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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of budgetary biasing in the context of public hospitals.

The study applies theories of accounting and budgeting behaviors in the specific institutional context of health care systems. Based on the theoretical framework, data from interviews with hospital budget officers were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

A typology of biases is provided. It proved to be useful and highlighted the central empirical assumptions and preliminary results of biasing dynamics.

Understanding the logic of budgeting actors and the drivers of bias may help explain why bias so often appears in health care budgeting. It further contributes to understanding whether the bias is functional or dysfunctional.

The concepts of budgetary bias are rarely used in the context of health care budgeting, so the study fills a gap in research knowledge.

Citizen participation in local government processes is touted as an effective means to enhance responsiveness and accountability. The topic has received considerable attention in the normative literature, yet there is persistent evidence that citizen participation occurs infrequently and has little influence on decision making. This study compares the perspectives of three different groups of stakeholders: elected officials, administrators, and citizens. Examination of the perspectives of these three groups of actors is important because it provides insight into the relationships between the groups and expectations regarding how input is used and how it influences decisions. Attention to these items can make participation more valuable and can inform other governments as they ponder how to align the priorities of different actors in their budgeting processes.

The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the ways in which actors may resolve the contradictions between the social and private aspects of accounting. It pursues this aim by developing theory and knowledge of the roles of belonging in the politics of budgeting.

First, the paper develops a Latourian anthropological theory of belonging as a social practice. It shows how this makes a significant departure from actor-network Latourian studies, shifting the focus onto the emotional and cognitive capacities that may enable actors to work through and gradually overcome the socio-political conflicts that budgeting can provoke. Second, to identify such a practice, it studies a Spanish cooperative involved in collective responses to socio-economic and political instability.

The study finds that the emotional and cognitive work by which the actors assembled their collective practice of belonging was influenced by their interactions with budgets, and, in turn, mediated the way they dealt with budgets, giving rise to more enabling roles and effects. It traces, for example, how planning and cost reduction supported abilities to relate the actors’ problems and anxieties to broader social problems, fostering more positive emotions including empathy, enthusiasm, and respect.

The findings offer a complementary, but alternative view of the socio-political character of budgeting techniques to prior studies, which advances understanding of how actors could shape more enabling roles and effects.

Involving budgets in discussions and meetings can increase the scope for work that leads to greater freedom, social cohesion, and wellbeing.

This is the first study to demonstrate how belonging can be actively assembled through budgeting. It has particular value for understanding how alternative organizations can use accounting to avoid fragmenting and degeneration.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.

This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.

This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.

The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.

This research aims to examine the introduction of participatory budgeting (PB) in local governments in two Francophone countries, namely, Benin and Niger, and how local contextual factors influence its practices.

The research employs a multiple case study design with a comparative approach to analyze the introduction and practices of participatory budgeting across selected municipalities in Benin and Niger. Hopper (2017) and Lassou et al.’s (2018) notion of “pragmatism” within neopatrimonialism is mobilized to analyze the data from sources including interviews and documents. The analysis is conducted at both the country and local government levels.

Participatory budgeting took roots in a number of municipalities. Its introduction and adoption has promoted participatory governance especially from traditionally marginalized segments of society (e.g. women); albeit to varying degrees, in the face of the prevailing national neopatrimonial context. Furthermore, despite donor's push for a standardized model of PB implementation, actual practices took varying shapes, a consequence of differing local conditions and circumstances.

In terms of limitation, it was not possible to access a number of research participants sought, particularly in Niger. But access to key documents from government, donors and civil society organizations help mitigate this to a large extent.

A major practical implication is the importance of adaptation to local socio-economic contexts and circumstances. As shown in the study, a blanket introduction and implementation of PB across societies based on a standardized model is unlikely to succeed and be sustained in the long run. A great deal of flexibility is required to accommodate indigenous realities on the grounds.

The study contributes to shed light on public sector budgeting regarding participatory budgeting practices in an under-researched setting: Francophone Africa.

The principles of public value management (PVM) have greatly inspired public management practitioners and scholars, but the application of these ideas to the everyday practice and research of government has proven to be more difficult. This article formulates propositions for how the principles of PVM could affect one of the core processes of government: budgeting. These propositions can inspire practitioners and be tested by future researchers.

The article identifies the core principles of PVM and applies these to the budgeting functions of the allocation, management and accountability of public money. This exploration leads to a first conceptualization of “public value budgeting” and generates 12 propositions about how budgeting will change and remain unaltered under the influence of PVM.

The central argument is that “public value budgeting” could promote more coordination and integration between public funds and community resources, more involvement of societal stakeholders in the budgetary process and more continuous tweaks and changes to the budget. At the same time, legislative vetoes, financial controls and debates about the best use of public money will remain an important feature of public budgeting.

The article forwards the first conceptualization of public value budgeting, connects the literatures on public value and public budgeting, and offers both a practical application of PVM to public budgeting as well as a concrete agenda for future research.

This study aims to investigate how actors’ responses to competing logics (academic and business logics) in budgetary practices in a university setting in Tanzania were shaped by state pressure, market pressure and organizational characteristics (funding certainty and changes in university ownership) and how actors’ agency was exercised in enacting competing logics.

The data for this study were collected from interviews, observations, informal discussions and document review. The data analysis processes were guided by institutional logic concepts and the role of actors’ agency.

The findings demonstrate how academic logic traditionally subsisted in a university setting in which there was funding certainty. Changes in the university’s ownership resulted in funding uncertainty. Market and state pressure increased the intensity of funding uncertainty, which supported business logic. While market logic supported the emergence of business logic, state pressure altered the balance of the competing logics. University actors responded by selective coupling and compartmentalizing where both elements of academic and business logics were enacted. While managers prioritized business logic, academics prioritized academic logic. However, the role of agency was exercised in actors’ responses, subverting both academic and business logics.

Managers should appropriately enact both elements of competing logics to avoid marginalization of some of the core university activities. In addition, profitable business ideas should be considered, identified, planned and implemented successfully. Moreover, there is a need to change the historically contingent and culturally situated environment when enacting competing logics. Furthermore, the state influence on universities should be considered to prevent unnecessary uncertainties in budgetary practices.

The paper demonstrates how selective coupling and compartmentalizing strategies were used by actors to enact both elements of competing logics in budgetary practices in a university setting. It further shows how actors’ agency influenced and subverted competing logics. The paper, thus, responds to the recent calls to investigate the influence of institutional logics on control practices, and the role of actors in strategically handling different logics in developing countries (Damayanthi and Gooneratne, 2017; Argento et al., 2020; Anessi-Pessina et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2020). It further suggests new analysis of academic and business logics in their context.

This chapter examines the role of actors operating within the context of participatory democratic institutions. The literature on radical democracy suggests that reforming democratic institutions to promote secondary associations, participation, and deliberative decision-making can radically transform states. Through an analysis of alternative local government (ALG) practices in Saquisilí, Ecuador, the chapter demonstrates that a variety of actors, with diverse motivations, constitute and operate within participatory institutions. Despite the radical discursive structure of the institutions, however, actors are able to creatively use those institutional spaces for other goals. The implication for radical democratic theory is that not all outcomes that have been read as unintended consequences are unintended.

This paper analyses participatory budgeting (PB) in two Indonesian indigenous communities, illustrating how the World Bank sponsored neo-liberal model of “technical rational” PB is overshadowed by local values and wisdom, consisting of sophisticated, pre-existing rationalities for public participation.

Adopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the study draws on data from semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and periods of participant observation. The paper utilises Weber's characterisations of rationality to analyse the PB process in indigenous communities.

The co-existence of both formal (technical) and substantive rationalities leads two Indonesian indigenous communities to execute participatory budgeting pragmatically. The formal budgetary mechanisms (Musrenbang), cascaded down from central and local governments, are melded with, and co-exist alongside, a tradition of public participation deriving from local cultural values and wisdom (Rembug warga). Reciprocal relationships and trust based on a pre-existing substantive rationality result in community members adapting budget practices while also preserving their local culture and resisting the encroachment of neo-liberal initiatives. The paper offers deeper analysis of the unintended consequences of attempting to implement technical rational accounting reforms and practices in indigenous settings.

The paper provides important insights into the way the interplay between formal and substantive rationality impacts on accounting and budgeting practices in indigenous communities. Our study also presents a unique case in emerging economy contexts in which neoliberal initiatives have been outmanoeuvred in the process of preserving indigenous values and wisdom. The informal participatory mechanism (Rembug warga) retained the community trust that neoliberalism systematically erodes.