Description of impact
James’s doctoral thesis examined the emergence of Australian public sector accounting and management developments, and translated into several international refereed journal articles, books and professional publications.His main contribution has been to identify and foster alternative public sector accounting research in the early 1990s. He has been influential nationally and internationally in relation to understanding New Public Financial Management (NPFM) reforms, which have been adopted in many countries. His empirically based work highlights the problems of trying to explain such developments through simplistic explanatory variables and emphasises the need for alternative modes of analysis via interdisciplinary research approaches, more closely rooted in the different national traditions and values associated with the provision of public services.
James has co-edited 20 books and series on public sector management and accounting developments. The last publication was Guthrie, J., Marcon, G., Russo, S., Farneti, F. (eds) (2014), “Public Value Management, Measurement and Reporting”, Studies in Public and Non-Profit Governance series, Vol. 3, Emerald Publishing.
Journal articles include:
Broadbent, J. and Guthrie, J. (1992), “Changes in the Public Sector: A Review of Recent ‘Alternative’ Accounting Research”, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 5 (2), 3-31. Cited over 570 times.
Broadbent, J. and Guthrie, J. (2008), “Public Sector to Public Services: 20 years of ‘Alternative’ Accounting Research”, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 21 (2), 129-169. Cited over 520 times.
Guthrie, J., Olson, O. and Humphrey, C. (1999), “Debating Developments in New Public Financial Management: The Limits of Global Theorising and Some New Ways Forward”, Financial Accountability and Management, Vol. 15 Nos 3-4, pp. 209-228. Cited over 480 times and winner of the John Perrin Prize for best paper in the journal 1999.
Guthrie, J. (1998), “Application of Accrual Accounting in the Australian Public Sector — Rhetoric or Reality?”, Financial Accountability and Management, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 1-19. Cited over 590 times and winner of the inaugural John Perrin Prize for best paper in the journal 1998.
Steccolini, I., Salitere, I., and Guthrie, J. (2020, forthcoming), “The Role(s) of Accounting and Performance Measurement Systems in Contemporary Public Administration”, Public Administration.
Guthrie, J. and Martin-Sardesai, A. (2020), “Contemporary challenges in the public sector and services reporting, integrated reporting and beyond”, Francesca Manes-Rossi and Rebecca Levy Orelli (eds), Reflections on new trends in public sector reporting: Integrated reporting and beyond.
Martin-Sardesai, et al., (2020 forthcoming) “‘Transmitting Governments’ Higher Education Commercialisation to The Business School Trenches: The Accountingisation of Accounting Academics’ Research”, submitted to Meditari.
Guthrie, J. and Martin-Sardesai, A. (2019), “Outcomes-based metrics and research measurement in the Australian higher education sector: a fast-changing landscape”, Workshop Latrobe University, 2 December 2019.