Insights into performance-based budgeting in the public sector: a literature review and a research agenda

ABSTRACT

In the spirit of New Public Management (NPM), performance-based budgeting (PBB) has (re-)attracted the interest of both academics and practitioners. A wide variety of approaches and results have enlivened the debate on this topic, but the growing amount of theoretical and empirical works calls for systematization. Therefore, a systematic review is carried out on public management and accounting studies published in international academic journals from 1990 to 2014. Through descriptive and thematic investigations, this article explores the results achieved to date and identifies gaps and avenues for future research, answering two questions: What has been done? What else should be done?

KEYWORDS:

• Performance-based budgeting
• systematic literature review
• public sector

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge helpful feedbacks from the participants at EAA Annual Congress (Glasgow, 2015), XIX IRSPM Conference (Birmingham, 2015), and AIDEA Annual Congress (Piacenza, 2015), and thank Prof. Jan van Helden (University of Groningen) for his precious comments on a previous version of the paper, the anonymous reviewers and the guest editors of the special issue for their priceless advices.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Giovanna Mauro

Sara Giovanna Mauro (corresponding author) is a PhD student in Management at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa. Her primary research interests are in public sector accounting and management. She has a Master’s Degree in Management and Governance and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics of Public Administrations and International Institutions.

Lino Cinquini

Lino Cinquini (PhD) is Professor in Business Administration and Management Accounting at the Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa. His main research areas are Management Accounting and Performance measurement in public and private organizations. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management and Governance.

Giuseppe Grossi

Giuseppe Grossi is Professor in Public Management and Accounting and Scientific leader of research environment on Governance, Regulation, Internationalization and Performance at the Department of Business Administration and Work Science, Kristianstad University (Sweden), and Research Professor at Kozminski University (Poland). Grossi’s research focuses on public governance, whole-of-government accounting and performance budgeting. He’s currently guest editor of several public management and accounting journals.