Budgeting under public scrutiny: tracing the justification work of stakeholder groups in the controversy of an Olympic candidature
Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management
ISSN: 1096-3367
Article publication date: 7 October 2020
Issue publication date: 19 March 2021
Abstract
Purpose
By mobilizing the empirical setting of a megaproject, this study problematizes public budgeting as participatory practice. The authors suggest that megaprojects are prone to democratic legitimacy challenges due to a long history of cost overruns, which provides stakeholders with a chance to dramatize a budgetary controversy.
Design/methodology/approach
Through article and document data, the authors reconstructed a controversy that emerged around the budget of Stockholm/Åre’s candidature for the Olympic Winter Games 2026. The authors used Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) orders of worth to systematically analyze the justification work of key stakeholder groups involved in the controversy.
Findings
This study illustrates that a budgetary controversy was actively maintained by stakeholder groups, which resulted in a lack of public support and the eventual demise of the Olympic candidature. As such, the authors provide a more nuanced understanding of public budgeting as a controversy-based process vis-à-vis a wider public with regard to the broken institution of megaprojects.
Practical implications
This study suggests more attention to the disruptive power of public scrutiny and the dramatization of budgeting in megaprojects. In this empirical case, the authors show how stakeholders tend to take their technical concerns too far in order to challenge a budget, even though megaprojects generally provide an ill-suited setting for accurate forecasts.
Originality/value
While studies around the financial legacies of megaprojects have somewhat matured, very few have looked at pitching them. However, the authors argue that megaprojects are increasingly faced with financial skepticism upon their approval upfront.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to Anatoli Bourmistrov, Giuseppe Grossi and all participants at the course “Digitalization and Accounting” at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) as well as participants of the Research School in Accounting (FIRE) Workshop in spring 2020. A special thanks, the authors would like to address to Emilia Cederberg, Johan Graaf, Jan Mouritsen, Desirée Ödén and foremost Marek Reuter for their helpful feedback throughout the making of this study.
Citation
Krauss, K.M., Sandäng, A. and Karlsson, E. (2021), "Budgeting under public scrutiny: tracing the justification work of stakeholder groups in the controversy of an Olympic candidature", Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 207-233. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBAFM-06-2020-0092
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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