Changes to accounting practices in public sector financial management have been central to the application of new public management (NPM) models and variants, given their results orientation and emphasis on financial control and public accountability. Since the 1980s developing countries have been adopting modernizing public sector reforms based on management practices and techniques which public organizations in advanced economies had taken from the private sector two decades previously in contexts of declining economic growth and changing political attitudes to the welfare state, predicated upon “questions about the role and institutional character of the state” (Larbi, 1999). In many developing countries, according to the World Bank (1997), economic crises, preceding economic reform, most frequently drove those early public sector interventions in which NPM reforms were imposed by the external pressures of state agendas and the structural adjustment programmes of international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Jordan’s political alliances and strategic geographical location have helped the state to form relationships with the EU and the US through several agreements with international donors and consultants supporting its 2005–۲۰۱۴ National Agenda objectives of sustainable development via various public sector and fiscal reforms. The launch of the National Agenda followed previous attempts at macroeconomic reform under IMF auspices from 1989–۲۰۰۴, but represented a departure in approach in that this new state-led modernization agenda recognized that social, economic and political development needed to proceed in an integrated way. The political and economic reforms post-2005 resulted in setting in motion the institutionalization of certain financial management processes in public organizations. Management accounting processes, reflecting NPM principles of results-based achievement deadlines, performance indicators, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, have especial relevance for state budgeting based on the idea that, motivated by accountability to its citizens, more effective and sustained performance could be delivered by the state and its agencies NPM has dominated much practitioner and academic thinking about public sector fiscal reform (Osborne and Gaebler 1992, Hood 1995, Hughes 1998). Hughes (1998:1) stated that “traditional public administration has been discredited theoretically and practically, and the adoption of new forms of public management means the emergence of a new paradigm in the public sector”. However, even in an advanced economy, such as the UK, it has been noted that “change toward NPM has not been smooth and linear, but uneven and contested” (Clarke and Newman, 1997: x). In Jordan, the institutionalization of new management accounting practices presented a formidable task; notwithstanding 20 years of reform endeavors, The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (2015) reported that in 2009 the country’s economic and social progress remained stymied by “poorly planned growth… a large and unwieldy government bureaucracy [in which] institutions had confusing and overlapping mandates. Public spending was rising on services that did not necessarily fall under the mandate of the public sector”. NPM-influenced National Agenda reforms therefore led to the adoption of a results-based management (RBM) approach as a “management accounting tool” to restructure and improve the budgeting systems of public organizations (Try and Radnor 2007, Hudock 2011, Sulle 2011), as that part of accounting practice which establishes the criteria for effective financial management. In staged accounting change processes, results-based budgeting (RBB) and the General Financial Management Information System (GFMIS) have been implemented to achieve more consistent planning and accounting of public funds.