Budget-related behavior in public sector organizations: Some empirical evidence☆

Abstract This article reports on an empirical investigation of the association of manager's budgetary behavior and departmental performance under conditions of pooled versus reciprocal task interdependency. Data was gathered from 201 departments in 22 public sector organizations. Multivariate canonical correlation analyses suggest that a significant relationship exists between budgetary behavior and performance and that the nature of this relationship differs in important ways between the two types of interdependency. The research contributes to contingency studies of management accounting and control systems in three ways. First, it extends the budgetary behavior research into the public sector domain. Second, it supports previous research indicating the importance of task interdependence. Thord, it illustrates the power of multivariate canonical analysis as a way of identifying underlying structures of contingent relations between organizational level variables and characteristics of management accounting and control systems. The study also suggests that characteristics of manager's budgetary behavior are similar across the public and private sectors.

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