Understanding cost differences in the public sector—a cost drivers approach

The association between organizational culture and the use of management initiatives in the public sector

“…‘AM can facilitate cost management by providing more accurate assessments of product/service costs and enabling an increased focus on the efficiency of internal business processes’ (Baird, , p. 554). Insight into the factors causing changes in total costs is ‘important for estimation, planning, performance measurement and decision making in the public sector’ (Bjornenak, , p. 193), and for improving service quality (Vasakidis et al., ).…”

Has Management Accounting Research been critical?

“…However, some positive results emerged, particularly when trust prevailed; and professionals were involved and could mesh accounting systems with prevailing management systems and ethos, and situational differences (Lowe, 1997;Lapsley and Pallot, 2000;Jacobs et al, 2004;Bjørnenak, 2000). NPM principles of accounting have spread, especially to Continental Europe.…”

Accounting Reform in Greek Universities: A Slow Moving Process

“…The relevant proposals were more oriented towards 'output-constrained' style of performance evaluation (ter Bogt, 2001). They were developed within the context of relating service input to outputs, and aimed to arrive at the full cost of public services, even though unit costs in an educational environment are not proper benchmarks for cross sectional comparisons as the specific characteristics (attributes) of each organisation's 'product' differ (Bjørnenak, 2000). However, the ratios developed were rather narrow in scope, as they referred only to quantitative aspects (for example, cost per student per department) without including quality factors in the analysis.…”