Budgeting and the construction of entities: struggles to negotiate change in Swedish municipalities

ABSTRACT

Budgeting has endured changes in management ideals, because it supports an instrumental rationality in which organizations should use their own resources to produce their own results. Budgeting depends on and enforces traditional and transactional systems based on predefined entities, such as single-purpose organizations and measurable outputs. This study investigates this issue and asks what types of entities budgeting needs, and where and when these entities can be negotiated and reconstructed. This study shows that budgeting and its reinforcement of traditional and transactional systems makes it difficult to proceed towards new management ideals based on cooperation, sharing, and responsiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Public budgeting
• new public management
• new public governance
• management control
• local governments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In City, we studied elderly care, education, environment and planning, and traffic. In Town, we studied social services, elderly care, environment and planning, library services, and childcare. In Suburb, we studied social services, elderly care, and environment and planning.

2. A Swedish municipality is governed by a municipal council, which is subject to re-election every fourth year in open elections. The subcommittees are political bodies subordinate to the council, and with responsibility for special operational or geographical areas. Each subcommittee has an administration responsible for executing the political decisions of the council and subcommittee. A municipality could have, for example, a social committee responsible for social services, and a corresponding social service administration.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Niklas Wällstedt

Niklas Wällstedt is assistant professor at Stockholm Business School. His research focuses on management control and performance management in the public sector, specifically on the development of alternative management practices. His research was published in book chapters, reports, and journals such as Financial Accountability and Management, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, and Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration.

Roland Almqvist

Roland Almqvist is Associate Professor at Stockholm Business School. His research has mainly been oriented towards management control in the public sector with a special focus on the outcomes of New Public Management in public sector organizations. Roland’s current research is focusing on the next phase in public sector management control and is exploring the question ‘what will come after the New Public Management?’ His research has resulted in book publications and articles in journal such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Public Administration.