Making the user useful? How translation processes managerialize voice in public organizations

• Date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Christian Huber,Nathalie Iloga Balep,Jacob Reilley
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12249
• Published date: 01 November 2020

Received: 22 February2019 Revised: 16 March 2020 Accepted:17 March 2020

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12249

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Making the user useful? How translation processes

managerialize voice in public organizations

Jacob Reilley1Nathalie Iloga Balep1Christian Huber2

1Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences,

Department of Management Accounting and

Control, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg,

Germany

2Department of OperationsManagement,

Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg,

Denmark

Correspondence

JacobReilley, Faculty of Economic and Social Sci-

ences,Department of Management Accounting

andControl, Helmut Schmidt University, Holsten-

hofweg85, 22043, Hamburg, Germany.

Email:reilleyj@hsu-hh.de

Fundinginformation

DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft, Grant/Award

Number:627097

Abstract

One of the most pervasive topics in public management discussions

in recent decades is the notion of user orientation. More than ever,

external stakeholders expect public organizations to “get closer” to

users and to treat citizens as knowledgeable consumers of public

services with a view and a voice. Existing literature highlights how,

through a wide range of calculative practices, information gathered

from and about public service users is assembled into descriptions

of organizational activity that are useful for managers in address-

ing issues of surveillance and internal control as well as legitimation.

In our multiple case study of hospitals and prisons in Germany, we

introduce a two-step model of translation for explaining how user

voice is transformed into management objects, which are then fur-

ther translated into organizationally “useful” information. In doing

so, we makethree contributions to further our understanding of how

user views are formatted to organizational activity and put to use by

managers in the public sector. First, we developeda model of trans-

lation that highlights how user voices and the prospect of user ori-

entation are enacted across diverse organizational contexts.Second,

we found that different types of organizations deploy distinct meth-

ods of accounting, which nevertheless make user feedback useful in

similar ways: to develop information that helps construct an image

of performance, gain financial leverage,and enact compliance. Third,

we found that in addition to quantitative forms of accounting, nar-

rative accounting techniques playedimportant roles in making users

“useful” in public organizations.

KEYWORDS

accounting, management, translation, usefulness, user voice

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, dis-

tribution and reproduction in any medium, providedthe original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

c

2020 The Authors. Financial Accountability & Management published by John Wiley & SonsLtd

Financial Acc & Man. 2020;36:401–419. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam 401

402 REILLEY ET AL.

1INTRODUCTION

Relationships between public sector organizations and public service users have changed quite a bit over the

past several decades. With the rise of New Public Management (Hood, 1991; Hyndman & Lapsley, 2016), indi-

viduals have been increasingly addressed as knowledgeable consumers of public services, rather than as pas-

sive claimants (Arnaboldi, Lapsley, & Dal Molin, 2016; Köppe, Ewert, & Blank, 2016; Watkins & Arrington, 2007).

Under a “user-oriented” public management paradigm, the citizen has been idealized as a user with a view

and a voice, someone whose opinions and experiences ought to be considered when assessing service provision

(Pflueger, 2016). The push toward more user orientation has been articulated in numerous reforms (Fotaki, 2011),

many of which intend to embolden individuals and grant them new avenues for participation (Newman & Clarke,

2009; Richardson, 1983). Increased attention to users, however, is not always an end in itself, but the means to

achieving broader managerialist goals (Fountain, 2001, p. 59). According to proponents of a “customer-focused

agenda” in the public sector, “getting closer” to users is the key to ensuring quality, holding providers account-

able, and increasing efficiency (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Pfeffer & Coote, 1991). Thus, the rhetorical conversion

of the citizen into an active assessor of service delivery is not merely about empowerment; it is also a strategic

attempt to constrain user voice so that it only speaks in organizationally useful terms (cf. O’Leary & Miller, 1987,

p. 261).

Within this context, managers of public organizations have found a number of ways to “make use” of user voices

by formatting them to organizational activity. Most commonly,this is accomplished through quantitative practices of

accounting.Satisfaction surveys, balanced scorecards, quality indicators, and various other accounting instruments are

employedwithin public organizations to transform user opinions and concerns into numerical terms. Such quantitative

accounting techniques do not necessarily reflect the preferences and opinions of service users. Rather, they mediate

what aspects of user voice are actually brought to the attention of managerial staff (Pflueger,2016). Through account-

ing,user voice becomes embedded in decision-making processes (Boyce, 2000; Simmons & Brennan, 2017; Wisniewski,

2001), where it can be used to hone an organization’s image (Fountain, 2001) or demonstrate performance toward

external stakeholders (Christensen, Newberry,& Potter, 2018). So, although reforms have propagated the idea that

users should voice their opinions, the tools deployed to “listen in” havedistorted what is heard and acted upon within

organizations.

In this paper, we focus on the ways in which different organizations attempt to “make users useful”; that is, how

managers and others translate the opinions, experiences, and desires of individuals into management objects, which

can then be used to achieve organizationally defined aims. Despite the push toward more user orientation in pub-

lic services, we know relatively little about how the prerogative for organizations to incorporate user voice is oper-

ationalized in organizational practice. Toaddress this gap, we draw on a multiple case study of hospitals and prisons in

Germany.

Ourstudy makes three contributions. First, we develop a model of translation, which helps conceptualize how differ-

ent types of public organizations makeusers “useful” through various forms of accounting. With this model, we open up

possibilities for comparing diverse types of organizations, which encounter similar reform pressures. Second, we shed

light on how different types of organizations make user feedback useful in similar ways: to develop information that

can help construct an image of performance, gain financial leverage, and enact compliance. Across diverse organiza-

tional contexts,distinct modes of accounting for user voice help organizations satisfy similar interests and goals. Third,

we show how, in addition to quantitative accounting, narrative accounting techniques were central in making users

“useful” in public organizations. The means for translating voice into something useful for organizations thus appears

in multiple forms of accounting, all of which produce an image of voicethat is potentially disconnected from actual user

concerns.