Strategic management accounting for change and flexibility

• In public sector organizations, strategies and management accounting are often developed with the ambition of providing a combination of long-term objectives and short-term evaluations. This combination is sometimes labelled Strategic Management Accounting (SMA). The purpose of this chapter is to enhance our knowledge about SMA in the public sector context. We do this through a qualitative study of the Swedish Public Employment Service, which in 2020 launched a new strategic direction to manage changes in the agency’s environment, along with a balance scorecard (BSC). The research question for this case was: How is the BSC used by a public sector agency as an SMA tool? Our results show that the agency’s operational managers and controllers use the BSC as an SMA tool to create active management and control, while at the same time being reactive with a short-term focus. We address these results in relation to an idea of flexibilization, more specifically the desire to become a flexible agency that can change and adapt to short-term changes.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Economics

Finance

Business & Industry

Politics & International Relations

Business administration

Företagsekonomi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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