Aptitude, Accountability, and Adaptation

Abstract

The study of how public organizations raise, allocate, and manage financial resources - known here as budgeting, financial management and accountability - has deep roots in public management scholarship. But with time, the practice of public budgeting and financial management has become much more technical and specialized, and in turn, so has the study of it. For these and other reasons, throughout the past roughly three decades, scholars who work in this sub-field have tended to focus on applied, esoteric and often idiosyncratic questions that have led away from its public management roots. The central point of this chapter is that research on public budgeting, accounting and financial management has much to offer to the study of public management writ large. Although it has uncoupled to a degree from the larger field, the sub-field is a unique empirical laboratory address some of the broader field’s classic and contemporary questions. It behooves public management scholars to acquaint themselves with how the sub-field informs their work, and scholars within the sub-field could use a framework for how to bring the evidence they produce to bear on broader public management questions. This chapter is written with both those goals in mind.