Because of the increasing importance of effective and productive management of public organizations, budgetary slack is started to be seen as an important problem for public organizations. In order to contribute the solution of this problem, the current study investigates the effects of budgetary control effectiveness, ethical work climate and managers’ procedural justice perception on propensity to create budgetary slack in pubic organizations. The data is obtained through questionnaire responded by 465 managers who work in different public organizations. The results of the analyses show that effectiveness of budgetary control, ethical work climate and procedural justice perception of managers have a statistically significant and negative impact on managers’ propensity to create budgetary slack in public organizations. Budgetary control and ethical work climate affect managers’ perception of procedural justice. In addition, it is inferred from the study that the perception of procedural justice has partial mediation effect between effectiveness of budgetary control, ethical work climate and propensity to create budgetary slack.

Keywords: Budgetary slack, Budgetary control, Procedural justice, Ethical work climate, Public organizations.