An Investigation of the Relationship between Performance (Operational) Budgeting and Improvement of Accountability in Administrative Agencies of East-Azerbaijan Province

Performance-based budgeting is a kind of planning, budgeting and evaluation system that emphasizes the relationship between budgeting costs and expected results. Within performance-based budgeting framework, different administrative departments are accountable based on certain standards of performance indicators,and managers have more authority in determining the best way to achieve the goals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between performancebased budgeting and improvement of accountability in the administrative agencies of East-Azerbaijan province. For this purpose, performance-based budgeting is defined based on the Diamond Model in three dimensions of planning, cost analysis (ABC), and performance management and one main hypothesis and three sub-hypotheses are set. The present research is applied and descriptive - survey and in order to test the research hypotheses, data are collected through a questionnaire. Regarding the subject and purposes of research, statistical population includes accountables and financial managers of administrative agencies and auditors of East-Azerbaijan Supreme Audit Court who have knowledge on budget. Research data are analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results of research show that there is a significant relationship between the performance-based budgeting and improvement of accountability in the administrative agencies of East-Azerbaijan. Also, the relationship between each element of the performance-based budgeting and accountability improvement is approved.