This paper deals with our role as consultant-researchers in the improvement trajectory
of a programme budget used in a Dutch province. For the 2009s programme budget the
newly designed budget format was used in two pilot programmes. One year later we participated
in the implementation of this format in all programmes of the 2010 budget. This
paper discusses our activities in these different stages. Our aim is to show how consultantresearchers
can contribute to the development of management accounting innovations in
the public sector and how institutional theory can play a role here. Our interventions were
directed at increasing the coherence between the logics underlying NPM-like innovations
and the management accounting techniques adopted in actual practice.