we see how the
management of activities through budgeting and the allo-
cation of resources introduced practices that became open
to rivalries between the logics of business, teaching profes-
sionals and local authority administrators.
Theorizing new logics and interpreting new practices
Reay and Hinings (2005) found persisting rivalries
14 years after the introduction of business logic into the
health care field in Alberta. In a later study Reay and Hin-
ings (2009) posited mechanisms by which the field man-
aged the co-existence of rivalries between physicians and
healthcare managers. Other micro-level studies have con-
tinued to demonstrate the persistence of older logics
(Oakes et al., 1998; Dunn & Jones, 2010; Townley, 2002).
Within an institutional logics approach Greenwood
et al. (2002) highlight the role of theorizing in change pro-
cesses.2 Theorization has been defined as:
‘‘the specification of the failings of existing norms and
practices and the justification of new norms and prac-
tices in terms of moral or pragmatic considerations.’’
(Dacin et al., 2002, p. 48).
Our interest is to explore how new logics interact with
the existing logics in constructing, theorizing and inter-
preting new practices within an organizational field.
Rather than focus on the antecedents of institutional
change (cf. Munir, 2005), we are concerned to build up
the micro-foundations of institutional change to study
how the meanings of new budgeting technologies and prac-
tices given by field actors are informed by changing insti-
tutional logics and the new practices associated with
these changes; meanings and interpretations that in turn
give rise to further actions and consequences (some of
which may be unintended). Institutionalization is a process
in which actors’ theories, meanings and practices are cen-
tral to the problematization of existing patterns and
arrangements, without which ‘pressures for change’ may
simply remain ‘pressures’, and ignored (Zilber, 2002,
2007, 2008). Without paying attention to the work that is
required to ‘‘create, maintain or disrupt institutions’’ (Law-
rence & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca,
2009b), research runs the risk of occluding the manner in
which institutional logics are instantiated by individuals
in everyday interactions and enacted through technologies
and practices.
2
As Munir argues: ‘‘. . .from a social constructivist perspective, an event
such as a technological innovation is not inherently disruptive (Bijker,
Hughes, & Pinch, 1987). It is theorization which makes it disruptive.’’
(Munir, 2005, p. 94).
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Studies by Greenwood et al. (2002), Lounsbury (2007,
2008) and Zilber (2002, 2007, 2008) underscore the pro-
cessual nature of institutionalization to highlight actors’
theorizations of existing institutions and their interpreta-
tion and enactment of new practices. In considering theo-
rization, they explore the take of the broad principles of the
new institutional logic, and show how organizational ac-
tors theorize the state and problems of their organization
(and pre-existing institutional practices), to justify new
‘solutions’ that can inform diffusion of new practices.
In representing organizations and activities, accounting
technologies and practices establish another form of cogni-
tion – reasoning and associated grounds of reason: classifi-
cations, representations such as accounting and budgeting
statements, scripts, schemas. (see DiMaggio & Powell,
1983, p. 35) that actors bring to their practices.3 In our
study, for example, as ‘information’ from the implementa-
tion of devolved budgets was produced and interpreted by
various actors, the information and its production influenced
their judgments and evaluations (Schank & Abelson, 1977).
Practices and performativity
In this regard, practice-focused work has usefully con-
nected practice to issues of performativity to underscore
how, in undertaking a new practice, variations in enact-
ment both reproduce and alter the practice. As Lounsbury
and Crumley (2007, p. 1004) suggest:
‘‘A focus on performativity-driven variation provides an
endogenous mechanism and useful ontological starting
point to understand how institutional change is cata-
lyzed. . .. From an institutional standpoint, the perfor-
mances of practice are intertwined with the prevailing
theories in a practice field that constitutes actors and
activities, and provides coherence to practice, despite
variety.’’ (Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007, p. 1004)
Performativity helps to highlight both the role of skilled
and learning actors in performing practices, and how a
practice is itself a form of re-ordering in an organizational
field.
In this way one aspect to the unrolling of institutional
changes is in the performative role that new accounting
discourses and technologies assume (Callon, 1998; Mac-
kenzie, 2006; Mackenzie & Millo, 2003). Accounting and
budgeting technologies perform, and contribute to the
construction of the ‘reality’ of which they speak. The per-
formativity of accounting and budgeting technologies is
not necessarily of the weak, generic form (MacKenzie,
2006, p. 17), in the sense of being observed to be used in
practice. Performativity is evidenced in the way that indi-
3
Key to the understanding of the cognitive emphasis is the recognition
of the central role of constitutive rules which guide actors in their
construction of categories of typifications of their own subjective experi-
ences that are then subsumed under general orders of meaning that
become seen as both objectively and subjectively real (Berger & Luckman,
1967). These tacit rules or routines are assumed to induce compliance
because they become taken-for-granted, and accepted, but they could also
be contested and challenged. Constitutive rules could be externally
imposed, hence guide actions, but they also could be constituted or
mediated by actions (Weick, 1993).
285
vidual budgetary practices both construct organizational
representations and are altered and tailored to fit particu-
lar circumstances, tasks or audiences. Accounting and bud-
geting technologies produce effective performativity
(MacKenzie, 2006, p. 18) because they make a difference
to practice.
Meanings are created, transformed, and stabilized as ac-
tors interact in their efforts to construct representations of
their environments, render sensible, and negotiate social
reality in their everyday practices in taken-for-granted
ways (Dobbin, 1994; Zilber, 2008). These interpretive acts
are mediated by what are assumed and hence perceived
to be objective and external pre-existing symbolic frame-
works (Swidler, 1986; Zucker, 1977). An emphasis on per-
formativity and theorizing recognizes the role that actors,
who are interested in the development of an institution,
play in both producing and interpreting information, and
making sense of their world (DiMaggio, 1988, p. 13). In
short, our study is concerned with the relations between
three interacting concepts that we see as central to the
production of institutional change and the possibility of
practice variations: the multiple (new and old) logics that
are in play within an organizational field, the new technol-
ogies and practices (budgetary processes in schools) within
the field, and the theorization and meanings that actors
bring to those practices.
In our study we posit three key institutional logics in
the field of education: business logic, governance logic
and professional logic. Business logic represents the new
logic of practice associated with field level changes intro-
duced by the regulations of the 1988 Education Reform
Act. This legislation introduced resource allocation and
budgeting responsibilities to LEAs and schools as part of
an array of changes to promote parental ‘choice’ and com-
petition between schools mediated by examination results
league tables and published school inspectorate assess-
ments by governmental agencies. Head Teachers of schools
were expected to assume a role of Senior Manager of the
school ‘enterprise’ and compete for pupils. Governance lo-
gic refers to democratic and bureaucratic processes associ-
ated with governance and political accountability. Agents
such as the LEAs, in particular, but also school governors
were most often associated with the principles of this type
of practice logic. Professional logic refers most closely to
the norms, expertise and practices of teachers as members
of an established professional body. While, of course,
teachers were overwhelmingly associated with school
organizations, it is also true that in LEAs professional logics
would often inform LEA officials’ practices and rationales,
particularly, as was common, if they had been school
teachers (Edwards et al., 1999).
In Table 1, we outline more closely the norms and ratio-
nales associated with each logic in relation to a set of logic
characteristics in order to demonstrate more clearly the
major differences between the three logics. We do not
claim that these three were the only logics of practice in
the education field, there are for example, schools founded
upon religious principles whose members draw upon reli-
gious logics of practice; they were, however the three most
salient logics that informed the debates and practices con-
cerning the new school budgeting in the time of our study.
286 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Table 1
Ideal types of institutional logics in the education field (table categories adapted from Thornton, Jones, and Kury (2005)).
Characteristic (Extant) Professional logic
Sources of Profession
identity
Sources of Professional expertise
legitimacy
Sources of Professional membership
authority Government regulation
Values/ Client (pupil) service
rationality
Basis of Providing legitimacy
attention
Basis of Teach educational curricula to pass pupils
strategy through examinations
Within the broader problematic of institutional change
and practice variation the approach is to explore the role of
multiple logics in these processes. Our concern is to ques-
tion how fields with multiple logics enable institutional
change. How do actors accommodate new logics and prac-
tices when their field has hitherto been structured by older
logics? What roles do budgeting practices play in facilitat-
ing change? Is budgeting dominated by any particular logic
of practice? How are budget categories understood? How
are they acted upon?
In the next section, we outline the key research sites
and the research methods employed in this study.
Research setting and methods
Research setting
Our research was gathered two phases. The first was
over 5 years at three LEAs, eight primary schools and eight
secondary schools in the North-West of England between
1993 and 1999. During the second phase, in 2011 we sup-
plemented the original research with further interviews
conducted in schools and LEAs in order both to bring up
to date developments in the debates concerning regula-
tion and the school budget surpluses or deficits, and to
compare them with our initial suppositions from the ear-
lier research. This paper has therefore a significant longi-
tudinal dimension to its account of changing budgetary
practices and the role of institutional logics. We also in-
spected several internal school and LEA documents and
undertook a thorough media search of school budget top-
ics in the professional media (notably Times Educational
Supplement – TES) to track developments in the field of
school finances.
The research began as the LEAs commenced the intro-
duction of pupil numbers based, formula funding of
schools’ budgets. LEAs are the local council organizations
usually based upon a particular urban setting (city or con-
urbation) or geographically larger jurisdictions such as an
English or Welsh county area that might incorporate rural
and smaller urban areas (towns, villages etc.). LEAs are one
division of a wider local administration responsible for the
provision of welfare, sanitation and cultural amenities over
(Extant) Governance logic (Emerging) Business logic
Bureaucracy School as a business
Political ideology
(conservative or labour)
Democratic system Scale (pupil numbers/fees revenue) and
examination success of/demand for school
Rules and standards Management team
Government regulation Government regulation
Democracy; fairness Competition/growth
Issuing guidelines, Examination League Table success/OFSTED Reports
standards and rules
Increase scale and scope of Growth through pupil numbers and client
regulatory arena acquisitions
a given district and are funded through the local authority
both from local taxation (council taxes) and a central gov-
ernment grant which is allocated by the Department of
Education and Employment (DfEE) as it was then called,
government departments in the UK change their name
with regularity.4 Fig. 1 below summarizes these relation-
ships. How schools managed and were able to control their
budget and expenditures are the general subjects of this pa-
per. At central government level the Audit Commission and
the Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) have respon-
sibility for inspecting teaching and financial standards in
schools and LEAs (Audit Commission, 1993, 2000; OFSTED/
Audit Commission, 1993, 2000a, 2000b). We detail the
changes to the funding of the schools sector below and we
focus upon the changes that the new funding regime for
education in England and Wales has generated for LEAs
and schools as institutions.
As the three LEAs studied were given assurances of con-
fidentiality, we re-named them Hallam, Montgomery and
Porterfield. The governance logics in each LEA were shaped
by the political identity of the political party governing in a
each Authority:
 Hallam is an ‘old (leftist) Labor’, densely-populated,
inner city authority in which several large secondary
schools were suffering declining pupil rolls as popula-
tions re-located to better housing in the suburbs. It
had an education budget of just under £100 million.
 Porterfield is jointly controlled by a Labor-Liberal polit-
ical alliance at local authority level (hung council). It
had an education budget of over £100 million support-
ing approximately 40,000 pupils, the majority of whom
attended school within urban developments.
 Montgomery is a ‘shire’ county, governed then by a
Conservative-Liberal alliance (hung council), which
contains both rural areas, with small isolated schools,
and large urban developments although Conservatives
did take over control of the authority during our study.
Although the population of the county is generally quite
4
For example, at the beginning of 2010 the department was called the
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), but with a change of
government in May 2010 it has now been renamed the Department for
Education (DfE).
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Fig. 1. The organization and funding of schools in England and Wales.
wealthy there are some areas of socio-economic disad-
vantage. The education budget was three times that of
the other two authorities.5
Research methods
At each LEA we interviewed officers, treasurers, person-
nel staff, educationalists and finance staff involved with the
development and/or implementation of the LMS scheme.
Staff in sixteen schools across the three LEAs was inter-
viewed including head teachers, governors, deputy head
teachers, bursars and secretaries. Moreover, six officers in
the DfEE were interviewed. In total, one hundred and ten
interviews, each lasting between one and a half hour, were
completed between 1993 and 1999. A further six inter-
views were undertaken in 2011. Each interview was con-
ducted by at least two members of the research team.
The interviews began by asking each interviewee to
give an account of her/his background, tasks and tenure
at the current job. The interviewees were then asked ques-
tions about their experience and understanding of the LMS
and devolved budgeting system, the perceived impact of
these changes upon their tasks and their organizations,
their responses to the emergence of budget shortfalls, their
understanding of the nature and development of the carry
forwards and the reasons for which carry forwards were
accumulated and the legitimacy of these budgetary prac-
tices particularly in the light of LEA’s stipulation of what
they deemed ‘defensible’ levels of budget carry forwards.
The interviews conducted in 2011 focused specifically on
recent government and local authority guidelines and reg-
ulations on the management of school budgets, as well as
individual school organizations’ experiences in managing
their budgets.
All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed.
Interview material was coded using computer-assisted
qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), The Ethno-
graph. While coding is at the heart of CAQDAS, analysis
should not be reduced simply to coding (Coffey, Holbrook,
& Atkinson, 1996; Lee & Fielding, 1996). The identification
of appropriate codes was not attempted until several inter-
5
In 2010 Montgomery LEA was split into two LEAs. We aggregated
relevant data to maintain the comparisons.
287
views were completed with the intention to identify and
add codes from relevant issues emerging from the inter-
views to retain flexibility (Krippendorf, 2004). Given that
most of the questions in the early interviews were struc-
tured around our research questions, in turn being drawn
from our theoretical focus, previous literature, and the
researchers detailed knowledge of LMS and the devolved
budgeting system accompanying it, only few modifications
were made in subsequent interviews to take account of the
different structures and demographics of each LEA and
school.
Guided by the research interests in accounting and
institutional change, a pilot process for the coding involved
the drawing up of an initial list of 32 codes (Krippendo,
2004). These questions gave rise to a number of evident
technical accounting codes, such as PLAN (organizational
planning processes), BUDSET (budget setting), FORMULA
(pupil number driven formula-funding of schools) and
CARRY (budget surplus carried forward to next accounting
period). Other codes were theoretically driven such as LE-
GIT (issues pertaining to forms of legitimacy – with specific
sub-categories), RESIST (non-conformity with designated
practices), CONFLICT (relating to contested issues and con-
flicts between groups of actors), HIERARCHY (relating to
hierarchical relations and changes to those relations),
COMPET (references to competition and competitiveness),
and IDENTITY (issues surrounding identity and perhaps
changes of group or individual identity). As regards the is-
sue of generality, it was decided to subdivide large issues,
such as budgeting (which had six separate codes, including
a residual, or catch-all code) and legitimacy. As Silverman
(1993) has advised, certain codes were adopted purely to
highlight particularly memorable quotations (which we
termed GOLD) and to capture particular organizational
styles of narrative – often in terms of stories (‘good’ or,
quite often, ‘bad’) about organizational experiences, some-
times apocryphal (these were coded, following an example
by Silverman, ATROCITY).
Having drawn up this initial list, each member of the re-
search team first coded the same interview independently.
A meeting was subsequently held in which the categories
were discussed, refined, added, or dropped according to
the difficulties experienced in operationalizing the catego-
ries or their failure to yield adequate coding for interview
288 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
material, but changes made were minimal. Nevertheless,
the pilot coding process was invaluable in allowing the
researchers to negotiate their interpretations both of inter-
view texts and more importantly, understandings and
shared meanings relevant to each code used. In total, a fi-
nal list of 35 categories was identified. These codes were
later used to identify relevant quotes or parts of the tran-
scripts, but the full transcripts were each read at least
twice to ensure that the context of the full interview was
taken into account. Themes were identified on the basis
of those issues that were raised repeatedly by our infor-
mants (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Theorizing each theme
consisted of exploring and creating a conceptualization of
the inherent issues, problems and dilemmas that under-
pinned practice in the area. Following Berg (2000), Glaser
(1992) and Strauss and Corbin (1998) and we took the
view that theorizing occurs through an inductive process
that might typically begin with a systematic review of
the recorded data, identifying any items, for example, for
which we felt a sustainable argument of relevance to logics
and theorization could be made. A process of clarifying the
meaning, wording and reasons took place in order to
ensure theoretical sensitivity.
Our access also included attendance at twelve meetings
where issues relating to the construction and the perceived
impact of LMS within each authority were discussed. All
three LEAs were generous in supplying to us relevant dis-
cussion, background and policy documents, as well as cop-
ies of their LMS scheme and published Section 42 data.6 In
the next section we move onto our case study: the develop-
ment of budgetary practices and institutional changes in the
education field.
In undertaking the six additional interviews in schools
in 2011 our aim was to review and discuss the phenome-
non of budget management during the first decade of the
21st Century. We documented changes to the finding pro-
cess and the control of budgets exercised at school and
authority level. We also reviewed numerous published
documents, some supplied by our informants, and media
material relating to school budget management in the ma-
jor education press in the UK – predominantly the Times
Educational Supplement (TES) – and also from the main-
stream news press for the years 1998 until 2010.
Databases of national school balances were also ac-
cessed and analyzed in order to extract recent information
on the movement of carry forwards during the 21st Cen-
tury in England and Wales. This material was available
through the Department for Education web sites in the
UK.7 We were able to extract data on the levels of balances
in our three LEAS. The latter interviews, data, documents
and press reports provided many positive insights into the
6
Section 42 data on budgeted resource allocations to schools, budget
outturns and carry forwards are compiled by LEAs and issued to schools.
The information is required under Section 42 of the ERA 1988. The Reports
are also available to the general public in local libraries and council offices.
Carry forward data are also presented to parents at Schools’ Annual General
Meetings and to meetings of the school Governors. Section 42 data was
later superseded by Section 52 data.
7
E.g., http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/adminandfinance/financial-
management/schoolsrevenuefunding/archive/a0014382/school-revenue-
balances.
processes we first observed in the 1990s. This material is
discussed in the latter sections of the case study.
Institutional change and practice variation: the logics of
budgetary practice
The Education Reform Act 1988
The Education Reform Act of 1988 was the carrier of a
new business logic that has come to dominate the organiza-
tions of school practices in England and Wales. The Act,
passed by the Conservative national government of Marga-
ret Thatcher, required the implementation of a budgetary
process that had two main components. The first was the
allocation by the LEAs of a school budget:
‘‘to be based on objective needs rather than simply on
historic spending, in order to ensure an equitable allo-
cation of the available resources between schools’’
(DES Circular 7/88, p. 21, emphasis added).
The budgetary allocation to schools was calculated
according to a pre-determined formula, based largely on
the age profile and numbers of pupils attending a school
(Edwards, Ezzamel, Robson, & Taylor, 1996). The rationale
for this was the intention to ‘‘increase further the aware-
ness of schools of the need to attract and retain pupils’’
(Ball, 1994; Coopers, 1988; LMS Initiative, 1988): that is,
a school’s prospects should be dependent on the logic of
business action in an environment of ‘market’ competitive-
ness. Resources allocated were intended to cover the
majority of the school’s costs, including the salaries of
teaching staff.
The second component of LMS was the transfer of control
over the spending of the budget from the LEA to schools’
governors – devolved budgetary responsibility. Schools
were also given the right with parent approval to ‘opt out’
of local authority control and receive their budget grants di-
rect from central government; that is, become Grant Main-
tained or, later, Academy schools. The broad aim of state
legislation was to increase local responsibility for the run-
ning of schools without changing the total resources allo-
cated by the LEA; the declared objective was to increase
the ‘‘quality of education’’ by more efficient and competitive
allocation of resources (DES Circular 7/88, p. 7), but in so
doing this logic directly disrupted the prevailing profes-
sional logic of practice in the field: the teaching profession
had been the major source of practice and institutionaliza-
tion in the education field, a position that remained almost
unchallenged until the 1988 ERA (Dale, 1989).
A corollary of this ascendancy in the role of governors
and the school heads was a diminution in the power of
the LEAs, as evidenced by the removal of much of their for-
mal administrative authority. As schools, their governors
and ‘Senior Management Team’ (SMT), meaning broadly
the head teacher, most deputy heads and, often, a school
bursar, now had the authority to decide how best to budget
the devolved resources (DES, 1988). The influence of LEAs
over schools and school staff declined. Moreover, schools
were no longer obliged to buy services from the LEAs but
had the power to buy them from the private sector, further
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
reducing the size and influence of LEAs (Edwards, Ezzamel,
& Robson, 2005).
In this context the SMTs theorized their situation under
the new logic of business education. Governing bodies of
schools and senior teaching staff acquired responsibility
for school budgets and staff employment. These players
were now re-presented as ‘managers’ of school organiza-
tions and formally trained on aspects of administration
and modern management ‘sciences’ such as planning and
decision making techniques, budgeting and personnel mat-
ters (Caldwell & Spink, 1988; Everard & Morris, 1990). This
enhanced management role is especially noticeable in the
activity of Head Teachers (Levačić, 1998, p. 337, Jones,
1999; Levačić, 1995).
The establishment of the SMT reflected (and enabled)
the new business logic as control over resources, preserved
in accounting and devolved budgets, confronted the pro-
fessional or collegial teaching mode of organization that
previously operated in schools. A new organizational
boundary between the SMT and ‘junior’ teaching staff
was constructed as a consequence of the new budgetary
system. Decisions concerning resources for a particular
service raised difficult problems for the SMT to ‘‘line man-
age’’ rather than, say, ‘‘consult and agree with colleagues’’
(indicative phrases from interviews). Below, we illustrate
the theoretical consequence of this shift in legitimacy with
particular reference to the new imperatives to ‘manage’
schools and school budgets in our three LEAs.
Theorizing, multiple logics and the practice of budgetary
control: ‘budget shortfalls’
As noted earlier, for a new budgetary practice to be-
come taken for granted, it needs to be theorized. In turn
theorizations and associated meanings can influence prac-
tice and variation. (Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007). A key
example of the theorization of the new accounting prac-
tices was the construction and objectification of the tea-
cher as a ‘cost’ category in schools. Under LMS schools
were funded through formulae based on a notional average
teacher’s salary (DES, 1988). School governing bodies were
responsible for paying staff their ‘actual’ salaries according
to each teacher’s point on the national pay scale, and were
charged the actual cost against the budget: this created a
pattern of school budget ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ based upon
the age profile of teachers in a particular school. Through
accounting norms and practices, the value of a teacher
was now routinely inscribed as a ‘cost’ category. To the dis-
course of the professional educator of an experienced,
‘good’ or competent teacher came the vocabulary and asso-
ciated values of a costly teacher. Through this new repre-
sentation of teachers as costs, the SMT in schools and the
school governing body had now to assess the staff profile
as an expense alongside, if not necessarily instead of, their
professional logic of teaching competence and similar edu-
cational norms.
As school heads, governing boards and SMTs confronted
the problem of managing a potential ‘budget shortfall’ be-
tween the allocation of teacher salaries based upon the no-
tional average and the actual salaries of staff, a new
discourse of ‘excess’ teachers in schools arose from a con-
289
text where previously there could be almost no such thing
as ‘too many teachers’. The term ‘excess’ was defined in
practice by the difference in the amount of salary funding
given through the formula vis-à-vis the actual cost of the
school staff salary bill – rather than the previous calcula-
tion of pupil/teacher ratio. For a school’s SMT, the teaching
staff was now inscribed as an accounting category that had
to be ‘managed’ and performed through the budget. How-
ever, practices of budget control did vary and showed the
influence of differing logics.
In each LEA the initial response to the staff profile prob-
lem and budget shortfall was uncontroversial: to encour-
age schools to ‘manage’ its staff through ‘early retirement
packages’ (voluntary redundancies). As with all systems
of volition, the limit, of course, was the number of teachers
prepared to retire early.
‘‘The underlying theme is one of voluntarism, so in one
sense the chain is as strong as its weakest link. For the
most part schools have co-operated but we have had,
over the past one or two years, some localised difficul-
ties, particularly in secondaries’’ (LEA Personnel Officer,
Hallam).
The numbers taking early retirement quickly proved
inadequate. As one head teacher in a secondary school in
Hallam recalled, after a number of teachers applied for,
and were granted early retirement,
‘‘We then ran out of people reaching fifty [years of age].
There just weren’t the people to apply for voluntary
early retirement and we still couldn’t balance the books.
We were rapidly running into massive deficit’’.
In each LEA, personnel departments sought to encour-
age school heads to redeploy ‘excess’ teachers within their
own LEA. This strategy, however, also met with mixed suc-
cess, as under LMS system schools were not obliged to ap-
point redeployed teachers from within the LEA. Porterfield
LEA officers produced a redeployment document that
aimed to minimize levels of redundancy in the LEA and
was successful in getting the majority of the schools to
adopt it. By co-ordinating redundancies and vacancies LEAs
hoped to govern and steer school staffing in accordance
with distributed resources. However, if a school’s head tea-
cher (or SMT) insisted on nominating staff for voluntary
early retirement but the LEA officers saw scope for rede-
ployment in other schools, then tensions between LEA Offi-
cers and the school head teachers arose.
The next option potentially open to school management
was to enforce a redundancy. This was a practice that most
LEA officers had avoided historically. LEA officers in Hallam
continued to discourage school SMTs from pursuing this:
‘‘We would have to caution them and say ‘‘we would
not support you, and if you get hauled before an indus-
trial tribunal, and they find against you, don’t come
knocking on the door of the local authority to bale
you out’’, that would be a governors’ cost’’ (Deputy
Director of Education, Hallam).
Of the three LEAs we studied, Hallam LEA was most
resistant to the redundancy option. The reason was for this
reflected the political ideals of the governing Local Author-
290 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
ity councillors. The prospect of re-deploying teachers and
compulsory redundancies amongst many teaching staff in
schools damaged the ‘Old Left’ political identity of the
authority’s Labor council. The Hallam Authority had an im-
plicit but strong party-political set of values, reinforced by
its political identity as a Labor authority, that staff redun-
dancy should be the last resort, yet the budget shortfall,
as recognized through their budgeting and accounting pro-
cesses, did gradually alter their thinking.
In Porterfield, which had a coalition of Labor and Liberal
councillors (Center and Center-Left), similar sentiments
emerged. In lamenting the lack of budgetary control by
schools over the age profiles of their teachers (as older
teachers are more costly), one head teacher there com-
mented on the perceptions of ‘blame’ that he felt head
teachers experienced in trying to cope with staffing and
budgets:
‘‘It’s not your fault [having] the age profile you’ve got.
Education isn’t or hasn’t been a ruthless management
thing where you do change age profiles in this sort of
manner and yet the management model seems to be
one that requires that alteration.’’ (Head Teacher, Sec-
ondary, Porterfield)
Here our informant stresses a commitment to an older
professional logic, one in which ‘‘Education isn’t or hasn’t
been a ruthless management thing’’, an ethos that under-
scores the contest with the new business logic with the
‘ruthlessness’ typically ascribed to it.
At a different point on the political spectrum, however,
in Montgomery the ruling coalition between the Conserva-
tives (the political Right) and Liberals (Center) in the
county was more committed to the national Conservative
government’s competitive business logic and took as a first
option making teachers in the county redundant so that
schools might balance their budgets. The Senior Education
Officers in Montgomery informed us that the only viable
means of reducing, or averting, school budget deficits
was enforced redundancies, since natural wastage was
deemed a slow process:
‘‘You have to say ‘‘sorry Fred, the budget is now in a ter-
rible state, we’re going to have to do something about it,
we can’t wait for natural wastage’’’’ (LMS Manager,
Montgomery).
In contrast to Montgomery, both Hallam and Porterfield
LEAs officers also pursued the more collegial professional
logic and promoted active teacher redeployment pro-
grammes, accepting enforced staff redundancies as the last
resort.
However, the first LEA to have experienced compulsory
redundancies in the period of our research was Hallam, the
LEA whose political identity was most resistant to forcing
job losses, as it had several inner city schools with falling
pupil rolls due to demographic shifts to the suburbs. The
LEA least inclined to support compulsory redundancies
was in a position where incentives for voluntary early
retirements were finally deemed insufficient to address
the large budget shortfalls in some inner city schools.
The tendencies for school head teachers to resist LEA
staff redeployment reflected another element of the bud-
geting’s performative influence upon practice. Head teach-
ers observed through their budgets the favorable financial
impact of employing a younger teacher, ‘probationer’, on
the lower rungs of the salary ladder – most especially in
the case of schools with a large number of staff approach-
ing the top of the pay scale. Use of temporary contracts in-
creased across the education sector:
‘‘. . .given financial uncertainty, there is increasing use of
staff on temporary contracts (Bullock & Thomas, 1993),
creating a dual labour market for teachers – a large core
of permanent staff and a pool of temporary peripheral
staff.’’ (Levačić, 1998, p. 341).
This national trend was reflected clearly in our schools:
‘‘What we are seeing is a move from what were perma-
nent part time jobs to temporary part time jobs, I think
we are doing a lot of annual contracts. . . that’s some-
thing I don’t particularly welcome but I think that in
terms of management flexibility it is the only way
[schools] can do it’’ (Education Adviser, Porterfield).
This theorizing of the problem of teachers costs, cou-
pled with the devolved budgeting system, informed an-
other new logic to practice: newly qualified teachers
could now be thought of desirable market ‘commodities’.
As a secondary head teacher in Montgomery noted, ‘proba-
tioners’ became ‘‘like gold dust’’ – reversing the prevailing
professional value given to experienced teachers with pro-
ven ability and expertise but employed on higher salaries
(Audit Commission, 1993, p. 11).8
Budgeting made it possible for the SMT in schools to
think of teachers in the logic of cost categories. The budget
served to perform teachers as business costs and made the
idea of shortfalls a problem that was also its construction.
But we have also observed how the logics of business, pro-
fession and political governance in different ways influ-
enced the practices and choices made in controlling
‘budget shortfalls’, either by reordering the relative impor-
tance of newly qualified versus more experienced teachers
or by seeking redeployment strategies, or voluntary or
compulsory redundancies. Variations in practice could oc-
cur because actors cognitively interpret the same situation
through different logics of action, and customize budgeting
technologies and practices differently. Alternatively, varia-
tions could come about as the outcome of multiple logics
competing, for example in the case of schools and their
LEAs, the business, professional, and political logics.
The new problem of the budget shortfall was however
only one outcome of budgetary allocation. Below we ex-
plore the contrasting position: the prevalence of surplus
8
Evidence that this has been a national trend is available: the OFSTED (a
state agency for inspection of school standards)/Audit Commission (the
government audit agency for local authorities) report on ‘‘Adding Up the
Sums’’ noted that the average point on the pay scale for new recruits had
dropped since the introduction of LMS, arguing that this was, in part, the
consequence of head teachers and governing bodies seeking to ‘balance’ the
ages of their staff (1993, p. 10). Our interviewees suggested to us that the
motive underlying the recruitment of younger teachers was more clearly
linked to the impact of formula funding and the desire to balance the
budget.
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303 291

on the school budget, here termed ‘carry forwards’. Whilst Table 2

issues about staff profile, recruitment and redundancies Summary of carry forwards in montgomery, Porterfield and Hallam local
education authorities total positive carry forwards as % of total school
were anticipated elements of the new budgetary system, budget delegated by LEA.
the possibility of budget surplus was not expected, and
formed one of the major controversies in this process of Authority Year

budgeting and institutional change. 90/91 91/92 92/93 93/94 94/95

Montgomery
Primary schools 7.2 9.4 10.3 10.3 9.3
Theorizing, competing logics and the practice of budgetary Secondary schools 5.2 5.4 5.3 5.5 5.0
control: ‘carry forwards’
Porterfield
Primary school N/A 4.9 4.6 5.5 5.7
Under the new competitive business logic for school Secondary schools N/A 1.7 1.3 3.4 3.8
funding, schools could build up ‘reserves’ from budget un- Hallam
der-spends, which they were allowed to ‘carry forward’ Primary schools 4.1 4.4 3.8 5.6 6.5
from one period to the next – hence the common term Secondary schools 1.9 2 3.8 3.2 2.6
for these budget surpluses ‘carry forwards’. Schools were
able to generate their own secondary sources of income,
problems of legitimacy for the budgeting exercise. Third,
from, for example, selling land, which could be used to
a debate in each LEA arose as to what actions could or
boost their level of carry forwards. In common with a na-
should be taken to respond to the phenomenon and ame-
tional trend (cf. Times Education Supplement, October 29,
liorate these problems. These three consequences are
1993, p. 9), a small number of schools in the three LEAs
examined together below.
we studied accumulated budget deficits – an effect that
In each LEA discussions in school boards, LEA working
in turn necessitated the staff change issues we have just
parties and parental meetings reflected the same concerns:
explored. The possibility of school deficits was an antici-
How does the LEA deal with schools that incur budget sur-
pated effect of resource allocation to schools.
pluses? In the case of ‘significant’ carry forwards, is the
Expectations of schools holding significant surpluses
quality of teaching being compromised? Is there a set per-
were, however, much lower. Yet a majority of schools
centage of the school budget that can be deemed accept-
assembled carry forwards, reaching in some cases to 30%
able as a carry forward? In the three LEAs similar
of the school budget. Table 2 summarizes the average carry
concerns arose among officials in adjusting to legitimation
forward balances in each of our three LEAs over the period
problems of school carry forwards/deficits. Answers gener-
1990/1991–1994/1995:
ated to these questions, however, indicated tensions in the
Table 2 shows that from the commencement of the LMS
new institutionalization of budgetary practices: the varie-
initiative, accumulated carry forwards exhibited two key
ties of meaning generated by different actors provided
trends. First, compared to secondary schools, primary
few bases for consensus, and were suggestive of tensions
schools accumulated significantly higher percentages of
between the old and the new logics of the field. In short,
their budgets as carry forwards.9 Second, in general terms
the problem of budget carry forwards revealed conflicts
the percentages of carry forwards of school total budgets
and tensions between the multiple logics of the field.
have been on the increase, possibly because school SMTs
Several responses could be seen as in tune with the man-
were becoming more cautious as they began to experience
agement and competitive ethos of the business logic that
the uncertainties associated with their increased indepen-
propelled the reform. For head teachers aboard with the lo-
dence from LEAs under LMS.
gic of the reforms, carry forwards were accounted for as a ra-
For all the organizations in the education field (schools,
tional exercise in planning and control. As one secondary head
LEAs, governors, the DfEE) concerned, the high levels of
teacher in Porterfield, exemplifying this approach, said
carry forwards were unanticipated. Shortly, a problemati-
zation of the new budgeting practices emerged in the the- ‘‘my carry forward is actually a planned commitment to
orization of the meaning of these accumulations. While the future expenditure. It’s a safety net against what’s
new policy reflected in devolved budgets made it possible expected. It’s not there for just slack money. My point
for carry forwards to be accumulated, the change in is I know what it’s for. . . But it leads me into difficulties
accounting policy from cash basis to accruals made the lev- that it may be misunderstood’’.
els of carry forwards more visible. It was this visibility that
Here a head teacher theorizes the building of carry for-
prompted new debates about the problems of how to con-
wards as an inevitable part of prudent management, which
trol and justify budget surpluses.
compels the building of a safety net to finance planned fu-
The carry forwards issue had three main consequences.
ture commitments. This notion of forward rational plan-
First, organizational actors engaged in theorizing and
ning and financial prudence is typically subsumed under
debating the meaning of carry forwards. Second, the scale
the logic of business because under LMS schools are ex-
and size of the carry forwards was to nurture significant
pected to bear the financial responsibility of their own ac-
tions. This head teacher also alludes to the difficulties that
9
This could be because primary schools felt more vulnerable compared his/her motives in accumulating carry forwards may be
to secondary schools. Alternatively, the cost of future contingencies, for
example replacing a boiler or repairing a leaking roof, is similar in absolute
misunderstood, presumably as being motivated by ratio-
terms to primary and secondary schools but it forms a higher percentage of nales other than those that this informant stated, and we
the smaller budgets of primary schools. noted these difficulties in other interpretations.
292 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Many head teachers suggested that carry forwards were
accumulated in the process of experimenting with LMS.
Here the accumulations of carry forwards was rationalized
as the outcome of learning:
‘‘We’ll plan to carry forward a certain amount of the
budget that was just feeling our way through the origi-
nal system of LMS’’ (Head Teacher, Primary School,
Hallam).
Considering the justifications for the building up of
school carry forwards, finance officers in all three LEAs
concurred with this assessment and considered the ini-
tially low levels of carry forwards as cautionary, prudent
and ‘common sense’ measures. The accumulation of high
carry forwards mirrored the budgetary devolution system
itself as school heads had the authority to shift resources
across expenditure heads and make budget ‘‘savings’’
(budget virement). Head teachers were having to ‘feel their
way through’ the new process.
Hence, one theory of this prudence was that it repre-
sented a criticism of the budgetary system and of the LEA
overseeing the budget: the ‘caution’ rationalization was ex-
tended to general provisions needed to compensate for
lack of accuracy in budget allocations to schools by LEAs
particularly, indicating a lack of trust in the budget num-
bers at both LEA and school levels:
‘‘Because we didn’t know that the information was
100% accurate when we gave it, but we’d given them
a budget, we knew we couldn’t top it up if we’d got it
wrong, just as we knew we couldn’t take any away. So
we had to say to schools, you know, ‘‘until we are
100% certain, slap some percentage on as a contin-
gency’’’’ (Deputy Director for Education, Hallam).
Many respondents accredited the extent of carry for-
wards the instability of the new budgetary system, a lack
of timeliness in receiving the budget and the prevalence
of calculative errors in the financial information provided
by the LEA.
However, general acceptance of these justifications was
undermined as the carry forward levels continued to rise
year-on-year (see Table 1) and both experimentation and
caution theories began to be slowly problematical and
undermined. For many LEA officers, high carry forwards
were gradually perceived as products of ‘‘excessive’’ pru-
dence and inadequate financial training in the management
of budgets. Head teachers were not trained sufficiently to
be budget managers, nor had it been an expectation of
their role. Budgetary surpluses were now presented as
been driven by overreaction and (exaggerated) fear of the
unknown, rather than by sound business and management
logic. The LEAs sensed that they might have failed to edu-
cate the head teachers sufficiently in managing a budget.
Head teachers required better governance:
‘‘Part of it is our fault, because I think we could do more in
terms of financial support, development and training. I
think part of it is fear as well. What happens if all the win-
dows fall in tomorrow or if we have a flood on if we have
an attack of vandals? I suppose that is why they tend to be
over-cautious.’’ (Education Officer, Porterfield).
While the theories of budgets connected with the busi-
ness logic, other actors saw in the carry forwards phenom-
enon more fundamental problems with the business logic
in education. Head teachers in schools that had budget
shortfalls and the attendant problems we have discussed
theorized the meaning of the carry forwards phenomenon
by questioning the legitimacy of the new budgetary prac-
tices and the logic that propelled them. Many such teach-
ers questioned the appropriateness of education
professionals having to act as responsibility center manag-
ers. From this theorization of a professional logic, carry for-
wards were intertwined with a problematization of the
budgetary initiative itself and the changes forced upon
the teaching profession: the logic of a competitive schools’
business of the LMS programme was put under challenge.
As the theorization of carry forwards underpinned the
logic of business, expressed in terms of financial prudence
and experimentation, came under sustained criticism,
other theories were generated to explain ‘failure’. The
Director of Resources in Porterfield LEA affirmed that some
schools had now accumulated ‘‘obscene’’ contingencies. A
report on carry forwards, prepared for the Education Com-
mittee of the LEA in Montgomery, claimed that ‘‘there
didn’t seem to be any single explanation’’ for the level of
carry forwards. There was no single authentic justification
for high levels of carry forwards: one LEA officer at Mont-
gomery attempted a study of carry forwards but claimed
‘‘there is no logic immediately evident why a particular
school would have a big carry forward and others do
not’’. Another LEA officer at Porterfield tried to analyze
contingent factors that might explain which schools would
accumulate surpluses, but failed to find an explanatory
model.
As the prevailing theories of carry forwards growth
were questioned, so concern arose as to the potential det-
rimental impact upon teaching quality and the concern of
parents. For example, an Education Officer in Montgomery
commented that for parents at governors’ meetings the
accumulation of large carry forwards:
‘‘means money that could have been spent on this
year’s cohort of pupils is not being spent; they are being
deprived’’. (emphasis added)
The idea that school carry forwards represented ineffi-
cient distribution of resources and a deprivation of educa-
tion for pupils in some schools presented more
significant theoretical challenge to these budgetary prac-
tices. LEA officials were critical of the poor governance that
LMS had introduced, both at the level of inefficient use of
educational resources that flowed through the LEA, and
in terms of weak school governance of the new School
Governing Boards. LEA officials felt that School Boards
needed to do more to rein in the irrational hoarding of allo-
cated funds by Head Teachers.
Hence, from the unanticipated phenomenon of schools
holding unexpectedly large balances from year to year,
conflicting and unreconciled interpretations of budgetary
practices were emerging. Many reactions of LEA officers
to the accumulation of (high levels) of carry forwards were,
we suggest, driven also by professional norms. In contrast,
these variations in practice reported across schools, even
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
within the same LEA, were either the outcome of different
cognitions of what ‘business logic’ meant for schools and
how it could be put into practice, or indeed because differ-
ent school SMTs deliberately apply different logics (e.g.
business logics for some and professional for others). An
indication of the latter was evident in peer pressure that
came from other heads. Those head teachers who observed
the largest surpluses in other schools carry forwards
shared hostility to their scale of carry forwards. One head
teacher of a primary school in Porterfield was dismissive
of the very idea of accumulating carry forwards:
‘‘I’m not a believer in under spending budgets. They’re
(carry forwards) pernicious and they’re evil. . . I’ve spent
the last five years trying to convince other head teachers
but I’m not winning. And it’s my life ambition to get
everybody to understand that you can’t do that. But it’s
double barrelled, isn’t it? It’s a double whammy, because
if this coming year the Education Committee says ‘‘we
really are short of money (and) we can’t save at the centre
any more, we have this horrible political problem [of how
to justify high carry forwards]. But, in any case, the
money is allocated to the children here and now, so sav-
ing up massive carry forwards, you’re actually paying for
the next children’s education with these children’s allo-
cation and I don’t think that’s morally right either’’.
Many LEA officers recognized that schools with large
carry forwards were vulnerable to parental criticism and
democratic pressure from those who felt that the money
allocated to schools to spend on teaching their children
should be spent on teaching their children – and not saved
up. In Porterfield the Senior Director of Personnel, con-
cerned about the high levels of school carry forwards, re-
vealed that one primary school had a contingency fund of
£60 K out of a school budget of £200 K:
‘‘We have half a dozen schools with contingencies of a
scale that I would say amounts to mismanagement,
not because they have any particular pet project they
want to spend it on, but because they want to have a
big pocket of resources.’’
There was substantial concern over the implications of
such practices, from perspectives of both internal and also
external legitimacy (the ‘‘double whammy’’). Budgetary
surpluses, for some actors in the field, meant that the logic
of reforms was flawed. Given the character of the LMS ini-
tiative and the state’s desire for educational organizations
to justify their actions through rationalizing accounting
and budgeting systems (Meyer, 1986), it was paradoxical
to find that the meanings put upon the carry forwards is-
sue could support institutional logics critical of the com-
petitive business logic of the budgetary reforms.
These concerns were reinforced by the wider visibility
of the budgetary reports. Possible ‘political’ inferences
from central government resulting from the high levels of
carry forwards worried all three LEAs and their schools.
Although the LMS initiative was understood to reflect
new ideologies of organizational legitimacy amongst the
important environments of educational organizations, the
enactment of LMS and the practice of carry forwards could
undermine the validity of claims to central government
293
funding agencies that schools were under-resourced. The
complaints LEA officers expressed at Governors Board
meetings for schools’ head teachers to keep carry forwards
within ‘reasonable levels’ were justified by the reasoning
that it would be difficult for school representative bodies
to argue externally that schools were under-funded.
The prevalence of large school balances ultimately
posed a question of the political credibility of the claim to
be an underfunded school sector. Here school budgeting
was again connected to governance logics and the realpo-
litik of the education field. Concern with school budgeting
practices was expressed as anxieties as to how ‘‘politi-
cians’’ (in both national and local government) might
interpret and understand the incidence of high carry
forwards:
‘‘The politicians could have drawn the wrong conclu-
sions from the under-spending; that there is too much
money in the schools’’ (LMS Manager, Montgomery).
‘‘Certainly the last three years we’ve been in a cut situ-
ation, he (the local authority Treasurer) sees the surplus
balances in school budgets and at one time we would
use that to offset services, so it means in theory all
the departments of the [local] authority have had to
suffer more draconian cuts than we would have had
to normally; I suppose it could be argued that he’s made
us pay in other ways’’. (Education Officer, Hallam).
The view of some LEA officers that carry forwards ‘‘can’t
be a good political signal to send to central government’’
(Education Officer, Porterfield) and that a carry forward
‘‘may be misunderstood’’ (see earlier quotation) was first
realized during the 1990s when, in a dispute between local
authorities and central government over class sizes and
teachers’ salary funding, the UK government suggested
that the £600 million national total of school carry for-
wards could be used to finance the teachers’ pay increase
(The Times Education Supplement, 1993). As we detail be-
low, other reactions and reforms followed.
The reform of budgetary practice: the management of
budgeting shortfalls and carry forwards to the present
In this section, we address some of the responses to the
variations in practice and unintended consequences that
our study found. We explore how the tensions between
the dominant logic of business in education, and the ex-
tant logics of teaching professionals and educational
governors/bureaucratic management played out in terms
of subsequent reforms and changes to the budgetary
system.
The effects of budget shortfalls were highly significant
for those schools that had to adjust from their historic
funding to the new budgetary resource allocation model.
Many of the most significant consequences in terms of
addressing budget shortfalls and the various responses of
LEAs played out during this transitional time. By 1998
many of the most serious examples of schools with sub-
stantial deficits were brought in line with their budget allo-
cation. From then onwards, as we see in Table 3, the levels
of budget shortfalls in affected schools for each LEA re-
mained low until the mid 2000s.
294 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303

Table 3
Total revenue balance as a % of total revenue income (for schools in deficit).

LEA Sector 99–00 00–01 01–02 02–03 03–04 04–05 05–06 06–07 07–08 08–09 09–10
Montgomery Primary 2.1 1.6 1.2 2.5 2.4 2.8 2.2 4.4 3.7 3.9 3.9
Montgomery Secondary 0.8 1.7 2.7 2.4 2.7 2.6 1.6 1.6 2.9 2.4 2.3
Hallam Primary 4.1 3.9 3.4 1.5 5.1 6.3 4.7 7.0 7.3 5.7 5.8
Hallam Secondary 0.2 3.4 2.4 1.4 4.6 3.3 4.3 11.1 16.5 23.0 17.4
Porterfield Primary 2.3 3.1 2.6 3.7 2.6 3.1 0.8 1.8 0.0 1.7 1.8
Porterfield Secondary 2.0 0.6 1.1 0.6 1.0 1.5 4.0 3.0 3.2 1.4 3.7

In each LEA officers monitored and counseled schools to
try and keep within the budgets, though as the numbers
reveal, Hallam was much more tolerant of schools deficit
funding for several years. In Porterfield and Montgomery,
LEA finance officers were less supportive of deficit funding,
though as we shall see shortly, these two authorities were
increasingly tolerant of carry forwards.
There are two reasons for this: first, Hallam retained a
consistent political identity after the implementation of
LMS and an underlying sense of support and tolerance of
budgetary shortfalls. Porterfield and Montgomery had the
support of more rightist political local authorities – indeed
during the 2000s Montgomery went from a ‘hung’ council
to Conservative controlled. Second, the struggles that
schools in Hallam had to keep within budget had specific ur-
ban, socio-economic characteristics with falling rolls and
greater deprivation than in the other two authorities. This
is borne out more forcefully by the budgetary position from
2006 to 2007 onwards, when cutbacks in funding and wors-
ening support for local authorities from central government
had greater impact than in the other two LEAs. In both Mont-
gomery and Porterfield the average % budget shortfall in-
creased and at these points some of the former concerns
with the ‘rationality’ of the business logic in education sur-
faced. In January 2011, a national newspaper, ordinarily
sympathetic to business methods, noted that ‘‘One in six
secondary schools now in debt’’. (The Daily Telegraph, 6th
January 2011). The budgetary crises in schools were now
magnifying the budgetary problems of government.
An example of this is drawn from our most recent inter-
views in 2011 in a secondary school in Montgomery that
was formed via the merger of two previous secondary
schools. The school had previously accumulated reason-
able levels of carry-forwards, but in the face of declining
student numbers and other budget cuts that came to
£600,000 has decided to engage in deliberate deficit bud-
geting. Having had a carry-forward the year before of over
£40,000 and this year of nearly £120,000, which the school
was happy to have so that ‘‘the cuts in staffing would be
less drastic’’ the school Bursar stated:
‘‘We’re going to have a deficit budget this year because
the government needs to know that what it’s doing is
actually having a huge impact, to say it’s a no reduction
situation in education, it’s just not true.’’
Certainly, this statement is suggestive of a political mod-
el where the school is signalling to government that it will
not limit its expenditure to the funds it receives, but also it
is partly a reflection of a professional stance that seeks to
protect education delivery and the careers of teachers.
While for the time being the school might be able to protect
staff jobs and protect the quality of pupil education as much
as possible, there were still some hard decisions to be made
to save some spending, including cost cuts in career ser-
vices for pupils, school meals, and alternative provision
for pupils who find it difficult to access normal school cur-
riculum. The influence of the professional model is evident
even while contemplating cuts in these areas in terms of
concern for pupils, for example concerning alternative pro-
vision, the Bursar argued ‘‘but there has to be something for
these kids. We cannot have them roaming the streets; they
need to be educated.’’ The school is also drawing on the
business model to help keep its costs down by benchmark-
ing its costs against those of similar schools in the area. The
tension between competing theories of budgeting in educa-
tion brings into sharp contrast the concerns of educational-
ists as professionals against their pragmatism of realizing
that efficiencies have to be found. As one Teacher–Governor
in the above school stated:
‘‘I don’t really look at things as budgets and targets, I
tend to see it as, you know, staff and students and the
impact of decisions there, really’’, but then she quickly
added ‘‘when you’ve been on the governing board, you
realise that those things [educational decisions] have
an impact on the budget. . .we can’t just carry on spend-
ing money that isn’t there.’’
The reform of budgetary process was, however, more
thoroughgoing with regard to budget surpluses. The issue
of carry forwards has retained, up to the present, the
capacity to stimulate dissatisfaction and unrest with the
dominant logic in the educational field. Given the struggle
between different logics in the theorizing of carry forwards
and the lack of a consensual interpretation of the carry for-
wards issue, in all the LEAs we studied there was a moral
determination for ‘action’: budgetary processes in schools
could not be allowed to continue with these levels of finan-
cial accumulation.
Yet, under the business logic of the 1988 ERA regime,
LEAs had limited authority to control school management
and schools’ expenditures. LEAs could ‘advise’ schools to
reduce carry forwards. Again, we noted further variations
in responses. In Porterfield, LEA officers justified their lack
of action against schools by suggesting that ‘‘it’s their deci-
sion’’, emphasizing the schools newly found autonomy en-
shrined in the business logic of the LMS initiative, LEAs
were also signalling a disclaimer from the consequences
of how schools put this logic into practice.10 So memos
10
In theory, LEAs could withdraw delegation from schools; however,
major school mismanagement has to be established before such action
could be invoked.
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303 295

and messages to head teachers from the LEAs officers ex-
pressed the potential political risk that could be caused by
carry forwards. As the head teacher of a primary school in
Hallam indicated:
‘‘the director (LEA) explained to us that if he’s saying to
the Treasury and to the Education Department that pri-
mary schools are running on a shoe string, it becomes
difficult to justify that if some schools have got big
surpluses’’.
For example, although Hallam informed schools that
the contingency needed to be ‘‘sufficiently large to cover
an immediate short fall, but it didn’t need to be a lot’’ (Edu-
cation Officer), within 3 years the contingency fund held by
all schools in the Authority increased from £2 million to
£8.5 million (LEA Section 42 documents). Similarly, within
3 years of the introduction of LMS the total carry forward
balances in Montgomery Authority had reached £17
million.
As the increasing magnitude of the levels of budget carry
forwards became apparent to officers in each LEA, as well as
the public at large, through schools’ financial reports, guide-
lines to the percentage of school budget that should be kept
as carry forwards were produced. These reports offered dif-
fering advice, ranging from 1½% in Porterfield through 2–3%
in Hallam to 5% in Montgomery – the LEA with the largest
level of carry forwards, and the greater commitment to
the ‘business logic’ of LMS. Schools retaining higher levels
than the stipulated guidelines were requested to justify
why they had done so. To the extent that schools could
demonstrate compliance with these guideline percentages,
it was now easier for LEA officers to deploy the rhetoric of
‘‘rational’’ and ‘‘common-sense’’ behavior to legitimate
their actions and the levels of carry forwards.
In Montgomery, for example, LEA officers reported in
1995, that the levels of carry forwards for secondary
schools had started to come down, and those of primary
schools had begun to level off (a suggestion that was valid
for 1994/1995; see Table 1 earlier). LEA officers in each LEA
suggested that the carry forwards issue was temporary – in
line with ‘learning and caution’ theses. Further changes in
the level of resource devolved to schools in their budgets
also meant that it was no longer clear that current levels
of carry forwards could be compared ‘meaningfully’ with
the past – which of course has had the consequence of lim-
iting further problematization. In each LEA the belief that
Carry Forwards were reducing was to prove incorrect.
If we analyze the position from 1999 (Table 4), we see
that level of carry forwards in each LEA continued to rise:
In 1999 government regulators commissioned a study
of school finances and the levels of balances some schools
were keeping. Levels of carry forwards were not reducing
and the controversy over carry forwards resulted in the
publication of new guidance nationally on school budget-
ing – with the aim of suppressing some of the variation
in budget practices that we observed (Ansari et al., 2010,
p. 68). A few studies, including one in a national newspaper
(Davies, 1999), seemed also to point to the paradox that it
was often the schools in deprived areas that pupil funding
formulae would hit hardest – as parents withdrew pupils
to send them to ‘better schools’ who in turn then took in
more funding (West & Pennell, 2002; West, Pennell, Tra-
vers, & West, 2001). The phenomenon of budget shortfalls
and budget surpluses continued jointly to contribute to
political debate about the logic of business in the field of
education.
In 2000, the Audit Commission and OFSTED revised fur-
ther the recommendations on proper financial standards in
schools with the advice to schools that:
‘‘Any budget surpluses should be earmarked for specific
future needs to ensure that pupils benefit from a
planned approach to spending that does not deprive
them of resources in a given year.’’ (OFSTED/Audit Com-
mission, 2000a, p. 7, 2000b; Audit Commission, 2000).
It was now no longer appropriate for schools to build up
budgetary surpluses without an account of the purposes of
the carry forward. Now, a good school budget meant ‘‘not
running into deficit, but equally it means not carrying large
balances of unspent money from year to year without good
reason.’’ (Audit Commission, 2000, p. 6). The school carry
forwards ‘problem’ was now translated into the ‘need’ for
a medium term plan which outlined their expenditures
plans over 3 years and rationalized any annual surpluses.
In this way a short-term budget problem of carry forwards
was now to be rationalized within a strategic plan, called
the School Development Plan (Edwards, Ezzamel, & Rob-
son, 2001).
The ‘‘trick’’ seemed to be for the head teacher to make a
claim for a clear future commitment for the carry forwards.
As a secondary head teacher in Porterfield neatly summa-
rized that strategy:
‘‘Their (LEAs) advice to us is to make sure that it’s ear-
marked, even if it’s for a general contingencies really,
but under some heading. Ear-mark it and it makes a dif-
ference. You may not be able to fulfil that purpose. In an
emergency you may have to divert it.’’

Table 4
Total revenue balance as a % of total revenue income (for schools in surplus).

LEA Sector 99–00 00–01 01–02 02–03 03–04 04–05 05–06 06–07 07–08 08–09 09–10
Montgomery Primary 7.5 9.4 9.8 8.0 7.2 8.1 8.7 8.1 8.0 6.7 7.0
Montgomery Secondary 3.3 4.2 4.3 4.5 5.3 5.6 5.0 4.9 3.1 2.7 2.6
Hallam Primary 5.5 6.9 8.4 7.7 6.7 6.4 6.4 6.7 6.5 6.6 7.7
Hallam Secondary 3.5 5.5 4.6 5.4 6.6 5.7 7.3 7.4 5.6 5.7 5.6
Porterfield Primary 4.9 5.7 7.9 7.4 7.9 8.6 8.9 9.5 9.9 7.0 6.6
Porterfield Secondary 2.6 2.5 2.3 2.3 3.3 4.3 2.8 3.3 3.9 3.2 3.3
296 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
As long as the school complied with ear-marking, carry
forwards might remain endowed with the legitimacy of
rationality and efficient management. But, if Schools could
not earmark them, then other strategies may be adopted to
hide the carry forwards; as the finance manager of a sec-
ondary school in Porterfield indicated:
‘‘We’re not letting anybody know how much we’ve got
really, because if you do then they’ll think OK, that is
great. Let’s spend it’’.
By 2001, following this new OFSTED and Audit Commis-
sion guidance (OFSTED/Audit Commission, 2000a, 2000b;
Audit Commission, 2000) schools were being counseled
to earmark funding in the annual budget and show where
it fitted into a 3-year plan, and to restrain budget surplus
balances to no more than 5%. Yet, as Table 4 reveals, the
aggregate percentage of balances to the total revenue in-
come of schools in surplus hovered around 5% for second-
ary schools but, in Montgomery and Porterfield especially,
was over 8% for primary schools. Levels of school balances
were not reducing.
In 2007 the UK central government (a Labor administra-
tion) announced that there would be a ‘clawback mecha-
nism’ introduced to recoup monies from schools
considered to hold excessive balances (Consultation Paper,
HMSO, March, 2007). The meaning of ‘excessive’ was again
revised from previous understanding to mean over 5% of
budget revenue for secondary schools and 8% for primaries.
The percentage limit, however, referred to those balances
not already earmarked. Guidance on the budget mecha-
nism showed a shift in logics, away from the decentralizing
business logic of ‘‘it is up to the schools what they do’’. The
guidance explained:
‘‘It is now mandatory for all local authorities to include
surplus balance controls and from summer 2008, oper-
ate clawback mechanisms for the 2007–2008 revenue
balances.
Local authorities have been given flexibility in how they
wish to implement the process of clawback. Having
consulted with a number of authorities we know that
a range of approaches have been adopted and we also
know that there are some areas in which local authori-
ties require further guidance.’’ (Consultation Paper,
HMSO, March, 2007, p. 2).
One of our interviewees noted the degree of earmarking
and ‘mini panic’ that ensued in schools busily looking for
funds to earmark to project. In Montgomery, for example,
the schools were issued with a template that required
any carry forwards to be notified in accordance with the
‘Budget Control Mechanism’.
Yet, in 2008, the government withdrew the clawback
threat though the mechanism for disciplining surpluses
in schools remained (Statement to Parliament, October
2007). The Education minister explained that there
had been a ‘‘listening exercise with LEAs and schools’’
and:
‘‘Rather than proceed now we will continue to discuss
these detailed concerns with schools and work with
local authorities to lower excessive surplus revenue bal-
ances,’’ (Education Minister, Jim Knight quoted in the
Daily Express, 30th October 2007).
The newspaper report noted:
‘‘Teachers’ organisations and the Tories warned they
would penalise prudent financial management, and
unfairly fine schools saving for new buildings and other
major projects.’’ (Daily Express, 30th October, 2007).
With the change in elected government in 2010 from
Labor to Coalition of Conservative and Liberal, it seems as
if the political values that supported the introduction of
school budgeting would be in greater accord with a decen-
tralizing business logic of school budget control. Yet we
conclude our empirics by noting that the large scale of sur-
plus balances held by some schools during a severe eco-
nomic recession endures, and promotes controversy and
conflict between logics. The Daily Telegraph report noting
the scale of school in deficit also commented:
‘‘Despite the rise in the number of schools in debt, 6014
state schools still held ‘‘excessive’’ budget surpluses.
These are defined as more than 8% of a primary school’s
budget and more than 5% for secondary schools and are
banned by the Government.
The total amount held in excessive surpluses across the
country was £407 million.’’ (The Daily Telegraph, 6th
January, 2011).
In summary, fluctuations between ideas that schools
manage their own budgets and fears that this is inefficient
hoarding or deprivation continue to characterize the edu-
cation field. In a field where two or more strong institu-
tional logics operate, it might be that this state of flux
will continue to exist in regard to certain aspects of prac-
tice within the field (Kraatz & Block, 2008). In the next sec-
tion we discuss the concepts and insights that we draw
from these cases.
Discussion: on the logics of budgeting
A notable characteristic of our study is that the collec-
tion of empirical material took place over two phases span-
ning 18 years and this prolonged engagement enhances
the trustworthiness of our findings. Our case study has
highlighted the influence of three institutional logics: a
new, and dominant logic, associated with the influence of
business methods and rationales, as well as two logics al-
ready operating in the filed of education in the UK: profes-
sional logic, associated with the teaching professions, and
the governance logic of authority and hierarchical control
in political organizations, as described earlier in Table 1.
We have explored the mechanisms through which new
budgeting tasks are shaped, and in turn shape the practices
in a field of competing institutional logics. In this section
we draw out the conceptual significance of our study and
its contribution.
Theorization and variation – the influence of multiple logics
Earlier studies have posited the influence of multiple
logics as sources of tension in a field (e.g., Kitchener,
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
2002; Reay & Hinings, 2005, 2009) and highlighted the
ways that such conflicts may be managed. Our study sup-
ports these insights but also highlights how the interplay
of logics, theorizations and actors positions helps produce
variation in a field. While much of the early attention in
neo-institutional theory was upon isomorphism and con-
vergence, our study shows how institutions can give rise
to variations that in turn serve as sources of instability
and creative tension. In this section we try to demarcate
the logics, theories and actors that constituted the
variations.
In the case of budget shortfalls we see various responses
to the problems of ‘over-staffed’ schools. Here we noted
how the responses were contingent not only upon a gen-
eral influence of existing governance logic, but also in par-
ticular the political identity within that governance logic.
As the new budgetary practices enabled the very idea of
‘over-staffing’, variation in responses reflected the influ-
ence of prevailing democratic or political ideologies – par-
ticularly for the LEAs education and finance officers
accountable to locally elected councillors. For LEAs with
more left-ist political rationalities of governance, the possi-
bility of enforced redundancies for teachers was a final op-
tion when all others had been exhausted; enforcing
unemployment was not a politically attractive route.
Montgomery, the LEA with the ‘rightist’ political leaning
supported the right of school heads to manage their staff
numbers. It should also be noted that this political leaning
was all of a piece with the ideological class of the business
logic reforms. As Strang and Meyer (1993, p. 492) note,
theorization is ‘‘the self-conscious development and speci-
fication of abstract categories and the formulation of pat-
terned relationships such as chains of cause and effect.’’
In Table 5, we summarize the key theorizations and
institutional logics of education and budgeting and con-
trasting responses of different actors to the new problem
of budget shortfalls. These theorizations are manifestations
of the multiple and competing institutional logics occa-
sioned by the heterogeneous responses of actors to the
imposition of institutional rationalized myths (Dunn &
Jones, 2010; Scott, 2001; Townley, 2002). We also note in
the table the actor-position (LEA officer, head teacher,
etc.) that characterized each theorization.
In all schools and all LEAs, there remained an element of
theorizing education as a professional domain, underscor-
ing the notion that the education field is a site of multiple
theorizing, even within the same LEA. Care and dedication
to education, and loyalty and collegiality to teaching staff
are assumed to be the underpinning of the profession. Fur-
ther, professional expertise was the source of legitimacy
that is the basis of attention, with authority vested in pro-
fessional membership of teachers or educators, as sug-
Table 5
Budget shortfalls and institutional logics.
Logic
‘Professional’ – loyalty/collegiality to teachers
‘Business’ – Managing school resources
‘Political’ – correspondence with LEA ideology
297
gested in Table 1 earlier. Thus, in situations of budget
shortfalls, the ethos was one of sharing the financial misery
and a´ backs to the wall‘ strategy that entailed avoiding
forced redundancy at all costs and encouraging voluntary
early retirement and redeployment of staff.
In contrast to professional logic whose basis of atten-
tion is providing legitimacy, business logic invests its
attention in examination league table success and high
quality OFSTED Reports (see Table 1). While some ele-
ments of this theorizing could be traced in all LEAs, it
was in Montgomery that the ethos appeared to be stron-
gest where business-type measures, in particular, enforced
retirement, were pursued in order to deal with budgetary
shortfall. But even in the case of the Montgomery LEA,
there was evidence of some measure of professional logic
in promoting voluntary early retirement and redeployment
of teachers as a possible way forward.
The third theorization emphasized the governance logic
with its identity enshrined in bureaucracy and political
ideology, and its emphasis upon maintaining consensus
and stability in education by pursuing redeployment of
teachers as the most acceptable political solution to budget
shortfalls. As we noted in Table 1, governance logic in edu-
cation finds its sources of authority in relying upon rules
and standards of conduct which are strongly influenced
by government regulation, hence its interest in enhancing
the scale and scope of the regulatory arena specific to the
educational field. Further, a distinguishing feature of gov-
ernance logic is its promotion of democracy and fairness
as the underpinnings of its rationality. This mode of theo-
rizing was especially evident in the Labor-controlled Hal-
lam LEA and Porterfield, which was governed by a Labor-
Liberal (center-left) council.
In the instance of schools accruing significant budget
surpluses – carry forwards – we observed how logics
seemed to structure interpretations of meaning that actors
put upon the phenomenon. In Table 6 we summarize the
logics, actors and theories of action that we think charac-
terized this controversial episode in the institutional re-
form of education. A similar variety of bottom up, local
theorizations to those we documented in the case of bud-
get shortages were pursued in the case of carry forwards.
Again we identify three modes of theorizing: professional,
business and political.
Under the professional model of theorizing, LEA officers,
governors, and parents, as well as those school head-teach-
ers not running a large budget surplus, considered accu-
mulating carry forwards as tantamount to depriving
current pupils of better quality education. In the vocabu-
lary of some head-teachers, carry forwards were´ evil‘ and
pernicious‘ because they promoted a preference for having
´
healthy bank balances to caring for pupils. This is also a
Actors Budgetary shortfall theorizing
LEAs and schools (of all LEAS) Voluntary early retirement, redeployment
LEAs (Montgomery) Voluntary or enforced retirement
LEAs (Hallam, Porterfield) Redeployment
298 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Table 6
Budget carry forwards and institutional logics.
Logic Actors
Business School heads
Business School heads
Business LEA officers
Professional/ LEA officers, governors,
political parents
Political LEAs, school heads
major reason why in all three LEAs, maximum limits were
placed on the amounts of carry forwards that schools could
have.
Those espousing the business ethos, mainly head-teach-
ers, understood the accumulation of carry forwards as a
necessary exercise in financial prudence and dealing with
uncertainty. To these actors, devolution of financial
responsibility to the school SMT ushered a new, uncertain
world as schools could no longer rely on their LEAs to bail
them out of trouble. This concern about uncertainty was
heightened further by widely shared views concerning
inaccuracy of school budgets, inadequacy of the SIMS
information system that schools had to use, and insuffi-
cient financial training of members of SMT; the latter a
concern shared with LEA officers.
Those who theorized education as governance argued
that accumulating carry forwards creates the undesirable
image in the minds of politicians that schools were over-
funded. Such a view ran the risk that carry forwards would
be seen to undermine the campaign by LEAs and head
teachers to secure more funds for schools from the govern-
ment. This concern resulted in pressure exercised by LEAs
on schools to keep levels of carry forwards low and to ear-
mark them for specific purposes, such as replacing a boiler.
But as we indicated earlier, these modes of theorizing are
not always discrete, may overlap in relation to the same is-
sue, and often split head teachers’ interpretations.
Amongst head teachers, it was noticeable that the schools
with low levels of reserves or deficits would be especially
critical of the idea of other schools holding large balances.
Hence, while logics helped to understand how interpreta-
tions and actions on budgets were being framed, it is also
the case that whether or not the implementation of bud-
geting in schools and the resulting resource allocations
were favorable would influence responses to the new busi-
ness logic and budgeting practices.
Logics of budgeting and the role of budgeting technologies
While it is true that the introduction of budgeting sys-
tems in schools was closely tied to a business type logic
that inspired the enabling legislation, our study revealed
another perspective on the long-standing discussion on
the roles of budgeting (Emmanuel, Otley, & Merchant,
1990; Ezzamel & Hart, 1987; Hayes, 1977). The introduc-
tion of budgeting owed much to the symbolic effect the
idea of allocating school resources and making schools
responsible for their budgets had in furthering a business
or corporate ideal for the organization of education (Ed-
wards et al., 1999). Initial willingness to accept and resist
Carry forward theorizing
Learning–managing-financial prudence; experimentation and planning for uncertainty
Caution; Lack of timeliness to information from LEA Inaccurate budgets/information from
LEAs
Inadequate training learning
Pupils deprived: ‘‘money that should be spent’’
Image of over-funded schools; political risks
the budget as a symbol is associated with actors’ identifica-
tion and commitment to such ideals.
However, as we have shown, the budget is also a mate-
rial practice. As such, we would argue, from our study that
there is no ‘logical’ essence to this practice. Rather what we
observe are differing logics of budgeting. LEA officers, head
teachers, bursars, teaching staff and governors all had to
construct and work with budgeting systems, and, in so
doing, the beliefs and identities that people brought to
budgeting reflected the institutional logic in which they
saw their work embedded. In this way, one of the ways
of conceiving of the different roles that budgets have on
organizations is related to the logic of action of their users.
Surveys show the persistence of budgeting in organiza-
tions while also lamenting the general dissatisfaction that
users have of budgeting as a process. We would suggest
that one source of this tension is the complex relationship
between the symbolic ties that budgeting might have to a
particularly dominant logic, and the competing logics of
action that actors in a field bring to budgeting as a material
practice.
To be clear, we are not extrapolating from this example to
suggest that the symbolic importance of budgeting is always
necessarily indicative of a logic of business (though that has
been a dominant association in neo-liberal reforms of orga-
nizations in recent decades). But rather that when budgeting
enters an organizational field with symbolic associations to
a particular logic, the material practice of budgeting, its
enactment in complex field with competing logics, will re-
flect and expose tensions between those logics. Moreover,
while budgeting was in part a condition of the tensions ana-
lyzed, it was also, through the enactment of reforms, the
mediator between competing logics. Budgeting might well
be added to the list of devices that Reay and Hinings
(2009) note can help manage the competition between log-
ics in complex organizational fields. Hence the logics of bud-
geting in our study: budgeting in our case showed the
influence of the logics and practical understandings of the
three logics we identified in our study. A focus upon institu-
tional logics we feel might fit in well with long-standing con-
cerns in management accounting research about the
conflicting and contingent roles of accounting (Burchell,
Clubb, Hopwood, Hughes, & Nahapiet, 1980; Hansen & Van
der Stede, 2004; Hope & Fraser, 1997).
‘Representational’ technologies, unanticipated consequences
and the performativity of budgeting
Before we summarize our study and present what we
offer as a model of processes of budgetary reform and
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
institutional change, we also wish to comment upon the
practical processes that seem to have guided the tensions
between logics and the debates on reform that we ob-
served. We have focussed in our study upon the practical
ways that budgeting has been theorized from the stand-
point of different logics within our field. However, the
relationship between these arguments and tensions is
complicated by the way that budgeting as a technology
of ‘representation’ has created the conditions through
which these tensions have been played. Budgeting repre-
sentations of the ‘position’ of schools were not only the
outcome of the budgetary process, they were also the con-
dition for the debates and conflict that our study exam-
ined. By representing the ‘school’, budgeting changed the
school, not only in its basic enactment by head teachers,
bursars, LEA finance officers etc., but also by visualizing a
school, its ‘competitors’, and assigning values and costs
to such categories as staff, pupils, and buildings.
‘Opportunities’ were given and constraints shown by
the imagining of schools as entities for planning and deci-
sion-making. In this way, we see a notion of performativity
that implies not just the idea that budgeting has to be per-
formed, but that budgeting actively performs and trans-
forms, by providing new tools for cognition. This point is
particularly pertinent to understanding the effects of new
technologies of ‘information’, such as budgeting, for as
budgeting practices ‘reveal’ their accounts, so those ac-
counts form the bases for new actions (Burchell et al.,
1980). Hence, while a significant part of our study was con-
cerned with the budgetary effects of shortfalls and sur-
pluses, it is budgeting that constructed and represented
the categories that are then the basis for further transfor-
mations of and interventions in the practice of budgeting.
This impact of budgeting as a representational practice
is also noted where the anticipated consequences of its
implementation fail to correspond with outcomes. In a
field where the underfunding of schooling was a taken-
for-granted assumption amongst teaching professionals,
the prevalence of a proportion of schools with large school
surpluses highlights the unintended consequences that
new representational technologies of budgeting can
achieve. The lack of consistent theorizations of the growth
of school balances contributed significantly to subsequent
budgetary reforms and to initiating substantial investiga-
tion of budgetary practices. Here, we see evidence of the
dislocation between the symbolic associations of budget-
ing as rational business technologies and their practical ef-
fects, and the emergence of ‘concerned groups’ within the
field. Subsequent interventions into school budgeting at-
tempted to recover that ‘rationality’ by introducing new
guidelines for budget planning and control, and re-aligning
the symbolic role of budgeting. In short, budgeting was not
a neutral technology of representation within the field:
budgeting both represents and intervenes (Dambrin &
Robson, 2011; Hacking, 1983).
Multiple logics, budgeting technologies and institutional
changes
Our focus on logics, theorizing and budgetary practices
emphasized the meeting of the micro and macro, and the
299
constructivist manner by which meanings are contested,
negotiated and stabilized through the interactions of indi-
viduals and groups (Powell, 2008; Zilber, 2008), or what
DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 22) called a ‘‘theory of prac-
tical action’’. Implicit in this is a sense of a critique of the
assumptions that budgeting or accounting practices (such
as the BSC) simply diffuse. As Zilber (2008, p. 158) has also
noted, by studying theorizing we highlighted:
‘‘the often contested and incomplete character of insti-
tutionalization projects, often neglected in standard
accounts of new practice diffusion.’’
Contesting the diffusion and institutionalization of
accounting practices is indicative of the social construction
of these practices by actors. Rather than being assumed to
discover the world ‘out there’, the world is constructed
through the collective interaction of actors, an interaction
that is constrained and mediated by existing social
arrangements, representational devices and beliefs. As Fiss
and Zajac have contended (2006, p. 1187):
‘‘the meaning of events may make for differing experi-
ences of the ‘‘same’’ data. . .’’
Finally, in this section we attempt to summarize our
analysis into a model of the change process that we have
observed. We show our model in Fig. 2 below.
Our study highlighted what we saw as the prevalence of
three key institutional logics operating in the key organiza-
tions we studied in the field of education. Those were the lo-
gic of business that was introduced under educational
reform legislation, the logic of professions associated with
teaching and the governance logic that guided the regula-
tion and structure of school authority and bureaucracy in
government and local education authorities. We have
underscored the impact of these competing logics and also
of the 1988 ERA upon budgeting symbols and practice vari-
ation in schools and the educational field as indicated in
Fig. 2. We have also noted how professional logic and
governance logic, as well as the unintended performative
consequences of school budgeting influenced the problema-
tization, debates and controversies concerning budgetary
reforms, which in turn impacted budgeting symbols and
practice variation. In understanding the changes and varia-
tions in intended and unintended effects and consequences
of the budgetary reform we saw the impact of differing the-
orizations of how to interpret budgetary information, and
act upon that new information.
While budgetary reform was introduced ‘in the name of’
business logic, with its focus on financial prudence, exper-
imentation, caution and training, we observed how other
logics were intertwined with interpretations, meanings
and questionings of the practice. In particular, the profes-
sional logic underscored care for educating children and
the political logic the risks associated with the image of
overfunded schools. These theorizations in turn both illus-
trated the competing logics in the field, but also the mech-
anisms through which conflict was managed by various
interventions and reform in the budgetary planning and
control process. Hence we see how the prevalence of com-
peting institutional logics both generated the problems
perceived by different actors in and around the budgetary
300 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
Fig. 2. Actors’ logics of action, practices and the mediation of institutional change.
process, and also gave rise to modifications, reforms and
revisions to the budgetary process to appease and manage
such conflicts. We might further posit that over the time
scale in which we have studied budgeting in education,
there is a recursive or iterative relationship between the
impact of competing logics and the technologies that act
as a contested practice between logics.
Conclusions
The focus of this paper has been upon the intervention
of budgetary techniques in the field of school education in
the UK occasioned by the 1988 Education Reform Act. Our
aim has been to explore the roles of budgetary techniques
in a field where dominant logics are in transition and mul-
tiple logics are competing. We observed how the practices
of budgeting and the interpretation of budget outcomes
were contested. Our findings showed how disputes over
the very meaning of budget results produced ongoing con-
flict and were the drivers for budgetary reforms in the field
of education that continued from the early 1990s up until
the present.
In Table 1, we outlined the characteristics of the extant
logics and new dominant logic in education in the UK to
show how the education field was being re-structured fol-
lowing government education. Although the introduction
of business logics into public sector fields has been a prom-
inent characteristic of ‘New Public Management’ changes,
the extant logics of professionalism and governance have
remained influential, and shaped the practices of budget-
ing since their introduction.
In this concluding section, we develop four proposi-
tions concerning accounting and budgeting practices,
and their interactions with processes of institutional
change. We hope that these tentative propositions might
stimulate further research and debate as to the role of
accounting practices in institutional changes in other
organizational fields.
In order to enable business logics, we observed the
introduction of resource allocation processes and the cre-
ation of centers with budgetary responsibility at school
level. Budgets were the intended carriers of business lo-
gic in the field of education that in turn restructured
school organizations. Senior Management teams, school
bursars, governing boards and various ‘budget holders’
were identified in order to enable and delimit the new
budgetary process. Budgeting, in our study operated both
as a symbol of the new dominant logic and was con-
structed to develop practices in accordance with that lo-
gic. The new business logic of schools created not only
the practices of budgetary planning, but also established
new roles and identities for head teachers and teacher
governors as responsibilized budget holders and deci-
sion- makers. LEAs no longer had an authority over
schools that was unchallenged. These new roles and
identities conflicted with the previous logic of gover-
nance in education, and the logic of and relations be-
tween teaching professionals:
Proposition 1. Budgetary practices define new responsi-
bilities and identities in a field that may conflict with roles
and identities defined by extant logics.
 M. Ezzamel et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 37 (2012) 281–303
We saw how the calculation of budget shortfalls and
budget surpluses both represented the schools. As new
budgetary practices established new representations of
the school and the field, then actors respond to changes
according to these representations. School heads with
unanticipated, unexpected and significant budget sur-
pluses would defend the new logic and interpret surpluses
in line with the rationales of the dominant logics. Those
schools and teachers disadvantaged by the new budget cal-
culations sought to interpret their situation that aligned
with previous logics and which also challenged the ratio-
nality of the new logic:
Proposition 2. Organizational actors disadvantaged by the
introduction of new budgetary practices will align inter-
pretations of budgeting with older logics.
As we noted the debates and conflicts caused the
phenomenon of budget balances – both favorable and
unfavorable generated different responses and under-
standings. In LEAs whose political ideology was consonant
with the political ideals of central government’s gover-
nance logic driving the educational reforms, LEAs used
their governance and authority to promote changes sup-
portive of the new business logic in schools. LEAs with
differing governing political coalitions were more likely
to be critical of the advantages and disadvantages enabled
by budgeting and attempt to intervene to maintain previ-
ous notions of fairness or address perceived ‘unfairness’
or ‘deprivation’. In this way we noted that the governance
logic of LEAs guided different responses according to the
political rationalities their governance logic entailed:
Proposition 3. Conflict between logics in a field is med-
iated by the homologies between the logics within the field
and the logics outside of the field that propel new logics
into a field.
The conflicts between budgetary practices and the
meanings put upon budgetary representations led to the
implementation of reforms to budget practices over
the period of our study. The LEAs attempted various
reforms at local level to contain budget variations and to
rationalize the holding of large budget carry forwards by
schools. Yet the advice and the changes suggested by LEAs
were insufficient to contain these budgetary outcomes and
the conflict they engendered. From the late 1990s we in-
stead saw various interventions (School Development
Plans, National Guidelines on Excessive School Balances,
Budgetary Control Mechanisms) by state agencies to influ-
ence and control these budget variations at school level. In
this way we observed the paradox that in order to protect
and reform budgeting interventions and actions were
made by central government that reflected a governance
logic rather than a business logic. While budgeting contin-
ues to hold a symbolic link to business logic, debates, con-
flicts and reforms (which we see continuing further as
economic conditions deteriorate), reforms of its material
practices have reflected the impact of conflicting logics,
such as governance:
301
Proposition 4. Through reforms, budgeting practices in a
field come to reflect the influence of logics other than the
logic that propels (symbolically) their entry into the field.
Clearly these propositions have been constructed on the
basis of our study of three LEA districts. There may be is-
sues of generalizability beyond those areas. Yet we offer
them for further consideration and research.
We entitled this paper ‘The Logics of Budgeting’ to sig-
nal how budgeting practices can come to reflect and enable
different logics in an educational field. Our study has, we
hope, demonstrated the subtle and nuanced ways in which
budgeting both enables changes in an organizational field,
and becomes an object of variation, dispute, and reform in
that field, where multiple logics prevail.
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