Management Accounting in Public Service Decision Making

Preface

In all parts of the world, public services, today, face a daunting set of challenges. These challenges are fully discussed in this book but in summary they involve the tension between growing demands for public services (consequent on population ageing, technological development, etc.) and limitations on the amount of financial resources that can be committed to the financing of public services. While resources for public services have always been limited, over the last decade we have also seen the existence of what is now termed “austerity”. This term came to prominence as a consequence of the Great Recession of 2007/09 and implies a strong downward pressure on the level of resources being devoted to public services as a consequence ...