This paper addressed two primary questions: a) how do individuals, institutions and organisations in public services diffuse and practice multiple accountabilities? and b) are these multiple accountability mechanisms competing or complementary, and can more than one accountability logic coexist to achieve the goal of the recent NPM reform? To answer these questions, we undertook a qualitative field study of a recent NPM reform in the Australian public service at the Commonwealth level. As illustrated in the theoretical framework (Figure 1), there are multiple accountability demands. The accountability discourse and practice, and the role of accounting therein, can be explained by analysing discourses of inter-institutional and organisational dynamics and the types of interaction between various actors within these fields (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008; Thornton et al., 2012). In this respect, this paper aids understanding the constellation of inter-institutional and inter-organisational dynamics that influence, condition and diffuse multiple logics of accountability (e.g. managerial, political or public) in the public service sphere. At the root of these institutional logics are NPM-driven changes, and individual and organisational responses to those demands. We emphasised how managers and organisations, such as auditors, regulators, professional bodies, public services commissions and critics in public sector inter-institutional fields make sense of their institutional environments (Thornton et al., 2012). This means that the institutional and organisational discourses and beliefs influenced the models of these responses and sense-making. Echoing Argento et al. (2016), we argue that accountability logics reflect multiplicity, interconnectedness and contradictions associated with public service institutions, governance structures and organisational processes. Our findings support the suggestions in the literature that accounting-style practices have colonised the key mechanisms of public service accountability (Agyemang, 2016; Broadbent & Laughlin, 2013, 2017; Lowe et al., 2012). Consistent with these studies, we provided evidence of accountingisation, which is an essential aspect of instrumental accountability logic. While there are other aspects of accountability, these do not have the same degree of cultural power or dominance as institutional logic that accounting and instrumental rationale holds. We argue that managerial (instrumental) accountability, based on compliance logic is widely embedded in the public service, but this is not without contest from public (relational/socialising) accountability, based on public service logic. Despite differences in managerial interpretations and organisational perspectives, the accounting way of enacting accountability has lost prevalence with the recent NPM reform in Australia. In this respect, the recent NPM reform paves the way for a new logic of ‘dual accountability’, by balancing instrumental information with non-financial (relational/socialising) information (Dillard & Vinnari, 2019; Lowe et al., 2012; Vosselman, 2016). This paper also shows how the influence of collective public sector ethos and variations in sense-making can trigger efforts to alter institutional logics in a field (Thornton et al., 2012). It contributes to the institutional logics perspective that shows the emergence of a new logic as a solution to tensions or ambiguities associated with the existing institutional logics (Thornton et al., 2012). Recent NPM reforms in the Australian public service provide essential discourse for imagining duality between instrumental and relational accountability logics through the design of appropriate financial and non-financial mechanisms of accountability. To this end, this paper demonstrates that previous reforms promoted rules-based accountability devices that overemphasised the instrumental role of accounting-based approaches to public sector accountability. However, the recent NPM reform in Australia has paved the required pathway for a dual accountability logic, through a broader understanding of performance aimed at creating public value and social impact. The reform created an opportunity for dual accountability through financial and non-financial account giving, which acknowledges that performance in the public service context requires more than calculation-based financial results (Lowe et al., 2012). This paper provides an understanding of how and why the functional, procedural and compliance roles of accounting emerged as dominant accountability logics in the public services field (Argento et al., 2016). It also illustrates how the dynamics of accountability relationships within the public service are not simple agent-principal relationships but involve multiple relationships (a combination of field, institutions, organisations, people, values, laws and regulations) between individual agents in a given context (Ebrahim, 2003; Laughlin, 1990). Our analysis reveals how accountability relationships are interlinked and overlap, and how the structure and human agency interact and influence one another in an unclear way, which creates the need for duality between instrumental and relational accountability (Vosselman, 2016). Thus, the theoretical understanding of accountability needs to move beyond single accounting-based logic to a dual logic.