Adoption of Activity Management Practices in Public Sector Organizations

This paper examines the extent to which activity management practices are adopted by Australian public sector organizations at each of Gosselin's (1997) levels of Activity Analysis, Activity Cost Analysis, and Activity-based Costing. The present paper replicates Baird et al. (2004), thereby enabling a comparison of the extent of adoption of activity management in the public sector with that reported in the private sector in Baird et al. (2004). The results reveal that the adoption of higher level activity management practices (Activity Cost Analysis and Activity-based Costing) is less prevalent in public sector organizations, whereas they adopt Activity Analysis to the same extent as the private sector.