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Dit artikel gaat over de politieke besluitvorming, inclusief financiële argumentatie, over Groninger Forum. Dat is een omstreden project voor cultuur en debat in de Groningse binnenstad, waarvan de investering wordt gesubsidieerd door gemeente en provincie Groningen. Het gebruik van financiële informatie in de Gemeenteraad en Provinciale Staten is minder dan men zou denken bij een omstreden project als Forum. Dit komt omdat de provincie de financiële exploitatie van het project ziet als een gemeentelijke aangelegenheid en de gemeente weinig ruimte laat voor discussie en standpuntverandering vanwege het sterke commitment van een raadsmeerderheid aan het project. Tegenstanders en voorstanders van Forum gebruiken financiële overwegingen op een politieke manier, om hun voor- of afkeur kracht bij te zetten, terwijl neutraal oordelende partijen een rationeel gebruik van financiële informatie laten zien. Sterk zijn deze indicaties echter niet. Vaak bewijzen politieke partijen slechts lippendienst aan financiële argumenten.

Recent research on politicians' use of financial and performance information is reviewed. Survey-based studies overestimate the frequency of this use; observational studies present a more accurate picture. A new and challenging research agenda is presented that will improve our understanding of the use and usefulness of accounting information. Implications for the real world of practice are discussed.

This article discusses the ways that the trends of corporatization and commercialization have changed managerial roles in universities. The authors argue that we have gone too far with these trends and plea for redesigned management roles. Performance measurement systems relying on student polls for teaching and on journal metrics for research support managerial interventions. However, managers also need to acknowledge the autonomy and different capabilities of their staff members in order to get the best results. This article contributes to the debate about desirable management roles in universities in the light of a meaningful academic knowledge production.IMPACTThis article will be of interest to university managers because it encourages them to rethink their roles by considering the need to ensure the long-term survival of academia, to academics who wish to engage in managerial positions because it warns them against a mechanical use of performance metrics, and to academia in general because it stimulates everyone to ask: where are we going? Politicians will benefit from reading this article because it makes them aware of the consequences of favouring New Public Management (NPM) principles in academia.

This paper investigates why central governments in some countries (especially the UK and Austria) have moved from a cash budgeting system to accrual budgeting, while others (particularly Belgium and Portugal) continue to use cash budgeting, given that both groups of countries share that their financial reporting system have become accruals-based. Our research shows that the two countries opting for a complete change to accruals emphasise the importance of consistency of the entire accounting system and the imperative to inform also about resource consumption in the budget. In sharp contrast, the two countries deciding for a partial change and for staying with cash budgeting argue that a clear and unambiguous view at cash spending is authoritative for their budgeting concept and that political decision makers would not accept an accrual-based budget. The change process in all four countries was influenced by several contextual factors, such as cash-accounting legacies and previous NPM-reforms. We conclude that stakeholders in government show more reluctance when deciding on a budgeting concept than about a financial reporting change which is perceived as less essential. We also conclude that the less ambitious reform mode (cash-based budgeting with accrual financial reporting) takes more implementation time than the more ambitious reform mode (accruals for budgeting and reporting).