In the spirit of New Public Management (NPM), performance-based budgeting (PBB) has (re-)attracted the interest of both academics and practitioners. A wide variety of approaches and results have enlivened the debate on this topic, but the growing amount of theoretical and empirical works calls for systematization. Therefore, a systematic review is carried out on public management and accounting studies published in international academic journals from 1990 to 2014. Through descriptive and thematic investigations, this article explores the results achieved to date and identifies gaps and avenues for future research, answering two questions: What has been done? What else should be done?

Over recent years, the meaning of accountability has evolved and has reshaped what public sector institutions are expected to account for and how. Consequently, a large number of initiatives have emerged promoting non-financial reporting. In this context, public universities have started to experiment with sustainability reporting initiatives, but these efforts are still limited and challenged by the parallel development of multiple forms of reporting, which include integrated reporting (IR). IR has been interpreted as a further step in the reporting journey, suitable for representing the creation of public value and addressing accountability pressures. The current research aims at understanding if and how IR constitutes a feasible next step for improving the reporting practices of public universities. For this purpose, the research carries out a content analysis of social or sustainability reports written by a number of Italian public universities to find out which of the key elements of IR have already been included in such reports. Results show that some of those elements are already included, but often in a fragmented and non-homogeneous way. The findings pave the way for further considerations on how the potential adoption of IR may strengthen the value of social and sustainability reporting by integrating the information reported in different documents, fostering toward a bureaucracy that is more sustainable and providing more opportunities of innovation in reports on public sector organizations’ accountability.

Purpose: The study aims to assess the COVID-19 event in three European countries (Germany, Italy and the UK) by investigating the quality of their performance management of it.Design/methodology/approach: Pragmatic constructivism (PC) is employed as a lens through which the performance management of each country can be examined and compared over a period encompassing the first wave of COVID-19.Findings: Official statistics show that one of the countries has a significantly lower death rate. It developed and operated a more detailed and precise system of performance management. From the perspective of PC, this system supported efforts to build a functioning reality construction integrating facts, possibilities, values and communication.Originality/value: The evaluation of different national approaches to the performance management of the COVID-19 reality is novel to the literature on management accounting. PC is used as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of the performance management of public sector activities in different countries.

The well-known practice of performance-based budgeting (PBB) is a relevant component of the New Public Management (NPM) reform agenda and has become widespread, with varying approaches and results across countries. However, its variation within specific countries has remained largely unexplored. This study analyzes three organizations operating within the same context—three ministries in Italy—to contribute to a new understanding of PBB variation by illustrating why the same PBB practice can or cannot be implemented and internalized similarly across these organizations and thus become (or not) fully institutionalized. The study adopts and enriches the institutional approach by extending beyond isomorphic convergence toward PBB and explaining practice variation, linking the interactions between external pressures and internal dynamics at the organizational level to PBB institutionalization. The empirical analysis shows how a lack of alignment between external pressures and internal dynamics contributes to an unfinished and apparently endless process of institutionalization.