Defense Organizations Budgeting and Management Control Systems in Restrictive Budgets Context—Literature Gaps

Abstract

There is an increasing need to adopt private sector management processes and performance metrics by the public sector, as New Public Management is more present in the executive government actions plans. The Defense Organizations, such as the Armed Forces are not exempt of this movement. Concepts as accountability and sustainability are more common. Through budgeting and management control, it is possible to improve performance and communication, in a restrictive budget context (Letens et al. in Strategic Performance Measurement for Defense Organizations: a preliminary framework, 2017 [1]; Navarro-Galera et al. in Defence Peace Econ, 25:577–604, 2014 [2]; Cain et al. in Inter J Public Adm 27:557–576, 2004 [3]; Dougherty et al. in Public Adm Rev 63:484–497, 2003 [4]). This study aims to provide evidence of gaps in the literature relative to the association of management control systems and budgeting in Defense Organizations, as the branches of the military. A literature survey is presented for the papers published from 2000 to 2019. Although more than 2500 research papers were found, there is none that provides neither a systematic literature review nor meta-data analysis for the management and business knowledge area. Preliminary results show evidence that most of the research has been done to assess economical determinants of the military expenditure, and that this research has had focus on implementation of accounting or control instruments in case studies approach. This paper provides evidence of the gap in management planning and control research, applied at the organizational level of Armed Forces branches, namely in the context of restrictive budgets.