Accounting for public value

Traditional textbook distinctions between public and private accounting have become increasingly problematic as private sector reporting and management techniques proliferate in public sector contexts, and as the public sector has become ever more complex. In moving beyond traditional critiques of New Public Management, this chapter suggests a more open, participatory approach to full(er) cost and full(er) value accounting. Shifting the focus away from reducing costly inputs, ‘balancing the books’, or reductive ‘bottom-line’ accounting, towards a more open ‘value-ing’ of matters of concern. In exploring such examples, I argue that alternative accounts must offer genuine alternatives to disciplinary or coercive measurement practices, instead being iteratively produced through and with a community of stakeholders. Furthermore, I argue that such accounts must go beyond ‘measurement’, speaking to deeper social and planetary concerns in a manner that is convincing, disrupts the social order, and redraws contested boundaries such that we see the world anew.