ABSTRACT
Once funds have been appropriated for spending in the sequence of budget formulation, negotiation, and enactment, budgets then must be executed as planned and authorized.[1] However, budgets also must be responsive to changing circumstances during the period of spending execution. All organizational entities employ management control systems with imbedded incentives, sanctions, and a myriad of rules to control spending and the budget execution process. Agreed upon authority relationships, institutional roles and responsibilities, job performance criteria, rules and regulations, incentives and motivational structures, and intra-organizational arrangements comprise the management control systems to provide accountability in an effort to stimulate decision making that results in efficient and effective use of funds.[2] Various levers of management control are used in the private sector to achieve organizational objectives.[3] In the public sector, these levers of control are employed by elected officials and, more typically as a result of delegation, by budget control agents and agency managers in budget execution.
