<![CDATA[This study examines how fixed asset maintenance budgeting is formed, implemented, and negotiated within a state-owned logistics enterprise in Indonesia, using a Political Economy Accounting (PEA) perspective. Rather than treating budgeting as a neutral technical exercise, PEA views accounting practice as an outcome of power relations, economic pressure, and institutional interests. Using a theory-informed, single-case qualitative design, data were collected through in-depth interviews with eight informants across head-office and terminal-level units, of whom seven contribute directly to the interview evidence reported below, together with direct observation and internal documentation (budget plans, realization reports, and internal policies). Findings show that maintenance budgeting for port loading-and-unloading equipment begins as a technical-operational exercise grounded in equipment condition, breakdown history, and manufacturer (OEM) recommendations, but is subsequently filtered through corporate governance mechanisms (unit cost standards, budget ceilings, and standardized templates) that transform technical need into a governance instrument. Informants recurrently reported deviation between budget and realization, attributing it to unplanned breakdowns, imported spare-part price fluctuations, and additional work identified during dismantling; they characterized these deviations primarily as adaptive responses to technical uncertainty, although the available evidence cannot rule out contributing planning or forecasting weaknesses. Viewed through PEA, budget decisions appear shaped simultaneously by four dimensions: political (government regulation and Ministry of SOE direction), economic (efficiency and cost-effectiveness pressure), social (the enterprise’s public-service mandate and the wider consequences of equipment downtime), and managerial interest (inter-unit negotiation between technical and finance functions). Building on this pattern, the study advances “adaptive, PEA-informed budgeting” as an emergent analytical proposition, in which flexibility and continuous justification, rather than rigid plan-realization matching, are treated as meaningful markers of budgetary accountability in this institutional setting, and outlines the further evidence needed to establish it as a distinct theoretical contribution.]]>
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