MODERNISING GOVERNMENT: THE CALCULATING SELF, HYBRIDISATION AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT LIISA KURUNMA ¨ KI AND PETER MILLER* INTRODUCTION How can we assess the performance of others? This apparently simple question has been at the heart of management and cost accounting for a century or so. The calculating self is central to this aspiration to evaluate and act upon the actions of others (Miller, 1994). The individual endowed with the ability to compare and calculate the costliness of his or her actions, and that of others, owes much to the battery of devices that management accounting has developed. Standard costing and budgeting, Return on Investment, Discounted Cash Flow, Breakeven Analysis, Activity Based Costing, the Balanced Scorecard and much more all share this aspiration to create and shape the capacity of individuals to calculate and to measure the performance of themselves and others. The Modernising Government agenda in the UK, as it has developed in the past decade or so, poses a particular challenge for this desire to measure perfor- mance. For the aspiration to create calculating selves, which has extended from the private sector to the public sector since the mid-1980s, comes into contact here with a separate process: the hybridisation of expertise and organisational forms that the Modernising Government agenda requires and inspires (Miller, Kurunma ¨ki and O’Leary, 2006). In the process of seeking to make public service providers accountable, a diverse range of experts and professionals have become hybridised in varying degrees. Medical professionals, nurses, physiotherapists, * The authors are from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. This study would not have been possible without the willing co-operation provided by staff at the organisations studied. The authors gratefully acknowledge their input. The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was part of the programme of the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science. For more information visit: www.lse.ac.uk/depts/carr. The researchers wish to acknowledge also the funding provided by the PD Leake Trust (a charity associated with the ICAEW), the King’s Fund, and the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines. The authors are grateful for the comments of two anonymous referees, and for comments on an earlier version of this paper received at the CIMA Workshop on New Public Management at the University of Edinburgh, September 2003. They would like to thank Iida Keto and Debbie Ranger for their research and administrative support. Address for correspondence: Liisa Kurunma ¨ ki, London School of Economics, Department of Accounting and Finance, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. e-mail: l.kurunmaki@lse.ac.uk Financial Accountability & Management, 22(1), February 2006, 0267-4424 #Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 87