Have a look at this Plunker .

   $scope.delete1 = function(){
      bar($scope);
   };

   $scope.delete2 = bar.bind(null, $scope);

   $scope.delete3 = function(){
      bar(this);
   };

To me it seems to behave exactly as it should: delete1 and delete2 seem to do the same thing on both parent and child controller. Delete 3 behaves differently - the reason is explained very nicely in this answer: controller's scope

Maybe you can specify exactly which behaviour(usecase) you find wrong. The go back links are so that you can leave the controller page and then come back to new instance of controller(and a new scope - as you can see from $scope.$id).

Are you sure bar doesn't use anything from Util? Do this:

app.controller('foo', ['$scope',function ($scope) {
    $scope.delete = Util.bar.bind(Util, $scope);
}]);

As mentioned in apsillers answer above, the bind method is being immediately evaluated upon assignment - so $scope's current value is bound as the argument to pass to the bar function. As far as a 'cleaner' alternative, I don't see why you need something 'cleaner': you're looking to assign $scope.delete as a function that invokes bar with the current $scope value, which your current code does to a T. If you're still searching for something a bit leaner code wise you could always adopt ES6 fat arrow syntax (but you'd need a transpiler like babel)- so your code would look like:

app.controller('foo', ['$scope',function ($scope) {
    $scope.delete = () => bar($scope);
}]);

as @apsillers said, in bind $scope gets resolved and gets used in subsequent calls,so cleaner way is the first one but still If you want to use bind then use

app.controller('foo', ['$scope',function ($scope) { 
     $scope.delete = function(){ 
         bar.bind(null, $scope); 
     }
}]);