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Program heads are key players in governmental budgeting because they are involved both in formulating their program’s budget and ensuring the program’s activities comply with the budget. This paper synthesizes past research pertaining to two aspects of a government’s budgeting system-formal budgetary procedures fairness and budgetary procedures implementation fairness-that influence program heads’ attitudes and behaviors. Criteria are identified for each of the two forms of budgetary procedures fairness, as are specific types of attitudinal and behavioral reactions on the part of program heads. Reasons that program heads value fair budgetary procedures are also discussed. The paper concludes by presenting implications the research has for people involved in designing and implementing governmental budgeting systems and for governmental budgeting researchers.

Empirical evidence from governmental budgeting and related organizational decision‐making contexts suggests that program heads will be less likely to leave their governmental unit when they feel that governmental budgeting is fair. The purpose of this study is to examine relationships between three forms of fairness in governmental budgeting – distributive fairness, procedural fairness, and interactional fairness – and program heads' intention to leave the governmental unit.

Questionnaire data were gathered from 87 US federal government program heads with budget responsibility and analyzed with multiple regression.

Interactional budgetary fairness had a significant and positive unique relationship with intent to leave after controlling for the other two forms of budgetary fairness and three demographic variables. Neither distributive budgetary fairness nor procedural budgetary fairness had a significant unique relationship with intent to leave.

Budgetary decision makers and budget staff in governmental units can reduce program heads' intention to leave the governmental unit by promoting interactional budgetary fairness through steps such as treating the program heads with kindness and respect during budgeting and providing clear and adequate explanations for budgetary decisions.

This study is the first to examine relationships between the three forms of organizational decision‐making fairness and turnover intention in a governmental budgeting context.

To summarize the findings of empirical studies the authors have conducted regarding budgetary procedures fairness and to discuss key implications of these findings.

Summary and synthesis of the authors' empirical research.

Identifies criteria for, and types of attitudinal and behavioral reactions that managers have toward, formal budgetary procedures fairness and budgetary procedures implementation fairness. Provides information regarding how the two forms of budgetary procedures fairness work together to influence managers' attitudes and behaviors, and how they reduce managers' negative reactions to unfavorable budgets. Presents reasons that fair budgetary procedures are important to managers.

The authors' studies used questionnaire data where all variables were measured at a single point in time, which provides little control over unmeasured variables and direction of causality. Future research should seek to expand the sets of criteria for and reactions toward budgetary procedures fairness, as well as to further detail the processes by which budgetary procedures fairness works. Also, relationships involving budgetary procedures fairness should be examined by means of laboratory experiments.

Underscores the importance of promoting formal budgetary procedures fairness and budgetary procedures implementation fairness in organizational budgetary systems, and provides concrete guidance in this regard.

Provides useful information to accounting and audit staff, budget committee members, supervisors, and other employees involved in designing and implementing organizational budgetary systems and to budgeting researchers.

This study revisits the area of reliance on budget to evaluate employee performance. It contributes in several ways. First, it updates this traditional research area making it more relevant to the current debate on the use of financial vis-à-vis nonfinancial measures in multidimensional performance measurement systems. Second, it examines the relationship between reliance on budget and budgetary participation in a manner that is different from that used by prior studies. Instead of treating budgetary participation as a moderating variable, the study examines it as a mediating variable. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that reliance on budget as performance measures affects the extent of employee budgetary participation. Third, it incorporates the recent interest by management accounting researchers in organizational fairness into this research area. It hypothesizes that budgetary participation affects the extent of employees’ perceptions of procedural fairness, which, in turn, influences employee job satisfaction and performance. The structural equation modeling results based on a sample of 152 managers indicate that the use of budget targets for performance evaluation is positively associated with employee job satisfaction and performance. However, much of these effects are indirect via (1) budgetary participation and (2) procedural fairness.

This study examines how leadership style, budget participation, and perceptions of budgetary fairness influence an important employee outcome, organizational commitment. In the proposed model, the leadership style of the superior, specifically consideration, is linked to subordinate participation in the budgeting process. Both leadership style and budget participation, in turn, influence employee beliefs about budgetary fairness, that is, beliefs concerning the procedural and distributive justice of the budgeting system. Finally, the justice of the budgeting system and its antecedents (leadership and budget participation) affect organizational commitment. Results from a survey of supervisors and managers in several firms support the proposed model.

This study extends Quirin et al. (2000) by incorporating equity theory (Adams, 1965) into a theoretical model of budgetary participation and performance. The study develops and tests a nomological framework of budgetary participation that includes two organizational constructs, budgetary participation and budget-based compensation, and three individual characteristics, perception of equity, organizational commitment, and employee performance. Measures of these constructs were gathered from a sample of 98 employees in 15 organizations.

In accordance with the proposed theory and hypotheses, results reveal that budgetary participation is associated with increased use of budget-based compensation as well as higher levels of perception of equity and organizational commitment. Budget-based compensation and perception of equity, in turn, are also associated with increased levels of organizational commitment, while elevated commitment was related to higher performance. The results provide further insight into the beneficial aspects of budgetary participation. Specifically, the results indicate that budgetary participation is positively associated with perception of equity, which in turn increases organizational commitment and, ultimately, employee performance.

This study contributes to the management accounting (MA) literature by exploring the effect of managers’ perception of justice in the budgeting process (as a subsystem of MA) on their satisfaction and motivation to achieve organizational objectives. Drawing on the Habermasian concept of deliberative democracy, which underscores the importance of gaining legitimacy to achieve desirable outcomes, our analysis focuses on seven constructs related to situational and intrinsic participation, procedural and distributive justice, and attitude on two outcome constructs: satisfaction and motivation. We surveyed managers with an accounting background who are directly involved in the budgeting process and analyzed our data using partial least squares-based path analysis–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results of this study indicate that both dimensions of justice – distributive and procedural – are positively associated with participation, and in turn, positively impact satisfaction and motivation. Contrary to expectations, managers’ influence on the final budget does not seem to be as important as we expected. Budgeting is an important managerial function that involves setting targets based on an organization’s strategy and allocating resources for its execution. Such a fundamental process requires managers’ participation at various levels to ensure that the process is fair and just. Our study’s findings imply that justice perceptions are an essential fabric of organizational processes that drive human behavior. Specifically, our findings reveal that perception of justice influences participation and satisfaction and motivation.

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 study investigates which dimensions of the management control system (MCS) increase the perception of organizational justice and reduce unethical behavior in the perception of managers. The purpose of this paper is to validate the theoretical model of the study of Langevin and Mendoza (2012), testing the theoretical hypotheses formulated by the authors.

A survey was performed in companies listed among the Best and Largest of Exame Magazine, and the sample is composed of 102 respondents of the research, which consists of 41 assertions.

The results of the structural equation modeling show that the definition of objectives increases the perception of procedural justice, but the same was not observed regarding the remuneration of the managers. Likewise, disregarding aspects that are uncontrollable by managers in performance evaluation does not lead to the perception of procedural and distributive justice. However, feedback quality leads to the understanding that the MCS is fair. Perception of procedural and distributive justice was also observed in the use of multiple measures of performance by the company.

Other factors that have not been investigated may interfere with and contribute to the reduction of unethical behavior (budget slack and data manipulation).

The only variable that interferes in the reduction of unethical behavior is feedback quality. The non-confirmation of all the hypotheses instigates the replication of the research in other contexts for empirical validation of the theoretical model of Langevin and Mendoza (2012).

This study examines the roles of organizational justice and trust in a specific type of management control system (MCS), gain-sharing. According to the proposed theory, employee perceptions involving the procedural and distributive justice of the gain-sharing plan influence employee trust in managers. Positive perceptions of fairness lead to high trust, which, in turn has positive consequences for the organization such as lower employee turnover. To investigate these issues, a survey was administered to employees of a large manufacturing company. Results of structural equation modeling indicate that employee perceptions regarding the fairness of the gain-sharing plan are positively related to employee trust in managers. Further, trust is linked to employee turnover intentions. The results imply that the organizational justice of an MCS has consequences for the attitudes and behaviors of employees and thus the success or failure of the MCS.