Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting
Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting: A New Role for Rule Variability
Springer | Finance | June 13, 2016 | ISBN-10: 9811003408 | 101 pages | pdf | 1.62 mb
Springer | Finance | June 13, 2016 | ISBN-10: 9811003408 | 101 pages | pdf | 1.62 mb
Authors: Di Francesco, Michael, Alford, John
Focuses on a "blind spot" in budgeting literature, analyzing how the rigidity of budget processes in the public sector inhibit the collaboration and agility needed in responding to complex non-routine problems
Illuminates contending understandings of the nature of budget control and offers practical recommendations to policy makers on how to reconfigure centralized budget control for greater flexibility
Offers a number of genuinely novel contributions to analyzing public management structures and practices, such as a taxonomy of budget control properties that unpacks the mechanisms inhibiting flexibility as well as an application of responsive regulatory approaches to budget control
This work explores how reshaping budget rules and how they are applied presents a preferred means of public sector budgeting, rather than simply implementing fewer rules. Through enhanced approaches to resource flexibility, government entities can ensure that public money is used appropriately while achieving the desired results. The authors identify public budgeting practices that inhibit responses to complex problems and examine how rule modification can lead to expanded budget flexibility. Through a nuanced understanding of the factors underlying conventional budget control, the authors use budget reforms in Australia to show the limits of rule modification and propose "rule variability" as a better means of recalibrating central control and situational flexibility. Here, policy makers and public management academics will find a source that surveys emerging ways of reconciling control and flexibility in the public sector.
Number of Illustrations and Tables
1 b/w illustrations
Topics
Public Finance
Financial Accounting
Public Administration
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