The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3574.htm
AAAJ
23,3
392
Received 9 December 2008
Revised 12 June 2009
Accepted 4 September 2009
Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Vol. 23 No. 3, 2010
pp. 392-419
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3574
DOI 10.1108/09513571011034352
Asset management in cities:
polyphony in action?
Michela Arnaboldi
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, and
Irvine Lapsley
Management School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine asset management in three cities. It is informed by
polyphony as a theoretical perspective and draws on the fact-building process to explore the practice
of asset management in these study settings.
Design/methodology/approach A comparative case study approach was adopted to have a
broader understanding of the levels of complexity in the study of polyphony in asset management.
With this aim, the three Scottish cities were analysed presenting a spectrum of city types.
Findings The paper finds evidence of polyphony. The three cases show different degrees of
controversies and achievements, providing a highly variegated picture of the effectiveness in pursuing
an asset management policy.
Originality/value Polyphony recognises the many voices of actors present in organisations. This
perspective on asset management is an important, but relatively neglected facet of this aspect of city
management. The paper provides an insight in this, showing the potential for the multiple voices of the
many different actors within local government, all of whom may have distinct views on asset
utilisation.
Keywords Assets management, Cities, Scotland, Public sector orgainzations, Case studies
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Each person has her or his own unique voice, grounded in the body, formed by experience,
and shaped by perception. When people in groups organized or are organized to work
together to accomplish a complex task none could achieve alone, there are at least as many
voices as there are people. However, some are louder. More articulate, or more powerful than
others. Often, these are the voices of those who direct the work and they usually speak in the
same discourse. Some voices remain unheard or silent, their words unspoken or experiences
unspeakable, their discourses unacceptable or undeveloped, their contributions to the
community limited (Hazen, 1993, p. 16).
This paper examines the neglected area of asset management in cities. As local
government organisations, cities are complex entities on a number of levels: their
relationship to central government, the influence of the electorate, the wide range of
services which they offer and the multiplicity of professional groups which occupy
organisational space within the local authority. This complex setting has a resonance
with contemporary debates around organizational polyphony (Kornberger et al., 2006).
The diversity of assets held by cities (e.g. schools, roads, monuments, houses)
accentuates the potential for multiple discourses within different professional cadres,
who have responsibilities for a variety of assets. A case study approach is used in this
paper to investigate the thoughts, actions and discourses of key actors in the different Asset
disciplines involved in asset management in three very different cities.
The practice of City Asset Management in local authorities is heteronomous and
management in
involves a variety of different actors such as, departmental managers, accountants, cities
and politicians. In this paper we explore the role that accountants play in this complex
process and in relation to other groups with interests in, or responsibilities for, capital
assets. In this respect, capital accountants in local authorities offer a distinct rationality 393
to asset management. Accountants bring formality and calculation to bear in the
matter of asset management, but not with a pervasive impact. Indeed, within these case
studies there is evidence that the deployment of accounting procedures has been
adopted to prevent conflicts with other managers. Other professionals within this
setting define their own meanings of asset management in discourses with networks of
professionals in other local authorities, their professional associations and government
agencies. A contested discourse results in which accounting is largely crowded out.
However, the three cities included in this study offer evidence of shades of
polyphony, which are shaped by the different contexts of these cities. In this study we
encountered what can be considered polyphony at one case study setting, with an
attenuated form of polyphony at another case study setting. The final case study
reveals the significance of local context with a form of dualism, rather than the great
variety of voices that you expect in the polyphonic organisation.
To show this variety of outcomes, to articulate the polyphonic debate, and to
contextualise them in the specific settings of the three cities, the rest of this article is
structured in the following sections: the next section presents the context of asset
management in cities; in section three we illustrate the theoretical framework we
endorse polyphony, drawing on actor network theory. The fourth section is
dedicated to presenting the methodology, which is a key element for capturing the
variety of voices in asset management; then we present the results, followed by
discussion and conclusion.

Research context: asset management in local government

The management of city assets is a key strategic responsibility of city managers. The
location and condition of city assets will shape the nature of services provided by the
city, constraining or offering opportunities for service development and
redevelopment. The centrality of this task in the fulfilment of city visions is a key
focal point for the diverse group of actors interested in city assets in the fulfilment of
their particular professional preoccupations. However, the management of city assets
is a considerable challenge on a number of dimensions. First, the diversity of the asset
base may be problematic. This may range from assets with almost indefinite lives
(such as roads), if properly maintained, to capital equipment (vehicles, computers,
heating systems), which inexorably depreciates as services are delivered. Aside from
the problematic issue of asset lives, the scope for significant variation within different
categories of assets also exists: assets with very specific service purposes and with
limited opportunities for alternative use (such as schools or libraries); assets which are
modern concrete structures, or older listed buildings, or even ancient heritage assets.
While the vintage of assets may also pose distinctive challenges for local
authorities, the nature of the financing of asset acquisitions may prove difficult with
the increasing use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the UK. This raises issues
over ownership beyond the contractual agreement, with difficulties over the
assessment of the division of risk between purchaser and provider, and concerns
AAAJ over the level of operating costs compared to conventional long term finance by
borrowing (Broadbent and Laughlin, 1999; Froud, 2003; Shaoul, 2005). Also, the
23,3 purpose of assets recreational, community, or functional as in educational provision
or social care may impose constraints on the management of city services (Young,
1994; Pallot, 1997; Bond and Dent, 1998; Donnelly and Shiu, 1999; Fitzgerald and
Melvin, 2002).
394 In this context the Scottish Executive[1] published in 2005 a non-statutory advisory
note, addressing the specific problem of asset management. This government guidance
makes city asset management an object of discourse within and beyond the local
government entities, themselves. This note acknowledges the increasing pressures on
local authorities due to tight budgets, new capital funding regimes and external needs
and it suggests a more formal approach to asset management:
With the introduction of the prudential capital regime, pressure on revenue budgets to fund
capital infrastructure investment is a permanent management issue for each authority.
Authorities are under direct pressure to improve the school estate, social housing provision
and the condition of local roads, and evidence of good asset management may become a
condition of discretionary grants. Good asset management can also help the authority
contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, which is part of its obligations
under Best Value (Scottish Executive, 2005).
The Scottish Executive statement is explicitly linked to Best Value, which, in recent
years, has been a major obligatory point of passage for local authorities across both
Scotland and the UK (Martin, 2000; Ball et al., 2002; Boyne et al., 2002; Enticott et al.,
2002; Higgins et al., 2004; Entwistle and Laffin, 2005; Arnaboldi and Lapsley, 2008). By
positioning asset management under the umbrella of Best Value, the government
emphasises performance management, a theme that is notable for its prominence
throughout the advisory note. For instance:
Most important of all, appropriate use of assets in the right location can make the difference
between good and poor service delivery. The whole point of asset management is to ensure
that the front line services provided by the authority are done so via the most effective and
efficient property portfolio.
Efficient asset management will enable an authority to:
. Assess the make-up of the best portfolio required to deliver the given services.
.
Minimise occupation costs, and maximise property efficiency.
.
Maximise efficiency of service delivery.
.
Facilitate long term planning in the context of corporate objectives.
.
Develop corporate thinking.
.
Develop valuable long term partnerships.
.
Free up resources for reinvestment, should the financial policy of the authority allow it,
and subject to the Prudential Code.
.
Allocate resources effectively to areas of greatest need.
.
Account to the public for its use of public assets (Scottish Executive, 2005).
The government advised local authorities to develop an overarching policy for asset
management in which accounting should assume a central role. This resonates with a
greater role for accountants in asset policy, which has been advocated since the late
1980s, when the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA)
published guidance for introducing capital accounting in local authorities (CIPFA, Asset
1989). These developments can be seen as a very deliberate positioning of local
authority accountants in the sphere of asset management an attempt at claiming a
management in
central influence on the organisation, management and stewardship of city assets. The cities
promise of capital accounting is in its capacity to displace the prevailing expenditure
driven logic, which had a grip-like hold on public finance, with an altogether more
strategic view. However, the application of capital accounting has been controversial 395
and several problems have been encountered, such as initial asset recognition, asset
categorisation, and valuation (Deakin, 1999). Nevertheless, the UK government
strategy is of particular importance as it strengthened the role of the accountants in the
management of assets. Accountants have been assigned a role of putting order into
asset management, by defining a common way of measuring assets and then
rationalising their planning and management.
This highlighting of the potential contribution of accountants adds another element
of the complexity of this policy: the presence of professional groups, which comprise all
the full-time permanent officials of cities with interests in asset management. This is
the particular perspective which this paper focuses on, in its search for an
understanding of whether the strength of these professional groupings (their training,
language, professional organisations, jurisdictional knowledge base and networks)
shapes the management of city assets, and if so how. This variety of settings for
different types of assets may lead to different discourses in setting management
policies, in which not only internal voices are important but also those of external
actors: different users (the community, elderly, commercial stakeholders), central
government policies (over, for example social care, and educational provision),
professional bodies.
Also, national networks may have significant influence. In Scottish local
government, an important advisory role is played by the Convention of Scottish
Local Authorities (COSLA). This body seeks to represent all local authorities in
Scotland in any national negotiations over public policy or labour disputes. It also has
a fostering and communication role within local government. As part of this fostering
role, it offers guidance to local government on what constitutes best practice.
Specifically on the subject of asset management, COSLA has established an executive
committee group, namely the Resources & Capacity Executive Group. This group
has been delegated responsibility by COSLA to develop policies for asset management
to offer advice to local authorities. This particular development highlights the
existence of multiple voices with direct interests in the issue of city asset management.
The presence of COSLA in the asset management policy arena presents yet another
actor, another voice.
This phenomenon of a multiplicity of voices, with different interests around
professionalism, political and managerial positioning, and stakeholder expectations
underlines the need for the theoretical framework of polyphony to capture and make
sense of discussions of asset management in this organisational context, as elaborated
on, further, below.

The theoretical framework: polyphony

The concept of polyphony is well established within the field of management and
organisation studies (Barry and Elmes, 1997; Carter et al., 2003, Clegg et al., 2006;
Trausan-Matu et al., 2007; Belova et al., 2008; Sullivan and McCarthy, 2008, Shotter,
2008) for interpreting the coexistence of different voices within organisations.
AAAJ However, this construct has had little consideration or exposure within the accounting
literature. Management scholars imported this concept from both music and literature,
23,3 which consider polyphony in different ways. Musical polyphony is the symbol of
harmony and order, where diverse instruments (voices) contribute to achieve a richer
and complete chorus (Wildman, 1998). Literary polyphony is the representation of
different voices, which usually is far from being ordered or harmonious (Sidorkin,
396 2002). Both have been inspirational to authors as they put voices and sound as central
in their writing, but literary approaches have gained greater diffusion, following the
increasing interest in narrative approaches since the 1990s (e.g. Boje, 1991; 1995;
Czarniawska, 1998; Gabriel, 2000; Rhodes and Brown, 2005).
The literary concept of the polyphonic organization has been developed by Hazen
(1993) highlighting two needs for organisation studies. First, she advocates increasing
recognition of the value of narrative approaches; and she highlights the need to move
away from the visual representation of organisation, to give space to the stories that
organisational actors tell us. Drawing on Bakhtins work (1984), Hazen (1993)
highlights three elements that need to be analysed to capture the polyphonic
organisation: dialogue, utterance and author. Dialogue is the way actors communicate
and it is always present in organizations in an ongoing multilayered process. Utterance
is the basic component of dialogue, always incorporating values, background and
personal perspectives and that may be inserted in written or spoken communications.
Finally there are the authors, i.e. every person communicating within the organization.
As Hazen (1993) highlights it within dialogue, authors relate inter subjectively to one
another through utterances, each expressed in the spoken or written word. This
process is a continuing polyphony, with voices and partners changing, never
completed.
The second proposal by Hazen (1993) is to pay attention to less dominant voices
within the organisation and to consider the unheard or the silent, as they may
contribute to interpretations and capture the complexity of organisational issues and
change. This issue has been elaborated upon by other authors (Boje, 1991, 1995;
Kornberger et al., 2006), highlighting that there is always a plurality of voices, which
continuously communicate their vision through dialogue. Polyphony is always present
in organisations, even though it may be silenced by a dominant discourse. One of its
elements is for example the presence of different directors, managers and heads:
although a unique strategy or plan may be formally presented, its development is then
translated by different actors within the organisation, making sense of its meaning and
transferring this sense throughout the organisation (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991;
Weick, 1995).
This diversity also raises the issue of inter-professional rivalry, which has attracted
increasing interest in accounting research, starting from the influential work of Abbot
(1988, 1991) and Amstrong (1985, 1987). Particularly interesting in the polyphonic
organisation is how the accounting develops in competition, or by cooperating or
hybridising with other occupations (Radcliffe et al., 1994; Walker, 2004; Kurunmaki,
2004; Miller et al., 2008). In analysing this process, Cooper and Robson (2006) suggest
studying all of the sites where professionalization may take place: not only professional
bodies and regulators, but also organisation themselves and all the bodies and
networks which may diffuse professional rules and norms (Cooper and Robson, 2006).
Rivalry, cooperation or hybridisation may emerge from the polyphonic
organisation, but it always important to recognise differences, an issue further
elaborated by Kornberger et al. (2006). The authors highlight differences as a possible
source of conflict, drawing on Lyotards (1988) concept of the differend that is a Asset
situation where there is an irreconcilable conflict between parties, one that cannot be
equitably resolved, because no judgment rule is applicable to all the parties
management in
simultaneously. When these conflicts need to be dealt with, organisations often make cities
recourse to the hierarchy for resolution. However, interventions by a higher authority
may create discontent in less powerful voices, hiding their discourse.
An alternative road to imposed hierarchical solutions to management challenges is 397
listening to the various voices within the organisation, searching for the matching of
interests. This second strategy moves around the concept of translation, which is
central to Latours work (1987), particularly actor-network theory (ANT). While ANT
is widely used within the accounting literature (see for example Preston et al., 1992;
Chua, 1995; Gendron et al., 2007) it has not been used in conjunction with polyphony[2].
The strengths of ANT are its capacity for yielding rich empirics through concepts such
as translation and interessment. Latour calls translation the interpretation given by
fact-builders of their interests and that of the people enrolled (Latour, 1987, p. 108). A
voice, a spokesman (Latour, 1987), who needs to develop and promote his/her idea,
searches for allies sharing similar interessment (Latour, 1987) to start a dialogue with
different actors in the attempt to deal with rising controversies. This process may be
enacted by voices who want a common, dominant discourse within the organisation,
but it may be also started by unheeded, peripheral, voices in the attempt to gain
recognition within the organisation. In both cases actors may look also outside their
organisations, searching for strategic allies who share similar problems and may
amplify their voice internally. In this process of amplification another element of
Latours work (1987) is central, that is fact-building; actors may use facts, calculations
and numbers, to support their ideas and to surround their claims with evidence. When
voices are unheard within the organisation, fact-building is a strategy to gain attention,
especially if facts are legitimated by external actors or networks. This strategy has
been highlighted as particularly beneficial in the accounting and auditing fields,
evidencing the mutual process by which actors and numbers gain relevance and
legitimation (Chua, 1995; Gendron et al., 2007; Mennicken, 2008).
Asset management is an area that is irredeemably characterised by conflict,
disputes and differing interpretations: different actors are rooted in the diversity of
their perceptions of reality (for instance, a road is different from a monument), in their
interpretation of this reality (a road may be seen as place to be maintained in good
shape or it can be seen as accounting item, with a value to be consumed) and over
contested claims of what is a priority. Thus, in the context of public sector accounting,
asset management is quintessentially polyphonic (Kornberger et al., 2006). In the
multilayered organisation of cities the competencies and the background of managers
are crucial for both understanding the origin of conflicts but also for analysing when
different voices are able to meet and develop a common discourse or not.

Research approach
This paper adopted a case study approach (Stake, 1995), investigating three case study
settings, to which we refer throughout the paper as Cosmos, Indus and Rura. These
fictitious names have been selected to preserve the anonymity of the cities and key
informants who collaborated with this study.
We adopted a comparative case study approach to have a broader understanding of
the levels of complexity in our study of polyphony in asset management. With this aim,
the three cities present a spectrum of city types (Table I). Cosmos is a major
AAAJ cosmopolitan city, with a population of nearly 500,000 people. Cosmos has a diverse
variety of assets, including cultural heritage assets, natural assets, social infrastructure
23,3 assets. Indus is an industrial city, with a population of nearly 150,000 within the City
boundaries, but with more than 300,000 residents within a 30-minute drive of the city
centre. It has an extensive road network, social infrastructure (school, libraries). It also
has considerable industrial estates as part of its economic regeneration programme.
398 Rura is the capital city of a rural county. It has a population of nearly 60,000 persons. It
has some light industry, but is predominantly agricultural-related business. It has
heritage assets, modern housing estates, leisure assets and extensive road networks.
These three cities provided useful settings for analysing the research questions of:
how are asset management policies implemented? To what extent, if any, have
accounting thought and practices (as encapsulated in capital accounting) penetrated
these authorities? Is there a common approach to asset management, or are there
different voices as in a Babel (Hazen, 1993; Kornberger et al., 2006).
The complexity of asset management necessitates community engagement with a
range of external stakeholders (citizens, the elderly, schools, commercial activities),
politicians and central governments. Given the focus of the reform from which this
study originated (Scottish Executive, 2005), our attention is directed at managers, as
they are dominant actors within this process. Much of the literature (government
guidance, professional accounting bodies publications) addresses the concerns and
actions of managers. This raises issues over whether primacy can be given to a
managerial voice or managerial voices in the processes of asset management. Though
the boundary may be not always clear (as for example in the case of national networks
of managers), this focus is important for the interpretation of polyphony in action,
given the centrality of management in official guidance.
The main source of data was face-to-face interviews with all the voices around the
management of assets in the cities that were studied. Preliminary documentary
analysis and internet sources provided information for selecting the informants to be
included in the analysis. As suggested by authors elaborating on polyphony (Hazen,
1993; Moriceau, 2007) we interviewed all the informants who may have a voice in the
management of assets: asset managers, facility managers, service managers, technical
support staff, financial managers, accountants, and corporate planners. In identifying
informants an analysis of the assets managed by the three cities was made (see table
above). This revealed a commonality of assets held at each local authority, but with
some differentiation over the background of those responsible for these assets.
However the only professional group (Rawson, 1994), which emerges was accountants.

Cosmos Indus Rura

Population 500,000 150,000 60,000

Type of Roads, and roads Roads, and roads Roads, and roads infrastructures
assets infrastructures infrastructures Transportation
Transportation Transportation Housing
Housing Housing Schools
Schools Schools Cultural heritage
Table I. Cultural heritage Industrial sites Land and natural heritage
The main attributes of Economic Prosperous Post-industrial, relatively Post-agricultural, growth in
the three cities situation deprived service activities
The background of the other informants was varied although occupying a similar Asset
position within local authorities. The only common, professional, element is for the
roads and infrastructure department with a prevailing presence of engineers.
management in
The panel of interviews was enlarged when informants spontaneously related their cities
discourse to other actors in the organisation. The interviews were unstructured; they
started with a brief introduction of the topic and the main themes that we wanted to
address. Letting informants speak freely on the topic helped in analysing their 399
language, their discourse, the possible internal and external networks of which they are
a part, the perspective adopted in managing assets, the contact with other voices and
their strength within the city. Overall, 21 formal interviews were held from January
2007 to March 2008. The average duration of the interviews was one hour, and they
were all transcribed. The interview data were complemented by documentary analysis
not only before but also after the site visits in order to get a better insight into the
different voices in place and to achieve a triangulation of data (Denzin, 1978). The
material was then analysed tracking the different voices emerging, identifying
patterns across and within the cases: the presence of different organisational structures
in the three cities: the discourse of the actors belonging to different areas of the
authorities, the assonance or dissonance to ideas, and the physical distance. These
understandings were enhanced by observations at site visits as the authors had the
possibility to see where the actors were located, and to meet and have informal
discussions with them.

The cities: voices and dominant discourses in asset management

The results of this study showed different discourses and pictures of polyphony in the
case study settings. We categorise the findings at the three sites as:
(1) polyphony in action (Cosmos);
(2) attenuated polyphony (Indus); and
(3) dualism (Rura).

Cosmos: polyphony in action

Cosmos is a large urban city with six main departments within its local government
administration. The variety of assets governed is wide, as is the stakeholders involved
in their use. Following the directions of the Scottish Executive, but also their strategic
mission to have an overall sustainable development, the authority assigned the
responsibility for defining a unitary asset management plan to its City Development
Department in 2005. This corporate level initiative was intended to create a dominant,
unifying voice across all the departments.
The City Development Director (CDD) is the translator of this unifying ambition.
The approach adopted in developing the asset management policy was hierarchical. It
introduced a new language, in which values and economic sustainability are the
recurrent utterances. The CDD described their approach as ordered, clear, transparent
and oriented to the creation of value for both the authorities and external stakeholders.
However, the asset management practices in certain areas of Cosmos were pictured as
messy:
In terms of childrens services, I get totally confused with how they operate, I dont really
understand it. They have a lot of childrens services out of random buildings, and what were
in the process of doing at the moment is a review of all the kinds of services that would be
held for young children up to five (CDD at Cosmos).
AAAJ The new approach is positioned by the CDD as an alternative to the current practices,
which are considered neither transparent nor economically sustainable. The desire to
23,3 set a new economic rationality is substantiated by the use of assessment methods that
are legitimated externally. The condition of assets is defined with a four category scale:
A, for excellent condition; B, good condition; C for satisfactory condition and D for poor
condition. This scale provides, in the words of the CDD, an immediate picture on
400 future outlays. This evaluation is made only on a sample of total assets, but it is
considered reliable enough to give an indication of the investment and disposal
activities. This is the major preoccupation of the corporate level in the light of overall
financial sustainability, as the following comment shows:
[. . .] because this authority is always under funded we have a need to obtain as much as
possible in the way of capital receipts from the sale of properties. So I mean its a case of
reviewing the property to see where we can get better use of them all the time (CDD at
Cosmos).
The rigid approach of the CDD softens when talking about roads and when specific
questions on this type of assets were made, the director referred the researchers to talk
directly to the functional managers in road services.
Roads and transport managers are the second voice at Cosmos, and though it is not
dominant, it is recognised and perceived as well governed by the City Development
Director. However, the approach at the roads department is significantly different from
the corporate unit. The director clearly emphasises that the definition of an asset
management plan should not start from scratch, but it should be an assembling of
data, which they already have, into a structured, maybe different, format.
Numbers, facts and technical measures are considered central in asset management
and they underlined the progress made in assessing the condition of assets in recent
years. Previously, the inspection of roads was visual and depicted as subjective,
unreliable and unrepeatable:
[. . .] historically, all road maintenance assessments and inspections were done using visual
inspections. [. . .] Its not reliable. If you sent a couple of engineers out and got them to look at
a road and score it, and then you went back with another group of staff and went back to the
same bit of road and did it again, you didnt get repeatable results, because at the end of the
day its just about peoples observations and their views (Director of Roads at Cosmos).
Now the measurement is considered scientific, objective and reliable:
Over the last few years, theres been the development of a thing called the Scanner, which is a
van with a bar along the front with 12 lasers and they take readings of the carriageway. They
basically read 3 different parameters: rutting; longitudinal profile; and texture. And this has
given a mechanism for giving us readings, which we can now give an assessment of the road
condition (Director of Roads at Cosmos).
The meaningfulness of these facts is further legitimated by the participation of
Cosmos managers in a national network for Roads and Infrastructure, which includes
all the local authorities in Scotland. Despite the objectivity of the new data, due to a
lack of time in revising the database, the Cosmo asset plan was drafted initially on the
basis of the traditional visual data. But the desire to move to the new data is high, and
they have already used them to attract the attention of the corporate level, showing
that the under investment in roads will cause serious and potentially irreversible
problems within five-to-ten years.
 The lack of funding and backlog maintenance was a major motivation of the roads Asset
managers, which was explicitly attributed to what they regarded as a non-rational
allocation, made by politicians, of the budget among functional areas:
management in
cities
I think one of the problems you have with politicians is that youre constantly obliged to try
and argue youre corner. I suppose because theres somebody arguing from education saying
the schools are falling apart, and somebody else is coming in saying if you dont spend
more money on social work children will be starving and so on. So you have to argue your 401
corner to get a bigger piece of the cake (Director of Roads at Cosmos).
They acknowledge that budget priorities are decided ultimately by city politicians,
who are very careful in listening to the voice of the electorate. In criticising this
approach a contest ensued between roads managers and the education department,
which they considered as over funded. The roads department observed that the voice
of education, enshrined in childrens needs, presents a more emotional discourse than
road conditions. They underlined this as a general situation for road management
across Scotland, commenting on the importance of the roads network and picturing it
as the ideal place for more rational discourses on asset management.
Another voice at Cosmos highlighted the importance of external links with similar
Directors elsewhere: housing. The link among housing departments was pushed by the
Scottish governments requirement of all cities to conduct a conditions survey of
housing properties. The initial survey was made at Cosmos in 2001 by external
consultants, covering 10 per cent of their properties. The data were considered
immediately an objective measure of the assets condition, which led housing
managers to replicate the survey internally, covering all houses. These measures are
now used to draw up what they characterised as an integrated cycle:
So the cycle is: stock/condition/survey; establish the condition of the stock; get that
information as up to date as possible; use that to draw up your investment plans and your
expenditure plans; update the database with the new information; and then just keep going
round in a circle (Housing Director at Cosmos).
So, housing is another voice, with their own, separate, way of planning. The
legitimation of their uniqueness is emphasised by another government requirement:
their separate treatment within the financial accounts. Cosmos housing director
remarked the presence of two accounts: a housing revenue account (HRA) and a non
housing revenue account (non-HRA). The HRA includes the income that comes from
rent; these incomes are ring fenced and the money that goes out can only be spent on
housing. In the non HRA, the money comes from local property taxes and it cannot be
spent on housing. The housing department emphasized this separation:
Council tax payers dont subsidise council tenants and council tenants dont subsidise council
tax payers. Theyre two separate accounts. And they sit in different places within the council
and the asset management strategy is different, it doesnt come together in one place as an
overall asset management strategy or policy. So the housing property asset management is
dealt with within the housing department, the non-housing which would be schools, libraries,
leisure facilities etc, thats dealt with by [the Corporate planner] and her team (Housing
Director at Cosmos).
This perception of the differend triggered the search for external rather than internal
relationships. This is also evident in another desire of the Housing Director: to compare
Cosmos Housing Department with Housing Associations, which are independent, not
AAAJ for profit voluntary organizations and which he saw as an example of good strategic
23,3 planning.
The previous three voices depict asset management at Cosmos as multilayered,
where managers have scant interest in other departments across the council. The only
explicit reference that was made is towards education (the fourth voice) which was
characterised as non-rational planning by the CDD and favoured by politicians by
402 roads managers. Education sits within a department which is (in its Directors own
words) a combination of an old education department and the social work functions of
the council that relate to children and families. The assets governed by this
department include schools; a secure unit; residential accommodation for young
people; janitors houses; and early years facilities for youngsters, with disabilities or
family problems. The condition of assets is described as varied: schools are considered
good, given a ten year period of higher investment; all other assets are instead
described as being in really poor condition.
In justifying this situation the Education Director advanced two issues, which are
recurrent at Cosmos: the difficulty of planning in a political setting and the
insufficiency of financial resources:
We can identify buildings that need work of various kinds but the budget is not adequate for
that, so its difficult to have a rational policy. Its a political system that I work in and if youve
got inadequacies then there are going to be political pressures so although I think Local
Government has made some steps towards rational asset planning its still learning about
that (Education Director at Cosmos).
In articulating these issues the Education Director spoke as an isolated, separate, voice,
promoting the discourse of social care and education. The presence of similar
situations in other departments of the councils was never mentioned. In addition, the
corporate level is perceived here as a watchdog, which is sometimes unequal in its
treatment. This was clearly remarked upon in this directors description of the asset
disposal policy:
As regards disposal of assets the council has a policy of organising this through the corporate
department. When assets are disposed of, and they arent ring fenced, they just go into a pot
for the council. Although to be quite frank, we try and build this into any capital scheme,
therefore if theres a disposable site the money is ring fenced and does come back into this
department. But thats not council policy, so we have to get special permission to do that
(Education Director at Cosmos).
The contrast with the corporate level is reflected in the education departments asset
planning. Though the head of education acknowledged the presence of corporate
planning, he nevertheless expressed their desire to plan separately, as the following
comment shows:
They do valuations and theyve been setting up a database for us which is kind of there but
an embryo at the minute, to be honest we dont pay a lot of attention to the values of assets,
but we do have records of maintenance costs, we do try and predict these for properties
(Education Director at Cosmos).
Their own education plan covers only 10 per cent of their entire budget, while the rest
of resources are allocated during the year as needs arise; wider rational planning is
considered impossible given scarce resources and political unpredictability.
 Theres always going to be a political process involved and you know, planning will have to Asset
take account of that, and sometimes somewhere it will have to be opportunistic because of
that. Its not an entirely rational process at all (Education Director at Cosmos). management in
In the past they tried to prepare a complete programme, which was systematically
cities
changed, leading education managers to circumscribe their planning efforts to
marginal works. The plan is drafted on the basis of maintenance requirements,
neglecting the asset categories used by the corporate unit and the value and the 403
depreciation of assets, calculated by another voice of Cosmos: accounting.
Accountants appeared in the discourse of the departmental managers through the
words asset value, depreciation and they were always referred to as corporate
level tasks, making a fusion of two voices: the CDD and accountants. Despite the
perception of functional managers, the accountants had not been involved in the asset
management planning at the City Development unit, as they remarked several times
during the interviews. However the accountants voice is indirectly involved in the
departments asset planning through the preparation of the expenditure and capital
programme.
The departments, the directors are each given a figure and they are asked to go away and
effectively produce a capital programme for their department. Theres an assessment form for
each project that stipulates various criteria [. . .]. In the form they can put in projects up to
their resource total and prioritise them, they can also put in projects which we call precluded
projects which are unfunded projects up to twice their resource total (Capital Accountant at
Cosmos).
The priority decision on these projects is then assigned to politicians; the amount of
resources for precluded projects is 25 per cent of the total available for each
department. This system is intended to put together all the voices, even politicians,
forcing their participation in the accountants rational capital planning scheme. The
prioritisation system is their way of assigning autonomy and responsibility to the
directors (and politicians) where, however, the total sums assigned to the different
departments has already been fixed.
The accountants major preoccupation proved to be not with the allocation within
each department but with overall balancing of resources, and with searching for new
sources of funding like Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and Private Finance
Initiative (PFI)[3], asset disposals and additional borrowing. Though these practices
involve the assets managed by the departments, decisions on these matters are highly
centralised and even the financial statements reflect this procedure, with a year-end
adjustment of notional capital charges. In addition, their valuation of assets is driven
by accounting matters and the need to prepare the balance sheet, they do not even
consider asset management as part of their scope:
Ive not really been that closely involved in the asset management planning to date (Capital
accountant at Cosmos).
Assets are considered not as physical entities but as financial numbers: the
accountants major preoccupation is to provide reliable financial statements. In doing
this they have little contact with operational managers but they maintain a close
relation with accountants in the operational departments. Accountants talk to
accountants:
We have regular contact with the people [accountants] that do the asset registers, if we knew
that money was being spent on a specific asset thatd maybe need to be revalued, then we
AAAJ communicate with them and wed ask them so we can get stuff reflected in the balance sheet
correctly (Capital accountant).
23,3
The asset register is maintained on a five-year rolling programme. Ad hoc evaluations
are made by internal surveyors for specific financial activities. So here we had another
voice seeking to exert influence.
The situation in Cosmos regarding asset management is one of multiple voices at
404 work. While there is not a cacophony of voices, the different interests and the lack of a
unifying corporate approach makes Cosmos a city where we can see polyphony in
action.

Indus: attenuated polyphony

At this city, there are examples of multiple voices in the management of assets.
However, there are counter pressures against this polyphony, with both finance and
the Chief Executives Office seeking to project a corporate view of city asset
management along the lines of the Scottish Governments advice on Best Value in asset
management (Scottish Executive, 2005). Given this tension we depict Indus as a city
with attenuated polyphony.
In terms of the voices in evidence at Indus, the most effective, by way of acquiring
resources, has been the Highways Department. This department has responsibility for
the maintenance of all major and minor roads, pedestrian areas, street lighting and
street furniture (such as road signs, bollards). Historically, this area of local
government activity has had a relatively poor share of this citys budget. In this sense,
Highways had been an unheard voice (Hazen, 1993) in budget negotiations at Indus.
However, this relative lack of success, with little attention to the voices of Directors of
Highways, and their colleagues, was repeated across the whole of Scotland (Audit
Scotland, 2004). Audit Scotland highlighted a maintenance backlog of c. 1.5 billion
(Audit Scotland, 2004). Therefore, it can be seen that, in the face of conflicting demands
for resources in budget setting, local authorities have systematically under resourced
their Highways departments. The response of the Directors of Highways in the face of
the continuing low priority to their budget requests has been to reach out beyond their
own organisation to be part of a national network to enhance their recognition, and
their voice. This network, called Traffic Scotland, is based within the Scottish
Governments Transport Agency and it is aimed at collecting comparative data about
road conditions. In addition it provides road users information on traffic on the Scottish
trunk road network. When the network was first established in 2002, they worked
together to improve their highly subjective practice of determining the condition of
roads by visual inspection, as the following comment shows:
The key problem we faced in roads was the lack of comparable, consistently collected data on
the condition of our highways. This lack of consistency arose because we used visual
inspections of road condition. [. . .] This unreliable data was replaced by machine based
surveys which were trialled and tested across the country, as part of the national agreement
with all highways departments. This has been made more credible by the introduction of
performance indicators by the national auditors. For example in this city, our key
performance indicator or road condition was 47 per cent at red or amber, compared to a
national average of 42 per cent. This was key to getting additional spend (Director of
Highways at Indus).
This system was fundamental to building up a detailed picture, local authority by local
authority, of the extent to which there was a backlog of repairs and maintenance. The
network took these results to the oversight body responsible for local government in Asset
Scotland, Audit Scotland. In collaboration with Audit Scotland the network developed
statutory performance indicators for road infrastructure. The outcome of this
management in
fact-building by the network was an enhanced voice and an increased proportion of cities
financial resources devoted to the Highways department. Furthermore they tried to
promote higher rationality in asset planning, by opposing the political process,
characterised, in their words, by short-termism, as the following comment shows: 405
In planning expenditure on roads and infrastructure, we distinguish between different types
of expenditure. For example, there can be safety, statutory or aspirational considerations.
However, elected members can put pressure on us because of short term considerations, e.g.
bad weather. They tend to be myopic and want a short term, rather than a quality fix
(Director of Highways at Indus).
Another prominent voice within Indus is that of Education. This department has
always been accorded high priority status by national politicians which translates into
a local government priority. Indeed, within Indus, the Education Department has the
only significant capital expenditure programme within the local authority. This was
prompted by a downturn in pupil numbers in parts of the schools estate with the
consequence that two schools were closed and a new one was built. Overall the schools
estate was seeking to build six new primary schools and to close two secondary
schools.
This capital expenditure is financed by the controversial PFI/PPP mechanism,
which was reluctantly welcomed by politicians. They initially hoped to finance schools
with capital receipts from sales of property. But capital receipts did not materialise and
they were determined not to raise the financing gap from increases in local taxation. In
the end, the need to rationalise the schools estate forced their hand towards PPP/PFI,
which was considered a necessary evil, rather than an integral part of this
departments processes.
The politicians reluctantly accepted going down the route of Public-Private Partnerships,
There is no real estates strategy. At the moment, PPP sits nowhere in our formal planning
process, because it is a whole different way of looking at things. This became a political
strategy at the time of the elections in May when the elected members put on a big push for
these capital developments in their wards before the election was held, but it is difficult to
accelerate capital projects without all the funding in place (Director, PPP programme).
For this over elaborate and extensive consultation over PFI/PPP, Indus was criticised
by the Scotlands central government, the Scottish Executive.
These sensitivities over using private finance were reflected in the locus of the
PFI/PPP project offices. Instead of being co-located with its department (Education) or
situated within corporate HQ, the PFI/PPP offices were located in a retail centre, where
they were effectively invisible. This meant the officers engaged in this politically
controversial capital funding project were at some considerable distance from their
main departmental offices and from the locus of politicians and corporate level
managers. The project management of the PFI/PPP projects was very efficient, with
careful procurement policies, tight specifications and close monitoring but these
flagship projects were not warmly received by other officers, by elected members or by
the overall local authority. This gave a muted presence to what should have been a
high profile voice within the organisation.
This hesitancy over the management of assets, such as PFI/PPP financed schools,
contrasts directly with the perceptions of the Economic Development department on how
AAAJ it conducts its business. This department is responsible for operational buildings, such
as retail outlets and industrial estates for economic regeneration. This departments fact
23,3 building consists of a database of properties classified on four categories: A excellent
condition; B good condition; C satisfactory; and D poor condition.
These categories are based on assessments of building condition, accessibility, and
fitness for purpose. This department estimates that most of its assets fall within the B
406 category. The members of this department display an economic rationality income
generation and economic activity as the key motivation for their business. This
department deploys this stance as a strong, distinct voice. Within this department
there is a certain scepticism over the efforts of the Chief Executives office and the
Finance Department to construct an Asset Management Plan for the local authority as
a single corporate entity (Scottish Executive, 2005) with the possibility of a loss of its
distinct voice. The following comment from a senior manager illustrates this point:
Our plan is under development. However, historically we have had a fragmented approach
to asset management. There has been no central control of properties, so departments have
gone their own way on maintenance and development. With the new plan there is an aim to
have all capital property developments as part of a unified policy on asset management
(Economic Development senior manager at Indus).
Another manager observed that the Chief Executives attempt at devising an asset
management plan for the entire local authority was looking to bring some semblance
of order to asset management and that inconsistencies would persist because
departmentalism is fundamental to local government.
A distinctly different voice emerged from the Housing Department at Indus. Within
this department there is an articulation of its assets as social capital, as assets, which
are for the benefit of the community. The Housing Department has a variety of
expertise within its management team, including housing specialists, accountants and
investment experts. But this department speaks with one voice, which sees the local
community as a main reference point in decision making. This emerged clearly
analysing the decision to offer its tenants the opportunity to move out of local authority
ownership and into a housing association:
We examined the option of transferring our housing stock to a housing association. As part of
this exercise we conducted a financial viability study, with the tenants as part of that process.
The tenants survey expressed support for staying with the Council, with it retaining
ownership and seeking to improve the quality of housing stock (Director of Housing at Indus).
After the results of the survey the option of moving out of public ownership was
rejected. Furthermore, this has galvanised the Housing Department in its efforts to look
after its tenants. This department is very open about the challenges, which it faces. It
recognises that it operates in a market and that it has specific areas of the city where
there are high investment needs and no demand for its housing. The biggest difficulty
this department faces is the condition of non-traditional housing, especially
multi-storeys dating from the 1960s. The department has demolished the majority of
its multi-storey dwellings. The size of the Indus housing stock has diminished from
around 40,000 units 25 years ago to 15,000. Of that reduction of 25,000, some 50 per
cent were sold to tenants and the other 50 per cent were demolished. These actions are
all part of the intent of the Housing Department to offer affordable housing, of good
quality to the citizens of Indus city who are in social need. In this process, Indus
Housing Department has had to adapt to changing realities. It is no longer in the
market of building new housing stock. Its tenants may opt to purchase their dwelling.
Also, this department is now taking part in partnership working with housing Asset
associations where there is any new build. This may entail selling land to housing
associations for these new buildings. To advance its cause, the Housing Department
management in
has engaged in a somewhat elaborate fact-building process. This includes a condition cities
survey of all its property under the auspices of the Scottish Homes Quality Delivery
Plan. This revealed that the current housing stock was in good condition. The Housing
Department has also built up a database of the assets it holds with a profile of each 407
house (flat or semi-detached, number of rooms, special needs, sheltered
accommodation). Previously the only financial information held was the gross
annual value historic information of little use to managers. This has been replaced
by a database of all assets, based on housing and land sales. All receipts from these
assets being sold off are channelled back into the improvement of the departments
existing housing stock. Despite this department having shared concerns with other
housing departments in other local authorities in Scotland, there was no evidence of the
networking activity of the roads and transport department. Instead this department
worked on local solutions for local community needs and offered a distinct voice in the
management of Indus citys assets.
While the above observations on asset management at Indus reveal a number of
distinct, differing voices in the arena of asset management in this city, the finance staff
project an image of a full awareness of all that is happening in the field of asset
management. Furthermore, the finance staff, in conjunction with the Chief Executives
office, present an image of being in control of the asset management process. The
capital accountant at Indus emphasised the primacy of finance in asset management.
In this sense, there are a variety of discourses with which the finance staff engage to
present themselves as the controllers of asset management. These include
monitoring, systems building and representations to external parties. Thus, the finance
staff deploy the asset classification scheme promulgated by CIPFA. They depict this as
having a natural fit across the local authority, with infrastructure assets held by the
transport department; operational assets held by Economic Development and
equipment sitting with service departments. In terms of monitoring, the finance
department is fully cognisant with the surveys of asset conditions. Its systems building
includes the elaboration of asset replacement policies (e.g. replacement of all refuse
vehicles after five years of use) and devising departmental profiles of assets held.
All of the above conveys an impression of control. And the finance team elaborate
further on this. They have a hierarchy for planning, with stage one being The
Corporate Plan; while stage two is Service Plans for individual departments. Despite
these efforts the Capital accountant highlighted some problems:
There is scope for improving the linkages in the financial planning process. Furthermore, at
present, the financial side does drive the physical side, rather than the other way round
(Capital Accountant at Indus).
The present financially driven planning process is partially justified by their
challenging task to satisfy external auditors, as the following comment shows:
The external auditor has challenged us, in recent years, over whether there are expenditures
which should be classified as capital expenditure but do not add to asset values in the balance
sheet. We had an estimate of 6million of such expenditure (using Red Book guidance
Royal Chartered Institute of Surveyors) that expenditure which does not add to floor area has
not added to value. Although there are some exceptions. The external auditor accepted this, in
the end (Capital Accountant at Indus).
AAAJ Therefore, while we see the tensions between the multiple and distinct voices in the
service departments and the overarching corporate view, as espoused by the
23,3 government and which is in processof implementation within Indus, we characterise
this city as one which has attenuated polyphony.

Rura: Dualism
408 The approach to asset management at Rura City is very distinctive. Even before the
government started advising local authorities to adopt a more corporate approach to
asset management with formal asset management policies, Rura City Council had
started this. Rura installed a structure to address the issues of achieving a more
effective corporate wide policy. There were a number of elements to this. In the first
instance, one of the most gifted and articulate officers within Rura was appointed as
Director of Asset Management (DAM), as confirmed by everyone we spoke to:
She [the DAM] is the most gifted person in Rura (Chief Financial Officer at Rura).
She [the DAM] is a key person to advise us on asset management. We have a close
relationship, we work closely together. Our staff work together very closely (Capital
Accountant at Rura).
We do have a whole capital asset management approach at the corporate level and she [the
DAM] is the one who has the larger, holistic look; for all these issues it is worth speaking to
her (Director of Planning regulation and economic development at Rura).
Second, Rura brought together all aspects of asset management estate management,
facility management, capital works design and management, architectural services,
and building maintenance within a single department, directed by the DAM. Third,
this department was located in a single building, in a separate location from Corporate
HQ, becoming a one stop shop for any asset management issue:
We are kind of technical advisors. We try to get asset management plans, what we need to do
with property, but also facilities, gas networks, so different advice. But also part of the system
we are selling our property, refurbishment projects in the school, and last year we were doing
the capital refurbishment housing plan. We are a one stop shop for property (DAM at Rura).
Also, the DAM was part of the overall corporate team, working closely with the Head
of Resources, who was, in fact, an accountant. The DAM organised this department
into three teams an asset strategy team, a professional and construction team, and a
facility management team. All of the above points to a single, unitary, corporate wide
approach to asset management. This corporate approach addressed the issue of
PFI/PPP projects by working closely together with the finance team under the Head of
Resources, recognising that this was the only viable option for Rura Council to build
capital projects. This was used to build PFI/PPP schools. However, from the start,
there was a break from the corporate vision. All capital asset matters sat within the
sphere of the DAM except for roads and transport. This exception proved to
undermine the unitary approach and create a dualism in Ruras asset management, as
shown below, with wider repercussions for the corporate wide view, with indications of
further fracturing in the future.
However, the DAM has reservations about the effectiveness of the integrated policy
adopted at Rura. Some of this dissatisfaction comes from the external voice of the
Scottish government, which impinges on the activities of Rura City Council. For a start,
the government push for a more corporate approach to asset management (Scottish
Executive, 2005) is under the auspices of the Best Value Audit regime, which may have Asset
dysfunctional consequences for service delivery (Power, 1997; Arnaboldi and Lapsley,
2008). Indeed, the DAM expressed frustration over this process, as the following
management in
comment reveals: cities
. . . we need to provide rough property indicators, and at the end we are very good at
satisfying the indicators, and the indicators become our role, where our role should be about
what a community is, what are the assets they need (DAM at Rura). 409
Another voice which impinges on Ruras asset management policies is that of the
elected politicians on Rura Council. Here, the DAM expressed frustration. In the DAMs
view, politicians at Rura need a very clear idea of what the choices are to help them to
exercise choice.
The idea of a corporate wide approach to asset management had considerable
appeal to the DAM when this department was first formed. However, the DAM was
now sceptical about whether the Rura corporate management team actually
understood all the priorities of the council areas. Furthermore she was not
convinced of their capacity to engage in joined up thinking.
Im not convinced we have a joined-up policy. We have policies for school estate, library,
sector policies. Im going to write the umbrella process, in which we include the information of
what they own, on backlog maintenance, strategy. We are going to suggest a new framework
for asset management, a model in which you have objectives and under that we will have not
a huge document but two-three pages done every year of the service asset management plan:
what are your services objectives, what property underpins those objectives, we refresh that
we work with services to understand which are the critical elements to deliver their services
objectives (DAM at Rura).
This raises questions generally about the likely success of the fully integrated
corporate wide approach to asset management. It also is indicative of the resurrection
of the many dormant voices which may have been unheard when the corporate
approach was at its peak.
While Ruras DAM and colleagues oversaw the needs of most of the city councils
objectives, there remained the other voice transport and roads. The Director of
Transport and Roads is very articulate. His voice reaches many parts of the
organisation and also outside the organisation politicians and citizens in particular.
His voice is strengthened by his membership of the roads network. But his
fact-building and his communication of what he saw as the needs of his service extends
well beyond the activities of the roads network. The Director of Transport and Roads
had committed Rura to the national network of chief officers of transport in Scotland.
For Rura, the results revealed that 33 per cent of its carriageways needed repair, which
made it 6-7 per cent below the national average. The poor conditions were positively
welcomed by the Director of Roads and Transport, who has mobilised the results of the
national road condition survey to secure additional resources to be allocated to his
service. The motivation of this network was attributed to an agenda within the
professionals in the roads industry to secure greater resources from their local
authority budgets. As the Director of Transport and Roads at Rura put it:
We did this survey to defend our position. It is a professional defense. If you go to childrens
services you will find the pattern of expenditure is the other way round. But they dont have
these kinds of graphs (referring to outcomes of national roads survey), because if your pattern
AAAJ of spending is the other way round from ours, you dont want to show this picture. The
elected members of Rura have an education bias, so that is where the money has been going.
23,3
The Director of Transport and Roads has exercised his voice over resource allocation
in many ways. He has advocated an incremental budgeting system for roads on the
basis of the national roads survey to the elected politicians. He concedes that he does
not have an asset management policy, other than the criterion that if a road is busy and
410 in bad condition it should become a priority. Indeed, despite the success of the roads
condition survey, this director is basically sceptical about the merits of sophisticated
asset management systems. He describes the valuation of assets as a purely academic
exercise:
Roads are public goods, putting a value to them appear to me to be just an academic exercise.
It is an academic deciding if you use the replacement value and so on. The complexity of
placing a value is too high. [. . .] Just to conclude on this, we dont have an asset valuation, an
investment plan, but we have the survey and we also have other indicators on the use on the
basis of the volume of traffic. Because we have a limited amount of money, maintenance
priorities are set on these indicators (Director of Transport and Roads at Rura).
However, he considers that an asset management system which would cost c. 500k
was unnecessary because Ruras network is not always that busy and there are always
alternative roads. The politicians were nervous about accepting this proposal because
they saw that this meant the unclassified roads network would receive limited
investment. This outcome has to be seen alongside a separate but parallel development
the articulation of a City Transport Strategy. This is the responsibility of the Director
of Transport and Roads, who has developed a City Transport Strategy. This is built on
the basis of a growing city, which has to address issues of congestion and pollution.
This also has implications for investment in roads as more development means more
traffic and road usage. He has mobilised this fact-building on other pressures on roads
to convince politicians of the need for greater investment in roads. As the director put
it:
It is very useful if I am also beating for money for other projects this is my plan.
However, to clinch political support, this director recognised that he had to engage the
public in his mission. As the director expressed it:
If the public see the condition of the network, that would be the driving force for change. We
are taking a technical perspective but without this claimant of the public it would be more
problematic.
As part of the development of the City Transport Strategy he convened a series of
public meetings to explain the thinking behind Ruras policy. At public meetings the
condition of the roads was raised, frequently. The director was able to inform the
public of the Rura City Councils record on roads maintenance. He was also able to
point in Rura City Councils strategy on road maintenance, which meant that, in
effect, minor roads would only be resurfaced once every 250 years. This had the
desired effect in terms of activating public interest in improving expenditure on roads.
However, the success of the voice of the roads service has had repercussions
within Rura city. In particular, the dualism of the centralised, corporate asset
management, on the one hand, and the roads and transport, on the other, has become a
focus of discontent within the city. Other voices, which had previously been dormant
have started to re-emerge. The capital accountant who works closely with all services Asset
in framing Ruras capital works programme warned on this:
management in
It would be better if there was greater consistency of asset management. We should be setting cities
priorities across the entire council. We should not have a situation where we have one service
with a greater level of resources than it needs. We should be able to redistribute resources.
This takes us into a debate on centralization of the corporate level function and our relations
with politicians (Capital Accountant at Rura). 411
This officer spoke positively of the overall corporate management approach developed
by the asset management department. He stressed how there was collegiality and this
was a feature of the corporate approach, although he conceded that this was largely
officer driven and devoid of political engagement. He highlighted that city politicians
are not interested in participating and understanding the process of defining the citys
asset management policy.
One of the things we need to address is the kinds of issues which can arise over the absence of
political impact. For example, elected members may pressure local interests rather than
taking a corporate or whole council view. A recent example of this is on the disposal of
assets, where elected members want the product of the sale to return to their constituency
rather than see the use of funds for the benefit of the whole council. We need a statement
where the Council sets out what it is trying to do with its asset management policies.
This approach of politicians can create problems in resolving the citys final budget
discussions. It can also be problematic in addressing competing or conflicting policy
claims. This is especially so where plans affect the citizens that politicians represent as
elected members. They are then reluctant to commit to overarching policies, which
may work against their local interests. In relation to the success of Transport and
Roads in the budget allocations, he observed:
I would like to get to a situation in which the council takes the initiative with a proper
investment plan to address the areas which need investment, instead of listening to who
shouts loudest.
Other manifestations of voices can be heard within other services. In Education, asset
management staff have been transferred from corporate asset management to sit
within the service department. This department has traditionally been the preferred
beneficiary of resources within Rura. This can be seen from actual expenditure on this
service, but also the location of Ruras largest capital programme on PFI/PPP schools.
The internal regulator of these PFI/PPP schemes had the boundaries pushed to the
limit to accommodate these investments. This is an indication of the multiple voices
favouring this service both officers and elected politicians. But the transfer of asset
management staff to Education appears to be the start of a process of disassembling
the dualism of Rura.
Another important service at Rura is that of housing. This was something of a
surprise to Rura Council. The Council had embarked on an extensive consultation with
the tenants of its properties about the desirability of ownership of Ruras entire
housing stock moving to a housing association. However, the tenants in Ruras
publicly owned housing voted firmly to stay within Rura Council. This change of
direction has prompted Rura to seek new leadership in the area. Rura Council has
responded to the rejection of housing stock transfer by appointing a new Director of
Housing. This Director has embarked upon a serious fact-building exercise to
determine the condition of Ruras housing stock. He has also undertaken an extensive
AAAJ consultation with tenants and has enabled them to voice their views on the quality of
their service. These fact-building exercises have identified major issues with the need
23,3 to refurbish houses, but also with houses, which are in the locations characterised by
declining population and unattractive housing stock. As part of this fact-building
exercise, asset management staff have been transferred to the Housing Department.
And here we see the pressures build up for voices to re-emerge, which have, hitherto,
412 been dormant. These voices look set to further weaken both Ruras intended unitary
path to asset management and its actual outcome of dualism.

Discussion and conclusion

Responsibility for asset management within each local authority should be shared by senior
managers, and supported by appropriately skilled officers who can work across service
departments to deliver a coherent and co-ordinated overall strategy. This means both a high
level strategic decision-making group (perhaps at member level) and a cross-service senior
management forum, in order that any decisions regarding property assets under the property
strategy are made in an informed way by both senior personnel and with a property advisory
input (Scottish Executive, 2005).
In this claim lies the genesis of this study, which explored asset management in
Scottish local authorities. This setting offers a useful ground for analysing the
implementation of a unifying policy in an area, which is populated by diversity that
operates at several levels. There is diversity in the type of assets (monuments,
infrastructure, photocopiers, buildings), in the stakeholders interests (children for
schools, elderly for social care, poor citizens for affordable housing), and in the
functional backgrounds of the managers involved.
The enactment of asset management within this diversity is analysed drawing on
the concept of polyphonic organisations (Hazen, 1993), which acknowledges and pays
attention to the variety of actors involved, either if they are a dominant or an unheard
voice. The polyphonic perspective was here complemented with ANT and particularly
Latours work Science in Action (1987) to give relevance to the relational and dynamic
setting of local authorities. The three cases showed different degrees of controversies
and achievements, providing a highly variegated picture of the effectiveness in
pursuing an asset management policy. From the results of this paper some more
general considerations may be drawn.
First, the results highlighted the usefulness of the conceptual perspective adopted in
this paper polyphony complemented by ANT. This association is not new
(Kornberger et al., 2006) but it is further developed here. The concept of polyphonic
organisations was primarily beneficial in depicting the overall phenomenon (asset
management) as giving voice to all the involved actors within the organisations, of
course, all voices were not equal with some being dominant while others remained faint
sounds from the margins. Further the attention to the three basic components of the
polyphonic organisation utterance, dialogue and authors (Hazen, 1993) helped in
understanding the antecedents of tensions and controversies, which were revealed to
lie in the incapability of actors to establish a common language. This is the case at
Cosmos and, though attenuated, of Indus in which each functional manager uses their
own local practices, neglecting the central attempts to set an overarching policy. The
endeavour to diffuse a dominant voice, by establishing a central orchestrator has failed
in these two authorities, leading to a Babel in which different discourses are layered
upon each other, satisfying local goals. At Cosmos the disharmony is greater and in
some way emphasised by the role of the City Development Department. This is an Asset
endeavour from the corporate level to develop a common language for setting priorities
(for example using a qualitative scale for assessing the condition of assets), but their
management in
attempt to homogenise is perceived as an oversimplification. At Indus this disharmony cities
is attenuated just because some voices, in particular accountants, are more silent
ceding the arena to two dominant diverse discourses: highways and social housing.
However, as evidenced by Kornberger et al. (2006), the presence of more silent 413
unsatisfied voices may prelude to the organization descending into a complete Babel.
While polyphony was helpful in capturing the multilayered structure of asset
management, ANT helped in drawing the dynamics by which voices changed their
position in the orchestra, moving from unheard to heard, or even to dominant
voices. Specifically two elements of Latours work (1987) proved of benefit: the search
for strategic allies and fact-building. Indus and Rura showed clearly both elements
highlighting how previously unheard voices, roads and infrastructures, gained
relevance by being part of an external network, which has leveraged recognition at
national level through Audit Scotland, the oversight body for all public services.
Despite the fact that managers of these departments do not belong to a specific
professional category, such as the accountants, their common situation has led to the
creation of an occupational grouping, based on their similar positions in their
organisations. As evidenced by Rawson (1994) these groupings may become relevant
although they are not based on a specific career ontology or identity (Rawson, 1994).
Further, as suggested recently by Cooper and Robson (2006), their origin is outside the
traditional sites (professional bodies, regulators), it stems from a common interest
which ended in a recognized national network.
With the network data, for the first time, the road managers had meaningful
numbers, which they could use in negotiation with their local authority finance officers
and chief executives. The legitimation of the network and the possibility to show facts
(numbers, and benchmarks at national levels) helped Indus and Rura roads managers
to substantiate their requests, amplifying their voices internally when budget priorities
are set. Indus and Rura are, however, different in the locus of their managers search for
strategic allies; given the intense competition over the budget and the limited dialogue
between managers, the search at Indus is mainly directed externally: the national
network for roads, the government policy for social housing, the users claims for
education and social care. At Rura the search for allies has also been internal, with
managers not trying to impose their voices as they gain relevance, by finding a
common ground of dialogue. The initial strategic alliances were favoured by the office
location, forming a duality of voices: on the one hand, roads and infrastructure and, on
the other hand, all other assets. This duet has been orchestrated by the Director of
Asset Management (DAM), whose background is in different functional areas. This
more successful result of Rura is favoured by the competences, background and culture
of managers, and the size and location of the authority. In addition there was also a
match of interessment (Latour, 1987) among managers, which is the common desire to
attract the politicians attention (and responsibility) on these matters, attempting to
provide simple and clear data for informing their decisions on budget priorities.
However even this more unitary situation is challenged by an emerging voice: housing.
The increasing relevance gained by roads in the budget allocation, indicated to the
housing director a possible path for leaving the chorus and becoming another solo
voice. The DAMs capability may be challenged, raising questions over whether this
will end in a different harmony or a Babel. On theoretical grounds, this instability is
AAAJ acknowledged by Latour (1987) who never considered a change or a phenomenon as
closed, but would always be challenged by new events and actors.
23,3 A second major result of this study relates to the different achievements in asset
management, giving insights that may be of interest in similar fields (see Table II for a
summary). Previous studies adopting ANT in accounting and auditing, showed
accounting as a constitutive practice (Chua, 1995; Gendron et al., 2007; Mennicken,
414 2008) in which the legitimation among users and the creation of meaningful numbers is
more important than the search for perfectly rational instruments. In this study there is
evidence of the benefits of a similar path. Accounting (i.e. asset values and
depreciation) proved a failure in becoming the overarching language for asset
management policies; this was also the case of the attempt to measure all the assets
condition with a unique qualitative scale (A, B, C and D). The former was seen as a pure
accounting task for other purposes (e.g. external auditors), the latter is considered an
oversimplification. At Rura, the agreement was found in a new language, built on
deconstruction of the discourses of functional areas (Kornberger et al., 2006), in which
facts produced by other managers found a place. At Rura the unitary final document
provides an overall, substantiated, picture of asset conditions and needs, expressed by
different languages in which the financial measures are set apart. This result has two
implications that may be of help in similar studies, it is to these implications we now
turn.
First, it suggests that the orchestrators competences and background are crucial
and they should cover, or at least understand, all the languages spoken in the involved
areas. The Director of Asset Management (DAM) at Rura was recognised by all the
interviewed managers as the main reference; departmental managers often suggested
to ask the DAM for clarification on both financial and technical matters: [. . .] is the
only one who has the overall picture of the asset management (managers at Indus). By
contrast, at Cosmos the CDD suggested several times that the researchers should seek
further details from functional managers, who, when interviewed, never mentioned the
City Development Director, spontaneously. At Cosmos the CDD emphasised the
prevailing inter-professional rivalry (Abbot, 1888; 1991; Amstrong; 1985;, 1987; Cooper
and Robson, 2006) while the DAM at Cosmos was able to smooth over this competition.
Second, the achievements in asset management policy in the three cities challenge
the ambition of the economic rationale to have a unique measure for allocating budgets
(cost, depreciation, economic values). Even in the most unitary case, Rura, the final
document is multi-voiced, with several different measures in setting priorities: roads
have physical conditions benchmarked against other authorities; future needs for
students for schools; housing maintenance requirements; and urgent maintenance for
cultural heritage. These measures have been particularly useful in achieving
transparency in the priorities within each function, but they do not allow immediate
definition of priorities across departments. Resources are scarce everywhere and all
claims by departments cannot be satisfied: the decisions on which departments and
services are going to be favoured or penalised are subject to negotiation and are
irredeemably political. However the asset management information helps in fostering
transparency among departments and providing better information for politicians. The
documents become the translation of departments voices and the cases highlighted
different channels though which these voices may be amplified: fact-building,
evidencing in particular the power of numbers and calculations; strategic allies,
whether they are alternative external users with an emotive impact (children, poor
people, elderly) or national, legitimated networks (roads, housing).
 Cosmos Indus Rura
Corporate plan Implemented but considered as a purely Image of a full awareness of asset Rooted in managers practice
formal task by managers management In place before the Scottish Executive
Not recognised by Economic proposals
Development Department at Indus
Approach in implementation of Imposed with a top down approach Participatory approach Deconstruction of languages
corporate plan A new economic and rational language Fact-building: monitoring, systems Construction of a one-stop shop for
building and representations to external managers with different teams,
parties competences and languages:
Translator City Development Director Chief Executive Officer Director of Asset Management (DAM)
who is widely recognised as the most
gifted manager in Rura City
Department managers Roads and transportation: Highways manager Roads and transportation
Strong and recognized voice Recently most effective in acquiring Claims for increase in budget
Plan grounded in data (numbers, facts, resources. It was an unheard voice in Fact-building: graphs, numbers
electronic measures of assets conditionthe past External amplification national
scanner) Amplification through the National network
Amplification of their voice through an Network of Directors of Highways Infrastructure and cultural heritage
external national network Fact-building: electronic inspection Aligned to roads and transportation
Housing Education Housing
Emphasis on their being different: The largest capital expenditure An emerging voice, searching for a fact-
Searching for other models: Housing programme at Indus building strategy to ask for additional
Associations: example of good strategicReluctance and distance by other resources
planning managers Education
Education The economic development manager Preferred beneficiary of resources within
Addressed by other voices as non- Emphasis on income generation and Rura
rational planning favored by economic activity
politicians Asset plan rooted in facts: evaluation of
They perceive the corporate level as a building condition, accessibility, fitness
watchdog for purpose
90 per cent of resources allocated during
Sceptical voice over the overarching
the year when needs raise plan
Housing department
Discourse based on social capital and the
retention of housing in public ownership
Accountants Separated role from both corporate plan Supportive to CEO Supportive to DAM
and managers plans
Asset

cities

cases
A summary of the three
415

Table II.
management in
AAAJ This paper also has implications for our understanding of government policy. Two
government requirements are related to asset management. The first one is the 2005
23,3 non-statutory note, which advocated asset management under the Best Value
umbrella; it proposed the enactment of a unitary policy, making a direct relation with
auditing and performance measurement (Scottish Executive, 2005). The second is the
introduction of capital accounting in local authorities, which has a longer and more
416 controversial history dating back to 1989 (Deakin, 1999). In both cases central
government does not provide precise rules for their implementation, leaving the
possibility for each authority to choose its own appropriate path. The genesis of the
vagueness rests in the three different approaches but with a common element: capital
accounting is appropriate for external accountability but it is not suitable for
managerial and budgeting purposes. The attempt to use accrual and capital accounting
in the public sector for managerial objectives is not new and several reforms have gone
in this direction; the result is often a compliant application, which does not touch the
core internal practices of organisations. This study showed a similar result: capital
accounting is directed to the auditors but the numbers themselves are not considered
useful in management decisions. At Rura the decoupling of these practices and their
goal is explicit and financial managers do not push for a different use of financial
statements; at Cosmos and Indus there is instead an attempt to link the two
government requirements asset management policy and capital accounting
adding the accounting discourse to the existing polyphony and, thus, creating further
controversies.

Notes
1. Since the reestablishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1997, the executive, civil service
functions have been fulfilled by a body known as The Scottish Executive. Since 2007 this
body has been renamed the Scottish Government.
2. The concept of polyphonic is not well established in the accounting literature although some
authors have used it to present their discussions and debates (see for example Ahrens et al.,
2008; Dillard, 2008).
3. See, for example Public Private Partnership: an introduction by Broadbent and Laughlin
(2003) or the Public Private Partnership section on the HM Treasury web site
(www.hm-treasury.gov.uk)

References
Abbott, A. (1988), The System of Professions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Abbott, A. (1991), The future of professions: occupation and expertise in the age of
organization, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 8, pp. 17-42.
Ahrens, T., Albrecht, B., Burns, J., Chapman, C., Granlund, M., Habersam, M., Hansen, A.,
Khalifa, R., Malmi, T., Mennicken, A., Mikes, A., Panozzo, F., Piber, M., Quattrone, P. and
Scheytt, T. (2008), The future of interpretive accounting research a polyphonic debate,
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 1 No. 6, pp. 840-66.
Armstrong, P. (1985), Changing managerial control strategies: the role of competition between
accountancy and other organizational professions, Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 129-48.
Armstrong, P. (1987), The rise of accounting controls in British capitalist enterprises,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 415-36.
Arnaboldi, M. and Lapsley, I. (2008), Making management auditable: the implementation of best Asset
value in local government, Abacus, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 22-47.
Audit Scotland (2004), Maintaining Scotlands Roads, report Audit Scotland, available at: www.
management in
audit-scotland.gov.uk cities
Bakhtin, M. (1984), Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis, MN.
Ball, A., Broadbent, J. and Moore, C. (2002), Best value and the control of local government: 417
challenges and contradictions, Public Money and Management, April-June, pp. 9-16.
Barry, D. and Elmes, M. (1997), Strategy retold: toward a narrative view of strategic discourse,
The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 429-52.
Belova, O., King, I. and Sliwa, M. (2008), Introduction: polyphony and organization studies:
Mikhail Bakhtin and beyond, Organization Studies, Vol. 29 No. 04, pp. 493-500.
Boje, D.M. (1991), The storytelling organization: a study of story performance in an
office-supply firm, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 106-26.
Boje, D.M. (1995), Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of Disney as
Tamara-Land, The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 997-1035.
Bond, S. and Dent, P. (1998), Efficient management of public sector assets, Journal of Property
Valuation & Investment, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 369-85.
Boyne, G., Gould-Williams, J., Law, J. and Walker, R. (2002), Best value total quality
management for local government?, Public Money and Management, July-September,
pp. 9-16.
Broadbent, J. and Laughlin, R. (1999), The private finance initiative: clarification of a future
research agenda, Financial Accountability and Management, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 95-114.
Broadbent, J. and Laughlin, R. (2003), Public private partnerships: an introduction, Accounting,
Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 332-41.
Carter, C., Clegg, S., Hogan, J. and Kornberger, M. (2003), The polyphonic spree: the case of the
Liverpool Dockers, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 290-304.
Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (1989), Capital Accounting in Local
Authorities The Way Forward, CIPFA, London.
Chua, W.F. (1995), Experts, networks and inscriptions in the fabrication of accounting images:
a story of the representation of three public hospitals, Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Vol. 20 Nos 2-3, pp. 111-45.
Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M., Carter, C. and Rhodes, C. (2006), For management?, Management
Learning, Vol. 37, M. 1, pp. 7-27.
Cooper, D.J. and Robson, K. (2006), Accounting, profession and regulation: locating the sites
professionalization, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 415-44.
Czarniawska, B. (1998), A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks,
CA.
Deakin, M. (1999), The financial instruments of capital accounting in local authorities, Journal
of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 89-107.
Denzin, N.K. (1978), The Research Act, 2nd ed., McGraw Hill, New York, NY.
Dillard, J. (2008), A political base of a polyphonic debate, Critical Perspectives on Accounting,
Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 894-900.
Donnelly, M. and Shiu, E. (1999), Assessing service quality and its link with value for money in
a UK local authoritys housing repairs service using the SERVQUAL approach,
Total Quality Management, Vol. 10 Nos 4-5, pp. 498-506.
AAAJ Enticott, G., Walker, R.M., Boyne, G., Martin, S. and Ashworth, R. (2002), Best Value in English
Local Government: Summary, Results from the Census of Local Authorities in 2001, Centre
23,3 for Local and Regional Government Research, Cardiff University, Cardiff.
Entwistle, T. and Laffin, M. (2005), A prehistory of the best value regime, Local Government
Studies, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 205-18.
Fitzgerald, E. and Melvin, D. (2002), The UK private finance initiative and Glasgow schools,
418 Facilities, Vol. 20 Nos 3/4, pp. 119-26.
Froud, J. (2003), The private finance initiative: risk, uncertainty and the state, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 567-89.
Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations, Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Gendron, Y., Cooper, D.J. and Townley, B. (2007), The construction of auditing expertise in
measuring government performance, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 32
Nos 1-2, pp. 101-29.
Gioia, D.A. and Chittipeddi, K. (1991), Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change
initiation, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 433-48.
Hazen, M.A. (1993), Towards polyphonic organization, Journal of Organizational Change
Management, Vol. 6 No. 5, pp. 15-26.
Higgins, P., James, P. and Roper, I. (2004), Best value: is it delivering?, Public Money
& Management, August, pp. 251-8.
Kornberger, M., Clegg, S.R. and Carter, C. (2006), Rethinking the polyphonic organization:
Managing as discursive practice, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Vol. 22 No. 1,
pp. 3-30.
Kurunmaki, L. (2004), A hybrid profession the acquisition of management accounting
expertise by medical professionals, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 29
Nos 3/4, pp. 327-47.
Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1988), The Differend: Phrase in Dispute, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Martin, S. (2000), Implementing best value: local public services in transition, Public
Administration, Vol. 78 No. 1, pp. 209-27.
Mennicken, A. (2008), Connecting worlds: the translation of international auditing standards
into post-Soviet audit practice, Accounting Organization & Society, Vol. 33 Nos 4-5,
pp. 303-550.
Miller, P., Kurunmaki, L. and OLeary, T. (2008), Accounting, hybrids and the management of
risk, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 33 Nos 7-8, pp. 942-67.
Moriceau, J. (2007), Have we begun to listen to organisations?, Tamara Journal, Vol. 6 No. 6,
pp. 127-35.
Pallot, J. (1997), Infrastructure accounting for local authorities: technical management and
political context, Financial Accountability & Management, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 225-42.
Power, M. (1997), The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Preston, A.M., Cooper, D.J. and Coombs, R. (1992), Fabricating budgets: a study of the
production of management budgeting in the National Health Service, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 561-93.
Radcliffe, V.S., Cooper, D.J. and Robson, K. (1994), The management of professional enterprises
and regulatory change: British accountancy and the Financial Services Act, 1986,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 19 No. 7, pp. 601-28.
Rawson, D. (1994), Models of inter-professional work: likely theories and possibilities, Asset
in Leathard, A. (Ed.), Going Inter-professional: Working Together for Health and Welfare,
Routledge, London. management in
Rhodes, C. and Brown, A. (2005), Narrative, organizations and research reviews, International cities
Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 167-88.
Scottish Executive (2005), Local Government In Scotland Act 2003 Asset Management under
Best Value Advisory Note, The Stationery Office, London.
419
Shaoul, J. (2005), A critical financial analysis of the Private Finance Initiative: selecting a
financing method or allocating economic wealth?, Critical Perspectives on Accounting,
Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 441-71.
Shotter, J. (2008), Action guiding anticipations and the continuous creation of novelty dialogism
and polyphony in organizing theorizing, Organization Studies, Vol. 29 No. 04, pp. 501-24.
Sidorkin, A. (2002), Lyotard and Bakhtin: engaged diversity in education, Interchange, Vol. 33
No. 1, pp. 85-97.
Stake, R.E. (1995), The Art of Case Study Research, Sage, London.
Sullivan, P. and McCarthy, J. (2008), Managing the polyphonic sounds of organizational truths,
Organization Studies, Vol. 29 No. 04, pp. 525-42.
Trausan-Matu, S., Stahl, G. and Sarmiento, J. (2007), Supporting polyphonic collaborative
learning, e-Service Journal, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 59-75.
Walker, S.P. (2004), The genesis of professional organisation in English accountancy,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 127-57.
Weick, K. (1995), Sensemaking in Organisations, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Wildman, P. (1998), From the monophonic university to polyphonic multiversities, Futures,
Vol. 30 No. 7, pp. 625-33.
Young, P. (1994), Market valuation with no market valuing properties with little evidence,
Journal of Property Valuation & Investment, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 9-27.

Further reading
Bing, L., Akintoye, A., Edwards, P.J. and Hardcastle, C. (2005), The allocation of risk in PPP/PFI
construction projects in the UK, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 23
No. 1, pp. 25-35.
Broadbent, J. and Laughlin, R. (2002), Accounting choices: technical and political trade-offs and
the UKs private finance initiative, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 15
No. 5, pp. 622-54.
Lyotard, J.F. (1993), The Postmodern Condition: A Report an Knowledge, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

Corresponding author
Michela Arnaboldi can be contacted at: michela.arnaboldi@polimi.it

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com

Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints