Tightening budget control in social services

This study investigates how tight budget control is enacted in social services, drawing on a comparative case study of two Danish municipalities. The analysis focuses on how budgeting principles within purchaser-provider arrangements shape managers’ interpretations of controllability, flexibility, and responsibility under conditions of fiscal pressure. The study examines why similar efforts to tighten budget control may lead to markedly different outcomes across otherwise comparable organizations. The findings identify three key drivers of these differences: how controllability is interpreted, how budgeting principles structure flexibility and budget adjustment, and how accounting information is coupled with professional work. The analysis shows that the enabling and empowering potential of tight budget control depends critically on how budgeting principles are designed and enacted. In the two cases, tight budget control facilitated rather than constrained budgetary flexibility, but in fundamentally different ways. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that professionalism is not determined by formal organizational arrangements but is locally enacted through managerial work that connects accounting information to operational practice.