Financial Accountability & Management, 28(1), February 2012, 0267-4424

A Special Breed? – A Longitudinal

and Cross-Sectional Study of
Norwegian Budgeting and Financial
Civil Servants

TOM CHRISTENSEN AND PER LÆGREID∗

Abstract: This paper focuses on civil servants in the central Norwegian civil service
whose main tasks are budgeting, supervision and accounting. The main research
questions are: (a) What is their typical demographic profile? (b) How has their
demographic profile changed over time? (c) What are the effects of having budgeting,
supervising and accounting as a main task on civil servants’ attitudes and behaviour?
The main findings are that they have a specific profile. There are significant
differences between ministries and central agencies as well as changes over time
and also marked differences with other civil servants regarding their attitudes and
behavior.

Keywords: financial management reforms, budgeting, civil servants, accounting,

demography, central government

INTRODUCTION

Many studies of decision-making and reforms in political-administrative systems

focus on whether they are homogeneous or heterogeneous systems (Christensen
and Lægreid, 2001; and Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). Homogeneity concerning
constitutional factors and political party structure is often said to make systems
more prone to modern reforms than heterogeneity (Hood, 1996). Yet most
political-administrative systems are heterogeneous. It is therefore important to
discuss how such systems differ with respect to organization, tasks, culture, and
demographic features; how these features correlate with one another, and what
their relevance is for decision-making in general or for attitudes to and the

∗ The authors are respectively from the University of Oslo and the University of Bergen.

Address for correspondence: Per Lægreid, Department of Administration and Organization

Theory, Christiegt 17, 5007 Bergen, Norway.
email: Per.Lagreid@aorg.uib.no


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102 CHRISTENSEN AND LÆGREID

adoption of reforms. The main findings of several long-term Norwegian studies

of these matters seem to indicate that structural factors are most important, and
certainly more important than cultural and demographic factors. Nevertheless,
culture and demography, including, for example, type of higher education, are
also significant (Christensen and Lægreid, 1999; and Lægreid and Olsen, 1978).
Primary tasks also seem to make a difference (Rubecksen, 2010).
During the last decade, interest has increasingly centered on the tasks civil
servants perform. Tasks represent a typical structural variable. Minzberg (1979),
for instance, operates with different task structures. Tasks reflect the different
types of horizontal differentiation with which Gulick (1937) is preoccupied, such
as purpose and process. Some tasks co-vary with other structural variables,
like position. Others might connect closely with demographic features, such
as type of higher education, or with environmental features such as task
environment (Thompson, 1967; and Scott and Davis, 2006). Overall, figuring out
how such heterogeneous features in civil service systems interact and their sig-
nificance for decision-making is a complex undertaking (Lægreid and Verhoest,
2010).
We will focus on budgeting, supervision, and accounting tasks (BSA) and the
people who perform them in the Norwegian central civil service, and look at the
demographic features – age, gender, education, work experience, tenure and
mobility – of civil servants who have budgeting, supervising, and accounting as
their main tasks. Variations among BSAs according to structural features such
as administrative level and hierarchical position are also examined.
We will use comprehensive comparative surveys of civil servants in Norwegian
ministries and central agencies conducted in 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006 to chart
long-term changes in the demographic composition of administrators and staff
in this category.
Using a task-related perspective and controlling for demographic and
structural features, we will also analyze to what extent BSA staff differ from
other civil servants regarding their identities and administrative behavior.
The main research questions are accordingly:

(a) What is the typical demographic profile of civil servants who have
budgeting, supervising and accounting as a main task, and to what
extent does their profile differ from that of other civil servants?
(b) How has their demographic profile changed over time?
(c) What are the effects of having budgeting, supervising and accounting
as a main task on the civil servants’ attitudes, contact patterns and
use of modern reform tools? What is the relative importance of these
effects compared to other structural and also demographic variables?

After first outlining our theoretical approach, which is a task-specific perspective,

financial reforms in an international and Norwegian context are then presented.


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Third, we will present our data base and method. Fourth, the profile of the BSAs
is described by presenting longitudinal data and compare the BSAs with other
civil servants. Fifth, we will subject the attitudes, contact patterns and use of
modern reform tools by BSAs to a multivariate analysis. Finally, we will discuss
some concluding points.

A TASK-SPECIFIC PERSPECTIVE

A task-specific perspective assumes that the requirements and constraints

inherent in the primary tasks of different public organizations influence the
decision-making, regulation and control of these units (Pollitt et al., 2004). The
main idea is that tasks matter and that we cannot discuss specific organizational
structures and processes without taking into account the particular activities to
which they apply (Krause, 2003; Bouckaert and Peters, 2004; Rubecksen, 2010;
and Verhoest et al., 2010). Task specificity and the nature of the actual work are
important to understand variations in attitudes, identities and actual behaviour
of civil servants. The division of tasks may play an important role in the behaviour
of government organizations and in how they are managed and controlled.
Pollitt and associates (2004) have developed a task-specific path dependency
model. Their argument is that both the particular history of the jurisdiction in
question and the nature of the primary tasks make a difference. Two well-known
parameters for defining agency tasks are to what extent their output and their
outcome can be observed (Wilson, 1989). Other important considerations are to
what degree the tasks can be standardized, if their consequentiality is high or
low, if they are politically sensitive or not, whether they involve major financial
resources and whether they are subject to market competition (Pollitt, 2003;
and Pollitt et al., 2004). Key characteristics of the tasks matter (Johnson, 2002;
and Pollitt, 2008). Verhoest and associates (2010) studied the implications of
primary tasks for autonomy and control and use of managerial techniques in
state agencies. The argument is that the constraints inherent in the main tasks
on which the civil servants are working in their current position will have an
impact on their attitudes, beliefs and actual work. It is argued that agencies
with different types of tasks will have different levels of autonomy and control
(Roness, 2010).
We are particularly interested in the importance of budgeting, supervising
and accounting tasks for decision-making broadly speaking. There is a rich
literature on the roles and tasks of management accountants and controllers
(e.g., Granlund and Lukka, 1998; and Burns and Baldvinsdottir, 2007), but since
this research is mainly preoccupied with private sector organizations and firms
we will not dig into that literature. These tasks are both traditional and modern
at the same time – in other words, they have existed for a long time (particularly
the budget function) but, as we will describe later, their content has changed,
for example, as a result of NPM. Modern budgets are different from traditional
ones; performance auditing has supplemented traditional, economically oriented


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audits, etc. The BSA tasks are also more control-, procedure- and rule-oriented
than many other tasks, where leeway and discretion are more evident, and they
are more inward looking than many other tasks.
Studies of government organizations, like state agencies, reveal that there
are significant variations in behaviour according to the agencies’ tasks (Pollitt
et al., 2004; Lægreid et al., 2008; Christensen and Lægreid, 2008; and
Verhoest et al., 2010). Based on this we can formulate some hypotheses for
analysis:

H1 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main

task will generally pay less attention to political signals and more attention
to following proper procedures.

The reasoning behind this expectation is that the BSA tasks are supposed to
be executed more in isolation from the political leadership than tasks like
coordination, information, policy development and planning, etc. The only
exception to this might be the Ministry of Finance, but we analyse the BSA
tasks more broadly in the central civil service. As pointed out above, the BSA
tasks tend to follow official procedures and are inward-looking.

H2 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main

task will, to a greater extent than other civil servants, have less contact with
and generally pay less attention to signals from user groups, special affected
stakeholders, and clients.

Again, this hypothesis assumes a kind of ‘isolation syndrome’ for this group. BSA
is part of internally oriented administrative policy, in this case the design of the
economy-related planning and control system, and therefore is not likely to use
decision-making premises favored by societal groups. While interest groups will
of course attempt to influence the budget, this will probably be directed more
at civil servants engaged in formulating policy. For supervising and accounting
the norm of being impartial is strong, so contact with interest groups is not
appropriate.

H3 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main

task will, to a greater extent than other civil servants, have clear rules
regarding execution of their tasks.

The BSA tasks are by definition more rule-oriented, because they are
standardized public tasks. The NPM doctrine asserted that more tasks should
be exposed to such rationalization and each task should be more formalized. It
is rather obvious, however, that tasks like coordination, information and policy
development and broad planning cannot be standardized or subjected to the
same kind of constraints as BSA tasks.


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H4 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main
task will to a lesser extent than other civil servants identify themselves with
roles as negotiators or researchers, but to a greater extent as judges.

This hypothesis compares the role of these civil servants’ with other societal
roles. The role of a negotiator, for instance, presupposes a broad set of close
contacts, which is generally held to be atypical for BSA roles, while the researcher
role is more innovative in nature and less rule-bound than the BSA tasks. The
control aspect of BSA potentially makes their role more like that of a judge.

H5 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main

task will to a greater extent than other civil servants use modern NPM
reform tools related to performance management, quality management and
autonomy.

This is based on the idea that BSA tasks use the most modern methods – in other
words, NPM is more relevant for their tasks than for other tasks and functions.

H6 : The proportion of civil servants with budgeting, supervising and

accounting as their main task will increase over time due to NPM reforms
in general and especially to financial management reforms.

In line with the ‘audit explosion’ argument (Power, 1997),financial management

reforms such as performance management, performance budgeting, accounting
reforms and supervising reforms are resource demanding and may increase the
demand for financial managers.

H7 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their

main task would over time have shorter public administration tenure, more
experience from private sector and higher mobility pattern.

Linked to the previous hypothesis one could also expect that NPM reforms may
blur the borders between public and private sector and enhance turnover of
financial managers between the public and private sector due to contracting out
practices, more flexible personnel management system and reduced differences
between public and private sector personnel systems.

H8 : Civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main

task will be connected to other civil servants, politicians and stakeholders to
the same degree as other administrative officers.

Finally, somewhat in contrast to H1 and H2 , one could argue that NPM

reforms would go against the idea of financial managers as a special breed.
A main feature of NPM may be that its ideas should spread throughout the
political-administrative system and not be isolated to special enclaves such as


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financial management. Thus the expectation that the financial managers should
now be less disconnected from other civil servants, political executives and
stakeholders.
Analyses of the effects of BSA tasks include structural and demographic
variables mainly as control variables to minimize unintended variance in the
multivariate analysis, but they may also have an explanatory value of their own.
We know from earlier studies that structural variables, such as administrative
level and position, have a significant effect on civil servants’ contacts, attitudes
and behavior (Lægreid and Olsen, 1978; and Christensen and Lægreid, 1999)
and that there might also be significant effects on demographic features such
as type of higher education, but also age, gender and tenure (Christensen and
Lægreid, 2008).

CONTEXT

NPM and Financial Management Reforms

New Public Management (NPM) as a reform wave emerged in the early 1980s,
based on a combination of doctrines or ideas from management theory and
new institutional economic theory (Boston et al., 1996). In implementation and
practice NPM shows a lot of variety around the world concerning what major
elements are attended to, and there is also variety among public institutions,
policy areas and levels (Christensen and Lægreid, 2001 and 2007). The elements
of NPM that are most relevant to point out for our study are the ones
emphasizing that the public sector should be based on private sector ideas and
models and run according to business principles (Self, 2000). A chief feature of
the NPM movement to make public administration more business-like has been
the reform of the financial management system (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004;
and Chan and Xiao, 2009). This can be divided into budget reforms, accounting
reforms and supervision reforms. Budget reforms have placed a greater emphasis
on measuring performance, and performance information budgeting has been
introduced in many countries (Hilton and Joyce, 2003). Input-oriented budgeting
has moved towards performance-oriented budgeting, activity-based budgeting
or output and outcome budgeting. In practice, however, performance-oriented
budgeting is difficult to carry out (Hilton and Joyce, 2003).
Another change is transforming the budget system towards accrual accounting
which is common in the private market sector (Kok, 2003). The argument is that
such a business-line system will be better suited to enhancing entrepreneurial
elements in the public sector. It has, however, proven difficult to implement and
use such systems in the public sector (Gutrie, 1998) and there is a concern about
negative side-effects on democratic control (Newberry and Pallot, 2008).
The accounting systems have also moved from cash-based systems towards
accrual accounting systems. The audit trajectories have changed from traditional
financial and compliance auditing to performance auditing and evaluation.


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External audits have become more important but internal auditing has been
expanded too. Some people have labelled this an ‘audit explosion’ and there are
perceptions that we are moving towards an ‘audit society’ (Power, 1997).
There are, however, different trajectories in different countries regarding
financial management reform. Despite a lot of reform initiatives over the past
decades there is no one way of understanding a new public financial management
system and a globally standardized system is far away (Chan and Xiao, 2009).
Some countries are frontrunners, such as Australia, New Zealand, the UK and
to some extent also Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the USA and Canada
(Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). Here there have been major changes, with simple
line-item budgeting under a centralized government system being supplemented
by performance budgeting, accrual accounting, performance auditing, perfor-
mance contracts, more entrepreneurial management, contracting out, output
and outcome measurement and fiscal decentralization (Rubin and Kelly, 2005).
This does not, however, mean that the new reforms are replacing the old
financial regulations and systems. In many countries one can, for example, see
a combination of the old cash-based budgeting and accounting system and the
new accrual-based system (Yamamoto, 2004), or a combination of management
by rules and management by objectives (Christensen and Lægreid, 1998). There
are also large differences in the way the reforms are adopted, even if they look
similar on the surface (Rubin and Kelly, 2005). In contrast to the front-runners,
Norway has traditionally been a more reluctant reformer than these countries
and has not yet gone very far down the reform path. Reforms have been adopted
in a piecemeal, incremental and experimental fashion, but picking up some
more speed in the last decade.

Government Structure and Financial Management Reforms in Norway

The Norwegian central government is organized in ministries and central
agencies. The central agencies are, legally speaking, government entities
subject to ministerial directions and directly subordinated to ministerial control.
Ministries and central agencies cannot handle their own budget independently
of economic decisions made in the Storting (Parliament) and they cannot borrow
money to finance their activities (Lægreid et al., 2010).
Norway is a prosperous country with a healthy economy and a high standard of
living. Its management of oil assets by the government Pension Fund – Global is
an example of long-term budgetary planning (Anderson et al., 2006). The fiscal
guidelines stipulate that petroleum income should be phased into the economy
on a par with the expected real return of the Government Pension Fund,
estimated at 4% annually. Owing to its small population and huge revenues
from offshore oil and gas, Norway has experienced less budgetary pressure than
many other European countries and hence the pressure for cut-backs and savings
has been weaker in Norway. Nevertheless, there has been pressure to improve
performance within the public sector and to introduce budgeting and financial


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management reforms in a bid to promote greater efficiency. Over the last two
decades there has been a trend to introduce more flexibility and local autonomy
in financial regulations and personnel systems, such as frame-based budgets and
more local and individual-based pay systems.
The Ministry of Finance is a strong overarching ministry coordinating finan-
cial and budgetary matters among line ministries. Norway has a decentralized
system of central public administration in which ministries and central agencies
have a high degree of managerial flexibility. The control and monitoring of the
spending activities of agencies is largely left to individual ministries.
A Norwegian system of performance management, Management-by-
Objectives-and-Results (MBOR), was introduced and developed from the early
1990s, when it was made mandatory for all government organizations. It was first
introduced in the Budget Reform of 1986, which also introduced more flexibility
in the use of allocated resources. In 1997 MBOR became an integrated part of
the Government Financial Management Regulations. Progress with government-
wide systems of performance measurement has been slow, however, especially
with respect to developing and using performance information. Although the
Ministry of Finance requires all ministries and agencies to set goals and monitor
performance, there is still more talk than action in the central government
on these reform initiatives (Anderson et al., 2006). But many ministries and
agencies have made a considerable effort to establish performance indicators and
to implement performance reporting systems (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007;
and Lægreid et al., 2006). A special Agency for Financial Management was set
up in 2004 to strengthen financial management and improve resource efficiency
within the public sector. Although envisaged as a kind of NPM entrepreneur,
actually implementing its ideas has proven problematic.
The budgetary regulations in Norway define a one-year budgeting system and
require the budget to be presented on a cash-term basis. There has been some
discussion about introducing accrual budgeting and accounting (Monsen, 2008),
although Olson et al. (1998) argue that introducing such a system in public-
sector organizations should be approached with caution. After being adopted
on a pilot basis in a limited number of individual agencies it is now an option
to introduce accrual accounting in addition to regular cash based accounting
in government agencies. The letter of intention (letter of instructions and
allocation) is the main instrument used by ministries to implement the budget.
The letter sets out the appropriations for the agency, the overall goals and
objectives, reporting demands, performance indicators and information requests
on performance indicators. The Norwegian system entails extensive delegation
to agencies. Ministries mainly manage agencies through dialogue and discussion,
which encompass both formal and informal elements. In some sectors, mainly
higher education and health, some funding is directly linked to results – with
money following students or patients. A main challenge in the Norwegian
system is to find an appropriate balance between delegating responsibility and
maintaining adequate systems of accountability and control.


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DATA BASE AND METHOD

Our method of studying BSA civil servants is based on three main elements
(Christensen and Lægreid, 1999). First, we focus on the structural, cultural
and demographic profile reported by individual civil servants in ministries and
agencies, viewing them as representatives of their organizations, but also on
their attitudes, contacts and experiences. Our main concern is to find out how
individual civil servants experience various tasks, demands, and constraints in
their daily work along different dimensions.
Second, we choose an extensive method to cover a lot of ground. In 2006 we
conducted a large survey of all civil servants with at least one year of tenure
from executive officers to top civil servants in Norwegian ministries and of every
third civil servant in the central agencies. 1,516 persons in 49 central agencies
answered, and the response rate was 59%. The response rate in the ministries
was 67%; 1,846 responded in the 17 ministries.
In addition we used comparable surveys from 1976, 1986 and 1996 to show
how the Norwegian central civil service has developed and to put BSAs into
a comparative perspective both concerning their own development and in
comparison with other groups. The response rate for the ministerial survey
was 72% in 1976, 1986 and 1996. For the survey of central agencies it was 68% in
1986 and 65% in 1996. The survey was not conducted in central agencies in 1976.
Third, we took a broad empirical approach to the question of tasks, first
asking the civil servants the following question: ‘Which of the tasks mentioned
below does most of your work in your current position involve?’ The 10 different
tasks named included budgeting as one category and control, supervision,
implementation and accounting as another one.1 In 2006, 370 of the civil servants
in the ministries and central agencies belonged to these two categories, i.e., had
budgeting, supervising and accounting as their main task and they constitute
the basis of the analysis.

THE PROFILE OF BUDGETING AND FINANCIAL CIVIL SERVANTS

Main Tasks
When asked to pick one main task, 11% of the civil servants in ministries
and central agencies in 2006 reported that they had budgeting, supervising
or accounting as their main task in their current position. But the number of
civil servants working with budgeting or supervising/accounting as a secondary
task or additional task is much larger. 35% said that they spent more than a
small part of their time on budgeting and 34% reported the same regarding
control, supervision and accounting. The correlation between these two main
tasks is 0.28 (Pearson r, sign: 000). For the rest of the analysis we will use the
combined main task of Budgeting and Supervising/Accounting (BSA).
There is a strong positive correlation between having BSA as a main task and
spending a lot of time on performance and result reporting, so it is evident that


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BSA belongs to a more general performance management system. On the other

hand, BSA correlates significantly negatively with information, public relations,
coordination, planning and development, drafting of legislation, regulations
and contracts and organizational development. This illustrates that BSA has an
internal focus that might be quite isolated from policy advice and policy-making
processes. This being said, the BSAs must be seen in relation to the whole
public administration system of division of labour and specialization (Ezzamel
et al., 2008).

Current Profile of the BSAs

Ministries and central agencies
In the ministries 50% of the BSAs were executive officers while the other half had
management positions. Table 1 reveals that 50% of the BSA employees in the
ministries in 2006 were less than 40 years old. A slight majority was men and
their dominant background was economics, with 41% evenly divided between
those who had studied (national/social) economics and those who had a masters
in business administration. Social scientists were also substantially represented
with a share of 25%. Very few had been recruited from the private sector, which
is rather typical for Norway, and most of them had rather a long tenure in
the ministries. About a quarter had received exit offers during the last year
and 22% were planning to leave their ministry for a job elsewhere. We do not
know how many of these actually left, but real turnover is rather low. There are
civil servants with budgeting, supervising and accounting as a main task in all
ministries. In the Ministry of Finance 22% of the staff are in this category.
Central agencies have a rather different profile. There are slightly more BSA
employees in agencies, and 62% of them are executive officers. This reflects the
more routine, technical profile of the agencies, which traditionally requires fewer
managers and more executive officers. Agencies such as the Petroleum Safety
Authority, the Financial Supervisory Authority, the Civil Aviation Authority, and
the Water Resource and Energy Directorate top the list with the highest share
of BSAs employees, ranging from 23% to 47%.
The BSAs in the central agencies are older and they are more male-dominated
than elsewhere. They generally have a lower level of education and there are only
a few with an economic, business administration or social science educational
background. Scientists and engineers form the largest educational group among
BSAs in central agencies. Compared to ministries there is also more recruitment
from the private sector, which reflects proximity and relatively more technical
tasks, and their tenure in government is considerably shorter. One out of three
BSAs in central agencies has received a job offer from outside his or her own
agency during the last year, which is somewhat higher than in the ministries.
BSAs and other civil servants
There are also some interesting differences between BSAs and other civil
servants. In the ministries in 2006 the BSAs are somewhat under-represented


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Table 1
Background Characteristics of Civil Servants in Ministries and Central
Agencies with Budgeting, Control, Supervising and Accounting as their
Main Tasks. 1976–2006. Percentage

1976 1986 1996 2006

Ministries:
Proportion with budgeting/supervising/accounting as 11 12 12 10
a main task
Under 40 years old 26∗ 41 53 50
Men 88 68 61 56
Education:
-Law 23∗ 17∗ 8∗ 4∗
-Economics 12 15∗ 17∗ 20∗
-Business school, master in business administration 6 9 16∗ 21∗
-Social science 1 10 18 25
-Other higher education/master level 26∗ 15 9 8
-Other higher education/bachelor level 32∗ 35∗ 35∗ 23
Recruited from private sector - 10 7 10
∗
10 years or more tenure in the ministries - 45 46 39
Exit plans 22 21 27∗ 22
Exit offers 26 19 30 26∗
Central Agencies:
Proportion with budgeting/supervising/accounting as - 10 11 14
a main task
Under 40 years old - 26∗ 21∗ 25∗
Men - 93∗ 69 65∗
Education:
-Law - 4∗ 4∗ 3∗
-Economics 3 4 8∗
-Business school, master in business administration 5 10∗ 10∗
-Social science 0 2 6∗
-Natural science, engineers 31 19 29∗
-Other higher education/master level 3 2 4
-Other higher education/bachelor level 49∗ 60∗ 40
-Recruited from private sector - 26 35∗ 34∗
10 years or more tenure in the central agency - 56∗ 43∗ 23
Exit plans - 27 33 25
Exit offers - 30 21∗ 33
Note: ∗ Significant differences from other civil servants.


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at the management level, probably reflecting the somewhat technical nature of

their work. In 2006 the jurists are clearly under-represented among the BSAs
in the ministries, even though BSAs have procedural-oriented tasks, and civil
servants with an economic background are clearly over-represented. Compared
to other civil servants in the ministries the BSAs also tend to get fewer job offers,
again probably reflecting the technical and internal profile of their work.
Also in the central agencies the BSAs are under-represented at the management
level. They also tend to be older than other civil servants, and they have fewer
years of education. There is also an under-representation of jurists and an over-
representation of economists. But there is also a somewhat higher proportion of
social scientists, engineers and natural scientists among the BSAs in the central
agencies than among all civil servants there. The BSAs also tend to be recruited
more often from the private sector.

Change Over Time

In the ministries the proportion of BSAs was very stable over the period 1976–2006
(around 10–12%; see Table 1). In 1976 the BSAs were significantly older than
they are now and also older than other civil servants at that time. The share
of men among BSAs decreased from 88% in 1975 to 56% in 2006, reflecting a
general feminization of the ministries (Christensen and Lægreid, 2009).
There are also significant changes in educational background over time. The
portion of jurists among the BSAs decreased significantly from 23% in 1976
to only 4% in 2006, also reflecting a more general trend, but as indicated, a
significant under-representation of jurists can be observed among the BSAs in
all periods. Social scientists, on the other hand, increased from 1% in 1976
to become the largest single group (25%) in 2006, making them slightly over-
represented. The same tendency, but not so strong, can be seen for BSAs with
a business administration background, easing from 6% in 1976 to 21% in 2006,
making them especially over-represented in the last decade. From 1986 onwards
civil servants with an economic background are significantly over-represented
among BSAs compared to civil servants with other main tasks. Taken together,
the two groups of economists increased their share from 18% in 1976 to 41% in
2006. The proportion of other higher education groups among BSAs decreased
over time, as did that of civil servants with a lower level of education.
Thus, the main picture is of the BSAs’ educational background becoming more
professional and more dominated by economists and social scientists, mainly
political scientists/public administration masters. Over time the decline in the
proportion of jurists and the increase in economists and social scientists is
quite striking. In 1975 there were 23% jurists and 19% economists/business
administration/social scientists, while thirty years later the latter group had
increased to 45% while the jurists had decreased to 4% among the BSAs.
Regarding recruitment and mobility in the ministries, however, the changes
have been far fewer. Recruitment from the private sector is stable at a rather


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low level; there are no big differences in tenure; and exit plans and job offers
have remained rather stable over time.
In the central agencies we have comparable data going back to 1986. Over
this period there has been some increase in the share of civil servants with
budgeting, supervising and accounting as a main task, especially during the
period 1996–2006. In contrast to the ministries, the age composition of these
employees is rather stable, and for all periods they are older than civil servants
with other main tasks. As in the ministries, the proportion of men has decreased
significantly, but is still on a higher level than in the ministries.
For central agencies we do not see the same strong change in educational
background over time as in the ministries. The jurists are at a stable low level
and are under-represented among the BSAs in all three periods. Compared to
1986 there are relatively more economists, masters in business administration
and social scientists, but the changes are much weaker than in the ministries.
There is also a decreasing number of employees with lower education, but this
group is still the largest among the BSAs.
In central agencies recruitment from the private sector increased from the
1980s to the 1990s, but remained stable in 2006, and there was a significant
drop in tenure among BSAs, particularly from 1996 to 2006. This is, however,
not connected with any significant change in exit plans or job offers.
Overall our expectations related to the NPM movement, that the share of
financial managers would increase over time due to NPM related reforms (H6),
and that their turn-over and mobility with private sector would increase (H7),
does not get any significant support.

ATTITUDES, CONTACT PATTERN AND REFORM TOOLS

Tables 2 and 3 examine the effects of belonging to the BSA group of civil servants,
combining the respondents from ministries and agencies, and show correlation
between working with BSA tasks and attitudes and perceptions of a more general
nature in their roles, contact patterns and attitudes towards reform tools, after
controlling for other variables like structural and demographic factors. The only
significant bivariate correlation that does not turn out to be significant in the
multivariate analysis is the effect on signals from the political leadership. Here
the main effect is of administrative level (ministries) and position (management
position). This multivariate analysis is, however, not shown in Table 2. H1
is however, partly supported since the BSAs pay more attention to following
proper rules and procedures. The table shows support for hypothesis H2 since
the BSA have less contact with and deemphasize attention to and pay less
attention to signals form user groups and clients than other civil servants, which
indicates their introverted profile. They also imagine that they have clear rules
and practice in conducting their daily work (H3 ).
Concerning identification with societal roles, they identify less with being a
negotiator or researcher, as expected from hypothesis H4 , but do not identify


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114 CHRISTENSEN AND LÆGREID

more with the role of a judge, at least not in a significant way. The hypothesis
H5 , concerning the importance of modern NPM reform tools, is supported,
because here the BSAs score higher than other civil servants. This is in particular
related to increased flexibility in budget matters and to the formulation of
goals, evaluation/performance reporting and increased autonomy for regulatory
bodies.
Overall, a BSA seems to carry a certain profile. The expectation that NPM
reforms had lead to less isolation and stronger connections between financial
managers and stakeholders (H8 ) is not supported. NPM has not lead to less
disconnection between financial managers and other actors. That profile seems
to be characterized by more attention to procedures than signals from interest
groups, i.e. a rather introverted and self-contained style, and more focus than
other civil servants on diverse NPM-related reform tools. This profile may seem
to be a rather paradoxical combination of traditionalism and modernism. It may
be more understandable when combined with one of the main results from the
analysis of the characteristics of the BSA group. During the 30 years analyzed

Table 2
Effects of BSAs on Attitudes and Contact by Structural and
Demographic Features. Linear Regression. Beta

Proper Signals Contact Identification Identification

Proce- from Clear with with with
dures Users Rules Interest Org. Negotiator Researcher

Budget/supervising/ 0.07∗∗ −0.10∗∗ 0.16∗∗ −0.11∗∗ −0.04∗ −0.10∗∗

accounting
Structural features
Administrative level 0.05∗∗ −0.08∗∗ 0.06∗∗ 0.01 −0.10∗∗ 0.04∗
Position 0.00 0.00 0.11∗∗ −0.12∗∗ 0.021∗∗ 0.05

Demographic features
Gender −0.05∗∗ −0.14∗∗ −0.04∗ 0.06∗∗ 0.01 0.02
Age −0.03 0.00 0.05∗∗ 0.04 0.02 0.04
Education:
-law −0.18∗∗ 0.09∗∗ −0.05∗∗ −0.04∗∗ 0.00 0.08∗∗
-social science −0.05∗∗ 0.06∗∗ 0.11∗∗ 0.00 0.04∗ 0.15∗∗
-economists 0.04∗ 0.11∗∗ 0.02 −0.07∗∗ −0.05∗ −0.07∗∗
Tenure central gvm. −0.03 −0.03 −0.03 −0.02 0.05∗ 0.01

R2 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.04 0.07 0.04

Adjusted R2 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.03
F 17.943 19.839 20.335 12.962 22.686 11.076
Sign of F 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.00 0.000
Note:
∗
significant on level 0.5; ∗∗ significant on level 0.01.


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 A SPECIAL BREED? 115
the demography of the BSAs has undergone a radical shift from jurists being the
dominant group to the complete domination of economists and social scientists.
This indicates that most aspects of BSA tasks have become modernized, while
they have retained some of their formal and introverted nature, probably in
a layering way. Another way to say this is that the new educational groups
coming into the BSA group have participated in changing the tasks, and this
combined with path dependency and decisions on modern reform have formed
a new profile.
Tables 2 and 3 also include a control for other structural variables, related
to administrative level (ministries/agencies) and hierarchical position, but also
for various demographic variables. The only variable that shows an overall
stronger correlation than BSA is hierarchical position, well established as one
of the most significant variables in many analyses of the surveys of the civil
service (Christensen and Lægreid, 1999). Administrative leaders or managers
score much higher than executive officers on the importance of performance
management tools, increased autonomy and contact with interest groups,
while executive officers attend more to clear rules, reflecting a difference in
roles. Agency civil servants tend to put a greater emphasis on performance-
management tools, increased autonomy of regulatory bodies and signals from

Table 3
Effects of BSAs on Reform Measures by Structural and Demographic
Features. Linear Regression. Beta

Increased Evaluation,
Flexibility Clear Performance Increased
Budget Objectives Reporting Autonomy

Budget/supervising/ accounting 0.12∗∗ 0.07∗∗ 0.12∗∗ 0.10∗∗

Structural features
Administrative level −0.05∗ −0.06∗∗ −0.09∗∗ −0.11∗∗
Position −0.20∗∗ −0.21∗∗ −0.19∗∗ −0.14∗∗
Demographic features
Gender 0.08∗∗ 0.05∗∗ −0.02 −0.03
Age 0.03 −0.07∗∗ −0.06∗∗ 0.00
Education:
-law 0.07∗∗ 0.01 0.02 −0.02
-social science −0.03 −0.11∗∗ −0.11∗∗ −0.06∗∗
-economists 0.01 0.05∗∗ 0.02 0.09∗∗
Tenure central government 0.01 −0.01 −0.05∗ −0.01
R2 0.08 0.08 0.09 0.05
Adjusted R2 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.05
F 27.430 25.951 28.435 16.455
Sign of F 0.00 0.000 0.000 0.000
Note:
∗
significant on level 0.5; ∗∗ significant on level 0.01.


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116 CHRISTENSEN AND LÆGREID

users, while ministerial employees attend slightly more to proper procedures

and more often have clear rules constraining their work.
Concerning the demographic variables there is a lot of variation. Being a
social scientist is the variable showing the greatest effects overall, while tenure
has a very weak significance. Social scientists’ profile is very similar to the BSA
profile overall, and they score differently on only one variable – having more
discretion in their jobs and less clear rules. The economists have somewhat
fewer features in common with the BSA profile, because they have more contact
with interest groups and put less emphasis on clear goals and autonomy. The
jurists have some of the features of the BSA group, in particular a very strong
emphasis on proper procedures, but they also have clear rules and less contact
with interest groups.
Of the other demographic variables, gender shows the most significant
correlations. Men have more contact with interest groups than women and
care more about clear goals, while women score higher than men on proper
procedures, and having a job with clear rules. Older civil servants report clear
rules in their work, while younger ones attend more to NPM reform tools like
unambiguous goals and evaluation and performance reporting.

CONCLUSION

We have first shown that the civil servants who have budgeting, accounting and
supervising as a main task have a specific and significant demographic profile.
There are clear differences between BSAs and other civil servants generally, and
between BSAs in ministries and central agencies. BSAs are under-represented
at the management level, and among them economists are over- and jurists
under-represented. In central agencies the BSAs tend to be older men and have
a lower level of education and are to a greater extent recruited from the private
sector. As for other civil servants, there is relatively low recruitment from the
private sector, especially within the ministries. Many of the BSAs also have
other tasks, especially regarding performance and result reporting. They are,
however, less involved in information, planning and development and in drafting
legislation, regulations and contracts.
Second, there have been significant changes in the profile of BSAs over time.
In the ministries the main picture is that BSAs have become more professional
and their educational background tends to be concentrated in the spheres of
economics and social science, with a corresponding decline of jurists. In line
with the rest of central government there has been a significant feminization of
the BSAs, especially in the ministries.
Third, the task-specific perspective gets significant support. As expected,
the BSAs pay more attention to following proper procedure than other civil
servants. Their daily work is to a greater extent constrained by clear rules and
they identify themselves to a lesser degree than other civil servants with the
roles of negotiator or researcher. In their daily work they pay less attention


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 A SPECIAL BREED? 117
to user groups and they have little contact with interest groups. They are
also to a greater extent exposed to, and use, modern financial management
reform tools related to performance management, flexibility in budget matters,
increased autonomy in regulatory issues and other NPM-related measures.
This pattern also holds when controlling for structural and demographic
features. Having budgeting, supervising and accounting as a main task is an
important key to understanding variations in the civil servants’ attitudes and
behaviour.
Fourth, although tasks matter, there are also significant variations according
to structural and demographic features. In fact position has a greater effect
than having budgeting, accounting and supervising as a main task for
several dependent variables, especially use of different modern reform tools.
Administrative level also has a significant effect along several dimensions.
Regarding demographic variables, type of education has a significant effect,
but there are also effects of age and gender. Overall, however, the effect of main
task is strong even after taking the control variables into consideration. Taken
together this pattern is in line with a transformative approach (Christensen
and Lægreid, 2001 and 2007) which states that organizational features can be
better understood by combining different theoretical perspectives. The different
perspectives are supplementary rather than alternative in their explanatory
power (Roness, 2009; and Verhoest et al., 2010) indicating that there is need for
synthesizing theories on understanding government bodies (Roness, 2010).
Thus our main conclusion is that Norwegian budgeting and financial civil
servants are indeed a special breed. They have their own characteristic profile
and a task-specific perspective, here represented by the finding that having
budgeting, accounting and supervising as a main task has major explanatory
power with respect to variations in civil servants’ attitudes and behaviour.
The role of BSAs is somewhat hybrid reflecting a complex mixture of classical
bureaucratic models, NPM and also governance models (Chan and Xiao, 2009).
It is inward-looking and has formalized features, making it in some ways old-
fashioned; yet at the same time it is also modern in two respects. One is that the
educational profile of the BSAs has changed dramatically over time, reflecting
and even strengthening the overall transformation of the demographic profile
of the civil service. The other is that it has taken many NPM features on board,
including performance management, which at the same time demonstrates how
the content of BSA tasks has changed.
In a Norwegian context of rather cautious and reluctant adaptation of NPM
reform tools in general and also financial management tools, these reforms
have not in a significant way changed the share of financial managers in the
central civil service, and their mobility pattern. Neither has it led to greater
integration between financial managers, politicians and stakeholders. This group
is still rather disconnected from other actors but on their own arena they apply
modern NPM inspired management tools to a greater extent than civil servants
with other tasks.


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118 CHRISTENSEN AND LÆGREID

APPENDIX

Independent Variable:
What is your main task in your current position (budgeting, control, accounting,
supervising): 1: yes, 2: no

Control Variables:
Administrative level: 1: ministry, 2: agency
Position: 1: executive officer, 2: manager
Gender: 1: man, 2: woman
Age: 1: under 40, 2: 40–49, 3: 50 and older
Education:
Jurist: 1: no, 2: yes
Social scientist: 1: no, 2: yes
Economist: 1: no, 2: yes
Tenure in central government: 1: 5 years or less; 2: more than 5 years

Dependent Variables:
Proper procedure:
Signals: 1 very important to 5 very unimportant
Rules: 1 very clear rules – 5 very high discretion/leeway
Contact interest org: 1: every week, 2: every month, 3: occasionally, 4: never
Identification with researcher: 1: yes, 2: no
Identification with judge: 1: yes, 2: no
Identification with negotiator: 1: yes, 2: no
Importance of different reform tools: 1 very important – 5 very unimportant,
6: not relevant.

NOTE
1 For the reason of simplicity we use the term ‘supervision and accounting’ for this category
consisting of ‘control, supervision, implementation and accounting’

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