Forms, rationales, relationships and influences in practice: An empirical study of budgeting in a public higher education institution

Abstract

This paper reports on a field study of the everyday practice of budgetary control in its practical sense through which organisational agents sustain, influence or transform budgetary control practice in a university setting. We document the dialogue of the micro processual activities, highlighting the significance of exploring the singularity of agents in terms of their viewpoints, trajectory, capital possession, and position they occupy in the field; they may not be mechanically pushed or pulled by external enforcement in the fulfilment of the imposition of budgetary practice. This study further examines how structural orientation of enabling and coercive approaches of budgeting might be impacted by unanticipated actual effects, determined by the micro-level forces in a specific social space.
Keywords: Budgeting, higher education, structural orientation