A STUDY OF THE USE OF TARGETS IN THE PLANNING DOCUMENTS OF EXECUTIVE AGENCIES Noel S. Hyndman and Robert Anderson* INTRODUCTION The need to plan, control and report on the performance of public sector organisations has been a central theme in many UK government initiatives in the last two decades. The Financial Management Initiative of 1982 called for managers at all levels in central government to have: a clear view of their objectives, and means to assess, and wherever possible measure, outputs or performance in relation to these objectives (HM Government 1982, p. 5). Similar ideas are included in the Next Steps Initiative (Efficiency Unit, 1988), the Citizen's Charter (HM Government, 1991) and developments in education and health care. It has been suggested that the genesis of this focus can be traced back to the Fulton Report of 1968 (see Carter et al., 1992). This need to measure performance now pervades almost all public sector management and accounting systems, and is seen as an important facet of New Public Management (NPM). 1 Two key reasons advanced for measuring performance are, firstly, that it provides essential information to improve management within the public sector and, secondly, that it can form the basis for discharging accountability by the public sector. As Carter et al. state, the development of performance measurement systems has been: driven by three sets of linked preoccupations: the control of public expenditure, managerial competence and greater accountability (1992, p.180). This paper focuses on the second and third of these dimensions. The particular facet of this drive for `managerial competence' and `greater accountability' which is examined, is the role of quantification (specifically target setting) in these new-style management processes which were introduced to replace the former emphasis on administration. By considering a conventional planning and control paradigm, and an objectives-plan- targets-monitor-control approach (which underpins this paradigm), the Financial Accountability & Management, 13(2), May 1997, 0267-4424 ßBlackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 139 *The authors are respectively, Reader in Accounting in the School of Management, University of Ulster at Jordanstown; and former Professor of Accounting, Faculty of Business, Brock University, Canada. They gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments made by two anonymous referees and participants at the Irish Accounting and Finance Conference, Dundalk, May 1996, and for the financial support of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants. Address for correspondence: Noel Hyndman, School of Management, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB, N Ireland.