Management Control Systems as the Protagonist in Public Sector Reforms: Observations from Worldwide Selected Literature

Abstract

Management control systems are used in private sector in assisting management to achieve the goals of the organizations. In the 1980s the performance of public organizations in industrial economies has been the target of severe questioning and the main reason for such questioning is the comparisons with private sector standards of returns on investment and it turned public sector organizations from service orientation to commercial orientation. In this context the practitioners started to adopt new management approaches as the basis for improving performance in the public sector. This new management approach or management control systems in the public sector creates the changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them to run better. The introduction of this new management approach in the public sector was to promote a culture of performance. The present study is an effort to understand the role of management control systems in the worldwide public sector reforms agendas by illustrating literatures from various parts of the world.