Kommunal resultatstyrning : En studie om resultatstyrningens utformning i svenska medelstora kommuner

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to research how the results control is constructed within Swedish intermediate sized municipalities regarding what formal control means are primarily employed and the reasoning behind why these control means are in use within the results control system. Since municipalities carry a complex function and an important role within the society, they are found to be of interest to research closer. Results control systems within municipalities differ somewhat to the systems within private companies as the purpose of these companies commonly is to be profitable, whereas municipalities have a greater amount of qualitative purposes, which the traditional results control systems fail to include. The starting point of this study is the budgeting as it is statutory for municipalities to constitute budgets. The paper further investigate what control means are implemented to compliment budgeting. The study implements a qualitative abductive approach where the data has been gathered from semi-structured interviews with nine municipal officials within seven municipalities. The study concludes that budgeting remains the prime control mean within the municipalities results control system and that budgeting often acts as the basis for the rest of the results control system, which means that the control system employs a cost-focused approach. As well as budgeting, benchmarking is a control mean that is heavily in use within the municipalities, and especially performance benchmarking. Multidimensional control means are employed to complement budgeting in qualitative performance measure. It is however evident that the balanced scorecard, which is a multidimensional control mean, is not used too much in the municipalities results control systems. The reason being that the balanced scorecard requires an excessive number of indicators to be produced. Internal transfer pricing is another formal control mean that is used relatively moderately with the reason being that the administrative costs are greater in relation to the control effect.