Zero-Base

Literature Review on Budgeting: Zero-Base

In the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, [1] J.L. Peters offers the following summary about the topic of Zero-Base Budgeting: Zero-base budgeting (ZBB) rejects a previous year's budget as the basis for future resource allocation decisions. Like other performance budget approaches, ZBB seeks to maximize efficiency and eliminate waste and redundancy. But unlike other approaches, ZBB shifts attention away from a reliance on precedents established in previous budgets and focuses instead on the achievement of planned objectives. This shift is intended to emphasize the role of analysis as the basis for allocation decisions rather than subjective factors that might impede or obfuscate the process of arriving at an optimal resource distribution. Because ZBB abandons the premise that budgets are inherently incremental—that each new budget should be based upon the previous year's appropriation—it requires that every aspect of the budget be justified anew each year. As such, it has been considered by some as the most radical and controversial of all modern budget reforms.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Budgeting: Zero-Base in the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy (2015, Routledge, Oxford, United Kingdom)

See Also

Further Reading

• Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (2018, Springer International Publishing, Germany)