Premium
Business Management Reform in the Department of Defense in Anticipation of Declining Budgets
Author(s) -
BROOK DOUGLAS A.,
CANDREVA PHILIP J.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5850.2007.00882.x
Subject(s) - accountability , stewardship (theology) , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , investment (military) , business , front line , economics , capital (architecture) , finance , economic policy , public economics , political science , politics , archaeology , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , history
Business management reform efforts have been part of the U.S. Defense Department agenda for decades. Current reform efforts have explicitly established the goal of generating, harvesting, and reinvesting savings from business management reform to buy more capital items; that is, they have focused on a measurable reallocation from operating and support costs to investment within a given budget top line. Recent increases in the defense top line, largely related to the war on terrorism, are not likely to persist; in addition, an examination of the factors affecting the top line suggests that a decline in the near term is likely. An examination of current and past defense management reforms suggests that efficiency‐seeking business management reforms are not likely to generate sufficient resources to cover a budget decline. Instead, management reform should be sustained for reasons of stewardship and accountability.