Understanding transparency in UK defence management

• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12194
• Author: John Louth,Gabriela Thompson

Received: 27 January 2017 Revised: 12 June 2018 Accepted: 25 June 2018

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12194

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Understanding transparency in UK

defence management

Gabriela Thompson1John Louth2

1Centre for Defence Studies, Department of War

Studies, King’s College London,UK

2RoyalU nited Services Institute, London,UK

Correspondence

GabrielaThompson, Department of War Studies,

King’sCollege London, Strand, London WC2R

2LS,UK.

Email:gabriela.thompson@kcl.ac.uk

Abstract

Transparency has become a keyword i nUK defence management,

but its meaning is unclear; there are those that argue that it is

too abstract to be implemented in its true essence, whilst others

argue that it is inherently incompatible with the New Public Man-

agement Model which dominates public sector management today.

Through observing the way individuals operationalise the concepti n

the defence community, we attempt to illustratewhat transparency

seems to mean in practice by focussing on how it is understood and

recognising the impact it has and is expected to have.

KEYWORDS

defence management, discourse, managerialism, New Public Man-

agement, transparency

1INTRODUCTION

The aim of this article is to understand what is meant by transparency in the context of defence and security.In par-

ticular,we consider how the notion of transparency is constructed and implemented, with a view to understanding its

effects and how these are legitimised within the defence community.1

In order to do so, we must look to understand what is meant by “transparency”.“Every event is conceptualized in

some relation to the past and the future, and thus narrativized” (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera,2016, p. 3); transparency as

a concept is doctrinally related to New Public Management (NPM) theory2(dominant in UK public management since

the 1980s), and thus intrinsically linked to the managerial narrative(Hood, 1991).

There are two doctrinal components of NPM in particular which affect the construction of the notion of trans-

parency and its practice in the UK defence sector3: the need for hands-on professional management, leading to the

clear assignment of responsibility and thus accountability,and the requirement for explicit standards for measures of

performance (Hood, 1991, p. 4). In practice, these doctrines

refer to: coverage(including a focus on general government); recording basis (including accruals accounting); val-

uation and recognition (including the measurement of government assets); and classification (including the dis-

aggregation of expenditureon an economic and functional basis). (Heald, 2003, p. 733)

The need for some form of measurement of transparency in public management in general arose from concerns

regarding integrity in the running of public business (Heald, 2003, p. 725). The primary critique of the pre-NPM

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2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam FinancialAcc & Man. 2019;35:246–257.