Cost uncertainty and budget overspending: A safety-first perspective

In this study we model a cost center manager's decision about how to achieve a required level of output. The spending plan that the manager adopts is expected to result in successful performance, but at an uncertain cost. The uncertainty associated with the spending plan is inversely related to the expected cost. The analysis presented in this article suggests that a manager who exhibits Safety-First behavior and wishes to avoid large budget deviations is more likely to exceed what he or she perceives to be the overspending limit rather than the underspending limit. That manager will tend to incur costs in excess of the budget. This mathematical result has an intuitive appeal; a manager is willing to pay a certain “risk premium” to avoid the risk of large budget deviations and accompanying adverse consequences. This result has implications for both performance evaluation and budget setting, particularly in the public sector. Under the circumstances that we describe, using budgets in evaluating managerial performance may be misleading. Another application of our study relates to the “budget creep” phenomenon and how, under particular circumstances, its size can be reduced.     

Managing budget emphasis through the explicit design of conditional budgetary slack

Budgetary slack plays an important role in the functioning of budgets in organizations. While theory has found negative as well as positive elements associated with its presence, the empirical literature has interpreted it as being dysfunctional to organizations. In this paper, we present empirical evidence on how a company purposefully budgeted additional financial resources with a motivation intention (Lukka. Budgetary biasing in organizations: Theoretical framework and empirical evidence. Accounting, Organizations and Society 13 (1998) 281–302) to facilitate the managers’ task in achieving the goals of the company. Using quantitative and qualitative data from four logistic sites of a disk drive manufacturer for 24 months, we examine how the company accepted more slack as the demand on business processes increased and goals other than budget targets––in particular, service quality––became harder to achieve. By allowing this practice, headquarters made it clear to local managers that product quality and service were at least as important as meeting budget objectives. We also find that not only was budgetary slack purposefully built during the budgeting process but also in the budgeting system itself through the underlying cost accounting assumptions. The results of this paper provide empirical evidence on the positive aspects of budgetary slack and on the role of cost accounting models used in the budgeting system to facilitate managerial work.     

MULTILEVEL FRAMING: AN ALTERNATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF BUDGET CONTROL IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISES

This paper addresses the question as to why there tends to be recurring budget deviations in public sector service organizations. In the public sector, budgets and actuals are loosely coupled, and budgets may serve other institutional functions than control purposes. However, little research has addressed how the framing of budget information may explain the different functions of the budgets as control devices. The paper argues that the valence of budget deviations varies between organizations, and that organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget surpluses have a propensity to underspend the budgets. Consequently, organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget deficits tend to overspend the budgets. The empirical part analyses the budget situations in the Central Bank of Norway and in a large university hospital in Norway. In the case of the Bank, it was found that underspending of budgets was framed as performance measures indicating high organizational efficiency. The Hospital, on the other hand, showed a different picture as budget deficits were the situation during all years studied. One main finding was the key actors’ roles as translators of the society's expectations as to the fulfilling of the organizations’ missions. These translators function as mediators between the institutional context and pressures, the organizations’ goals and the internal budget processes. The conventional wisdom that the budget also acts as a means of communication and as symbols and ritual acts that reflect the institutional contingencies of the organizations, is further developed by describing how organizations’ goals valence the role of budgets.     

Budget Reporting in Local Government: Problem or Solution?

Budgeting practice in Victorian local government has been criticised by the ICAA, which has developed a standardised budgeting model. The Victorian government has prescribed standardised financial and budget reporting following a decade of reform in the public sector. This paper examines whether the criticism of local government budgeting is valid, and whether standardised models are appropriate, particularly in the context of ambiguous outcomes and lack of input-output relationships, criticism of the adoption of accrual accounting in the public sector, and a focus on the implementation of a flexible best-value regime designed to suit local conditions.     

The external organizational environment and its impact on management information systems

It is argued in this paper that organizations are “living purposeful” or “adaptively rational” systems whose survival depends on their ability to interact successfully, on a continual basis, with the surrounding environment. Three states of the external organizational environment — controllable, partially controllable and uncontrollable — are identified, and the information characteristics of each state are discussed. The approaches that organizations can adopt to collect information on the environment are also discussed; these approaches use externally-based data sources and modeling and/or analytic techniques. On these bases, we consider effective strategies and methodologies which organizations can adopt for processing, evaluating and communicating information about the external environment to satisfy decision-making requirements.     

CONNECTING ACCOUNTING AND EDUCATION IN THE UK: DISCOURSES AND RATIONALITIES OF EDUCATION REFORM

In this paper we analyze the processes which have structured the emphasis upon budgeting and accounting in the Local Management of Schools initiative by outlining the inter-relations between the discourses of neo-liberal government and economics, and the apparent “need” for the expansion of accounting and budgeting systems in the public sector and particularly education in the UK during the past six years.At the heart of our analysis is the contention that accounting and budgeting systems have been promoted throughout the UK public sector by connections to a discourse of managerial enterprise and economic rationality. The intersections between accounting techniques, and economic and managerial notions of decision making, responsibility and market organization have provided the complex discursive formation within which the accounting and budgeting innovations introduced under LMS have been presented and represented as “necessary” elements of proper public sector organization. The colonization of accounting into the education sector has been made possible by a series of seemingly unquestioned linkages, associations and reductions, upon which we offer a commentary, between the discourse of economic rationality and the techniques of accounting.     

The social construction,challenge and transformation of a budgetary regime: The endogenization of welfare regulation by institutional entrepreneurs

Our historically-informed field study focuses upon the socio-political processes by which heterogeneous budgeting compromises are reached by a variety of contending parties in seeking and resisting fundamental change, as well as the consequences of those compromises within the State of Wisconsin’s transformative Welfare Works (W-2) Program. Despite the continuing political rhetoric of comprehensive changes in the manner in which budgets are formulated, and, more broadly, the welfare system through adoption of a “market-based delivery system” and “performance-based contracts,” we find that the adopted and transformed regulation and budgeting regime facilitated more incremental changes in welfare delivery. Our field observations identify the manner in which budgeting facilitated this shift from a comprehensive to incremental strategy in terms of: (1) the malleable nature of budgeting, which provided the needed organizational flexibility to shift resources from one application to another in an ostensibly rational manner, thereby ensuring the legitimacy of the emerging organizational arrangements and related dramatic budget cuts under W-2; and (2) the active role played by institutional entrepreneurs in the construction, challenge and deployment of budgets in shaping, and thereby endogenizing welfare reform regulations at both the federal and state level. Refining our theoretical line of reasoning, field observations suggest that W-2 and the social context to which it was applied were mutually endogenous rather than fully endogenous, and that the principal actors implicated in the change process may be more aptly described as cultural entrepreneurs rather than institutional entrepreneurs; they also suggest that the forms endogenization and entrepreneurship take are reciprocally interdependent such that the manner in which each plays out conditions the other. Implications are explored.     

An institutional theory perspective on the DRG framework, case-mix accounting systems and health-care organizations

Case-mix accounting systems have been advanced as both reflecting the economic reality that underlies a hospital's various “product lines”, as defined by DRG prospective payment categories, and facilitating rational decision making regarding resource acquisition, deployment and use. This article uses the institutional perspective to extend this conceptualization of case-mix accounting systems. The institutional perspective proposes that many elements of organizational structure, like case-mix accounting systems, reflect as much a need to conform to societal expectations of acceptable practice as the technical imperative of fostering rationality. This article also extends institutional theory regarding the issues of power and decoupling by considering institutionalization to be an unfinished process in the health-care context, wherein the active agency of individuals and organizations is subjected to systematic examination. In this specific context, case-mix accounting may play a significant role in establishing and perpetuating — not merely supporting — the very social structure of legitimacy, and may consequently be considered an interest-oriented activity having the potential to penetrate and alter the internal operating processes of financially strained hospitals.     

Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis

This Special Issue is based on papers initially presented at the ‘Accounting for the Public Sector at a Time of Crisis’ Conference at the Centre for Not-for-profit and Public-sector Research, Queen's University Belfast, UK in 2018. The public sector consists of organizations that are owned and operated by government; organizations that exist to provide goods and services for a country's citizens. What is particularly distinctive about such organizations, and what makes them different from businesses, is that they are (or, at least perhaps, should be) not-for-profit. In addition, they frequently have wide social and cultural goals that are central to what they do. They are pervasive in most societies. Yet, it is argued, they face crisis on a number of fronts: in terms of the influence of potentially inappropriate, business-like new public management ideas related to performance management and the embracing of related accounting and budgeting approaches; and in terms of the impact of austerity, following the Great Recession in 2008. In such a context it is suggested that public sector governance, accounting, and accountability systems are heavily involved. The papers included in this Special Issue present an opportunity to reflect on aspects of this crisis in terms of how it connects with accounting systems and accounting changes. Key arguments of these papers, and overarching themes of this Special Issue, are explored in this editorial.     

Mediating instruments and making markets: Capital budgeting, science and the economy

We examine in this paper how certain instruments link science and the economy through acting on capital budgeting decisions, and in doing so how they contribute to the process of making markets. We use the term “mediating instruments” to refer to those practices that frame the capital spending decisions of individual firms and agencies, and that help to align them with investments made by other firms and agencies in the same or related industries. Our substantive focus is on the microprocessor industry, and the roles of “Moore’s Law” and “technology roadmaps”. We examine the ways in which these instruments envision a future, and how they link a multitude of actors and domains in such a way that the making of future markets for microprocessors and related devices can continue. The paper begins with a discussion of existing literatures on capital budgeting, science studies, and recent economic sociology, together with the reasoning behind the notion of “mediating instruments”. We then address the substantive issues in three stages. Firstly, we consider the role of “Moore’s Law” in shaping the fundamental expectations of an entire set of industries about rates of increase in the power and complexity of semiconductor devices, and the timing of those increases. Secondly, we examine the roles of “technology roadmaps” in translating the simplified imperatives of Moore’s Law into a framework that can guide and encourage the myriad of highly uncertain and confidential investment decisions of firms and other agencies. Thirdly, we explore one particular and recent example of major capital investment, that of post-optical lithography. The paper seeks to help remedy the empirical deficit in studies of capital budgeting practices, and to demonstrate that investment is much more than a matter of valuation techniques. We argue, through the case of the microprocessor industry, for greater attention to investment as an inter-firm and inter-agency process, thus lessening the fixation in studies of capital budgeting on the traditional hierarchical and bounded organization. In addition, we seek to extend and illustrate empirically the richness of the notion of “mediating instruments” for researchers in accounting, science studies, and economic sociology.     

The pattern of PPB rejection: Something about organizations, something about PPB

“Pathology” is defined in Webster's dictionary as “… the study of the essential nature of diseases and especially of the structural and functional changes produced by them”. Thus, a pathological study can reveal information concerning both a disease or toxin and the organism to which it is introduced.Planning, programming and budgeting (PPB) was introduced in not-for-profit organizations in order to improve organizational planning and control. It failed. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a study in pathology concerning PPB and the not-for-profit organization. PPB is considered to be the toxin. The not-for-profit organization is considered to be the organism. The scalpels employed in conducting the examination were forged in the organizational, planning and control, and general systems theory literatures.     

The four spikes

The unintended impacts of human appropriation of the planet's resources have become so numerous, voluminous, and entangled in feedback loops that they often overwhelm the capacities of decisionmakers to cope with current crises, much less prepare for a sustainable future. The difficulty may be alleviated by viewing global change from a broader perspective than is normally offered either by specialists (whose views are necessarily narrow) or by mainstream media (whose interests are usually fragmentary and parochial). From this broader perspective, it can be seen that four “megaphenomena” began sweeping the planet in the past century. Graphed on a time-line of millennia rather than years or days, they appear as four enormous “spikes” — of human population, materials/energy consumption, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, and extinctions of species. These megaphenomena account for the proliferation of afflictions swamping humanity at the outset of the 21st century. Understanding the nature of the spikes may offer the most viable means of managing — by attacking the roots — of what could otherwise escalate into an increasingly disastrous cascade of impacts.     

转型期行政事业单位预算绩效评价规则研究

剖析财政部近期预算绩效评价部署与远期绩效预算改革定位的政策基调,提出面向绩效预算改革的行政事业部门预算绩效评价规则定位问题,整合涵盖评价视角观、范畴观与指标观的预算绩效评价规则体系,促进绩效预算改革实践的深入拓展。     

The influence of culture and transparency on global research and development intensity: An overview across Europe

Culture and transparency can be described as a set of beliefs, norms, and actions, which drive the human action into innovativeness. Over the centuries, those pillars have driven individuals, groups, organizations, and nations, into the most complex networking schemes. It seems now unquestionable that those beliefs and policies, affect both private and public organizations, driving them across innovation wages in a more incremental or radical way. The dependent variable in this research (R&D) embodies the disbursements in research and development, carried out by business enterprise and public sector, and by education institutions. Thus, this research aims to mainly explore the effect of culture and transparency, as drivers of business attractiveness, on global R&D intensity. Using information from 31 European countries over the period 2010–2014, total R&D expenditures were regressed against several variables such as the Hofstede's cultural dimensions, the public sector transparency index, and other aggregated variables. Most of the theoretical assumptions are now supported by our empirical outcomes. Culture and transparency can act as attractiveness drivers, for business sector organizations and for other private and public institutions, toward the implementation of knowledge transformation mechanisms and intellectual capital achievements.     

Flexible specialization, new technologies and future industrialization in developing countries

Developing countries increasingly recognize that in the future far more attention will need to be paid to firms located outside the modern or formal sector. In this context, the complex of recent microelectronics and organizational innovations seems highly attractive for these are often said to be capable of facilitating a pattern of industrialization based on flexible, small-scale production, rather than on the more typical large-scale technology of mass production. This article, accordingly, seeks to evaluate the various mechanisms through which the new technologies—and the more general possibilities implied by the various definitions of ‘flexible specialization’—may in fact contribute to such an alternative model of industrialization.     

Ritual legitimation, de-coupling and the budgetary process: managing organizational hypocrisies in a multinational company

The study of participation in the budgetary cycle has formed a prominent part of the research literature concerned with the budgetary process. More recently there has emerged a body of literature concerned with exploring the political and symbolic nature of the budgetary process. The paper reports upon the outcomes of an empirical study of the introduction of `budgetary participation' in a division of a European subsidiary of a large North American car manufacturer. We detail the long process of consultation and negotiation within the subsidiary, and between it and the European Headquarters. The study provides a revealing instance of the roles of formal budget participation as a ritual of control and legitimation without the substantive involvement of middle managers and suggested to us the introduction of de-coupling and organizational hypocrisy alongside the introduction of budget participation. The study pays close attention to the contingent effects of the wider political context of the division and the relationships between the division, its organizational context and organizational environment, and how this context played upon the budgetary process in the division. The outcomes that we analyse at `Delta' reflect the de-coupling strategies and organizational hypocrisies commonly found in public sector organizations. In this wider setting the corporation persists with the ritual of `tight' budget negotiation and target setting and apparent underachievement in performance. Yet we conclude that the complex technological and political context to the formation and siting of Delta continued and may continue to support its existence.$g0     

Use of derivatives in public sector organizations

The present paper develops and tests a model explaining public sector derivative use in terms of budget discrepancy minimization. The model is different from private sector models. Private sector models do not readily translate into the public sector, which typically faces different objectives. Hypotheses are developed and tested using logistic regression over a sample of Australian Commonwealth public sector organizations. It is found that public sector organization derivative use is positively correlated with liabilities and size consistent with the hypotheses concerning budget discrepancy management.     

CANBERRA TO PORT MORESBY: GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING AND BUDGETING FOR THE EARLY STAGES OF DEVOLUTION

This paper examines changes which have occurred in government accounting and budgeting from the antecedent system of Treasury control in the colonial era of The Territory of Papua and New Guinea to the contemporary system of Finance control in the Independent State of Papua New Guinea. An exposition is provided of existing and proposed governmental accounting and budgeting issues during the early stages of devolution for indigenous control. Although self-government provided new legislation for government accounting and budgeting, the critical event in the formation of the present system was the Constitution which highlighted indigenous responsibility against a backdrop of national attainment criteria. The development of indigenous responsibility for the government accounting and budgeting system has been limited by: (i) overreliance on an expatriate model, and (ii) a fundamental dearth of qualified accountants at the professional level in the public sector. In the longer term, however, cultural rather than administrative issues will tend to influence and guide policy in this area.