Accounting and performance management innovations in public sector organizations

Guest editors: Anatoli Bourmistrov, Nord University; Giuseppe Grossi, Kristianstad University; Toomas Haldma, Tartu University

Globally large number of countries underwent radical and sustained economic and regulatory changes during the last decades. These countries have experienced different degrees of economic development, regulatory and public sector reforms, and other peculiarities stemming from their history, culture, languages and identities. We believe that this research setting offers a great opportunity to investigate how incentives change and impact public sector accounting and performance management practices. We are interested in understanding how these changes affect providers (accountants, controllers, consultants, etc.) and users (politicians, public managers, auditors, etc.) of accounting and performance information and have implications for their work. There is still a lack of research studying the measurement of public value and public performance, the strategic planning, budgeting, control, and reporting of public services provided by the public sector organizations in co-production with users, or by hybrids and similar inter-institutional settings, and the role played by new forms of “dialogic” accounting and budgeting in ensuring democratic governance, transparency and citizen participation.

We invite papers using different theoretical approaches that investigate the changes in accounting, budgeting and control mechanisms, its regulatory and institutional reforms, enforcement difficulties and their impact on the innovative practices in different levels of governments (state, regions and local governments, etc.), and policy areas (as primary and higher education, health care, etc.). We particularly encourage comparative studies highlighting causes and consequences of similarities and differences across countries, policy areas and providers of public services (public, private and hybrid organizations).

Topics could include, but are not limited to:
- Innovations in performance budgeting, performance management and reporting in public sector;
- The internal and external drivers and barriers to innovation in public sector accounting and performance management;
- The effects of technological change on accounting and performance management;
- The impact of global economic crisis on accounting and performance management innovations;
- The changing role and identities of providers and users of accounting and performance management tools;
- The development and use of new forms of “dialogic” accounting and performance management in ensuring democratic governance, transparency and citizen participation.

All theoretical framework and methodological designs are welcome. Authors should bear in mind the publication policy of Baltic Journal of Management, which focuses on papers that are relevant to practice and policy. Papers must be submitted in English.

Authors should submit their papers by November 01, 2017 to Baltic Journal of Management (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bjom) according to the journal guidelines. Feedback for the papers submitted to the Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research (CIGAR) conference will be provided in a panel section in conjunction with the conference organised in Porto during 8-9 June 2017. Please be aware that presentation at the Conference does not guarantee acceptance of the paper for publication in special issue of Baltic Journal of Management. The participation in the Conference is not a precondition for submitting a manuscript to the special issue. Five-six papers after a double-blind review process will be published in a special issue of Baltic Journal of Management in 2019.