Multiple facets of budgeting: an exploratory analysis

This paper investigates four potential reasons for budgeting in organizations (operational planning, performance evaluation, communication of goals, and strategy formation), their antecedents (e.g., organizational strategy and structure), and several budgeting characteristics (e.g., target difficulty and budget emphasis) that potentially influence these reasons-to-budget's performance. While the idea of multiple uses of budgets in organizations is not new, the rationale for this study is that prior research has tended to look at the same (one) reason for budgeting (primarily performance evaluation), or at only one reason in isolation. Based on survey data from 57 managers responsible for preparing the budget for their organizational unit, our analyses suggest that while the four reasons-to-budget exhibit overlap, they are also substantively unique in their own use. Moreover, we demonstrate that the reasons-to-budget arise in different circumstances and that each reason-to-budget's performance is associated with different budgeting characteristics. We also demonstrate a link between the performance of the individual reasons-to-budget and overall budget satisfaction and organizational unit performance.     

预算功能彰显及其绩效研究——基于我国企业预算管理调查问卷的实证检验

本文在提炼与描述了预算的四项功能(业务规划、业绩评价、目标沟通、战略形成)的基础上,研究了各项预算功能彰显程度的环境决定因素、预算功能与预算特征的关系,以及各项预算功能是如何影响组织绩效的。研究发现,预算功能具有多重性,预算环境是各种预算功能彰显的重要驱动因素,各项预算功能都伴随着相应的预算特征,并对组织绩效产生不同影响。     

Relating Context Variables to Participative Budgeting and Evaluative Use of Performance Measures: A Meta‐analysis

Extant findings regarding how context variables relate to participative budgeting and the evaluative use of accounting performance measures (APM) are contradictory. Unlike previous reviews of such findings, this empirical article uses a meta‐analysis to examine the relations of context variables with participative budgeting or evaluative use of APM to determine (i) how the variables relate and (ii) which factors might cause between‐correlation variance, such as statistical artefacts or moderating influences of variable measures, sample selection, or industry differences. All meta‐analyses are based on rather small samples. Three groups of context variables emerge. First, some relate significantly and homogeneously to participative budgeting or evaluative use of APM; these direct relations should be considered explicitly in further studies. Second, for some variables, the relations are homogeneous but not significant, such that they are neither simple nor direct. Third, substantial variance exists in the correlations for some context variables; these relations are contingent on other influences. Industry differences and sample selection explain some inconsistencies in exploratory moderator analyses and should receive additional research attention.     

Informational influences on group decision making in a participative budgeting context

Potential benefits derived from participative budgeting may be unattainable if employed in certain group configurations. A model is developed based on group polarization research which demonstrates that the participative process that is supposed to increase motivation may generate decisions that are opposed to the integrative aspect of budgeting in a subsystematic environment. A laboratory experiment manipulating information/leadership tests the model's validity. Results indicate a polarization in attitude, while information/leadership affect the direction and strength of polarization.     

Opening the black box of management accounting information exchanges in buyer–supplier relationships

The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons why collaborating firms “open their books” and share management accounting information. We investigate the effect of variables related to the tasks and relationships of single individuals of the partner firms (i.e., task interdependence and analysability, team interdependence and relationship duration) on open book accounting (OBA). Our model controls for firm-level variables (i.e., asset specificity, degree of economic dependence, contract presence, contract comprehensiveness, and firm size) known to influence management accounting information exchanges. By using social network analysis (SNA), the data collected from a fashion firm and its entire set of suppliers shows that the quantity of management accounting information is positively related to task interdependence while having an inverted U-shape relation with the duration of the relationship. In addition, it provides evidence of a positive association with task analysability, whereas we find no relation with team interdependence. The analysis also confirms the importance of firm-level factors in explaining the exchanges of management accounting information. Our conclusions have important implications for the design of OBA in inter-organisational relationships.     

Piecewise linear incentive scheme and participative budgeting

This paper studies the economic incentives of participative budgeting through the design of incentive schemes within the agency theory framework. In particular, a piecewise linear incentive scheme (PLIS), an optimal version of Weitzman's New Soviet Incentive Scheme (NSIS), is derived. The characteristics of PLIS are: first, unlike NSIS, the bonus (penalty) rates of the optimal PLIS vary according to the agent's type in order to improve the principal's welfare, second, a penalty may be imposed on the overfulfillment of the agent's performance in order to maintain incentive compatibility, and finally, it is shown that if the coefficients are constant as in NSIS, there is no need for participative budgeting. Also, PLIS is compared with a quadratic incentive scheme. Both incentive schemes achieve the optimal solution, but each incentive scheme has its own advantage over the other depending on the situation.     

The evolution of the application of capital budgeting techniques in enterprises

This study examines the evolution of the application of capital budgeting techniques. Previous studies mostly used cross-sectional inquiries to understand the capital budgeting practices of firms. Only a few researchers have undertaken longitudinal studies to generalise the findings of the individual cross-sectional studies to the wider population and to identify the emerging trends in the use of capital budgeting techniques (CBTs). This longitudinal study surveys 83 studies of capital budgeting practices across firms in India, South Africa, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) for the period from 1966 to 2016. The findings show that six capital budgeting techniques, namely, the net present value (NPV), the internal rate of return (IRR), the payback period (PBP), the accounting rate of return (ARR), the return on investment (ROI) and the real option valuation (ROV), are the most popular methods for evaluating capital investments. Of these techniques, the ROV is the least used, and a general lack of familiarity with this technique and its complexity are the most commonly cited reasons for not using it. Another method that is used less than the first four techniques is the ROI. However, this technique is of growing significance and is mainly used in the UK, followed by the USA, South Africa, and India. Firms in the USA and UK have increased their use of the IRR as a primary method for evaluating capital projects and have retained the PBP as an ancillary technique to strengthen the available information when evaluating capital projects. Firms in India and South Africa are increasingly excluding both the PBP and ARR methods and are increasingly using the NPV when evaluating capital investments. Although this development is in line with the theory, it limits the scope of the available information when evaluating capital projects.     

Vertical information sharing in the budgeting process

This study develops a model of vertical information sharing between superior and subordinate in the budgeting process. Upward information sharing involves the revelation of private information by subordinate to superior. Its proposed antecedents are budget participation and organizational commitment while job performance is a proposed outcome. Downward information exchanges from superior to subordinate are also examined by including role ambiguity in the model. Survey results suggest that vertical information sharing is an important intervening variable in understanding the performance effects of budget participation and organizational commitment.     

Participation in budgeting: A critical anthropological approach

Accounting researchers adopting structural and post-structural interpretive approaches have long criticized mainstream assumptions about the enduring economic aspects of accounting systems, highlighting their roles in reflecting and shaping social realities that are contradictory, diverse, and changing. The paper aims to develop this critique by inquiring empirically and philosophically into the roles that constructing participation in budgeting might play in enhancing ‘ontological plurality’, that is, supporting actors’ perspectives, abilities and concerns which are generally excluded by structuring action to maximize private profits. It defines and elaborates a critical anthropological approach using Marx’s notion of ‘social praxis’ and Latour’s idea of ‘modes of existence’ to highlight the theoretical contribution of anthropologists exploring beyond traditional divides over social agency through studies of grassroots participative responses to contemporary socio-economic crises. Drawing on ethnographic data collected through a multiple site case study of eight worker cooperatives in Argentina, the paper analyses how reciprocal relations between the actors’ levels of agency in wider associative actions, and their degrees of participation in budgeting, caused gradual expansions in ontological plurality, moving the actors beyond their particular tensions and broader structural conflicts. Exploring the notion of ‘ontological movements’, the paper develops a continuum of participation and ontological pluralism in budgeting, which it argues contributes to the structural and post-structural interpretive accounting literatures through historical, constructive, and participative components.     

Participative budgeting with kinked linear payment schemes

This paper studies the truth-inducing property of a class of budget-variance-based payment schemes calledkinked linear schemes. In these schemes, the manager is either paid a bonus proportional to a favorable budget variance, or charged a penalty proportional to an unfavorable budget variance. With the penalty rate higher than the bonus rate per unit variance, the payment to the manager is piecewise linear in the actual output and kinked at the budgeted output. This paper shows that participative budgeting with kinked linear compensation schemes can induce truthful reporting of expected output from an informed manager even when the manager can shift the underlying output distribution by his unobservable efforts. Furthermore, participative budgeting with kinked linear payment schemes can achieve optimal contracting between a risk-neutral manager and a risk-neutral owner even in a setting where a menu of linear payment schemes cannot. This paper is based on my dissertation at University of California-Berkeley. I am grateful to my dissertation committee members (P.K. Sen, Nils Hakansson, and Robert Anderson), and other faculty members at the University of California-Berkeley. I thank anonymous referees, my colleagues at New York University, and the participants at the 1991 annual meetings of the American Accounting Association and the European Accounting Association for their helpful comments.     

The effect of participative budgeting on job satisfaction and performance: Role ambiguity as an intervening variable

The results of studies into the effects of participative budgeting have been equivocal. This study seeks to explain the process by which participation in budget setting affects managers' performance and job satisfaction. A model is developed to show how role ambiguity acts as an intervening variable in the link between participation and outcome criteria. Empirical results indicate that budgetary participation acts indirectly, via role ambiguity, to influence job satisfaction and performance.     

Managerial attitude,motivation and the effectiveness of budget participation

This study empirically examined the effect of budget participation on managerial performance using a contingency theory approach. Contingent variables investigated included managerial attitude (towards their job and company) and motivation (to work). The results indicated that both variables moderated the effect of budget participation. Specifically, participation in the budgeting process by managers who reported a more favourable attitude or motivation, was associated with improved performance; whereas participation by managers exhibiting a less favourable attitude or motivation, was associated with hampered performance. These results support the fundamental argument that an organization may be better off following a budgeting style (participative or non-participative) that is congruent with its employee attitude and motivation.     

A study of the linkages between rolling budget forms,uncertainty and strategy

Addressing the dearth of studies on rolling budgets, we investigate how the importance of rolling budgets for various planning, control and evaluation reasons relate to a business unit's strategy and uncertainty, and report on the variation in these responses when partitioned into quarterly and monthly rolling budget types. We use a survey instrument with responses from 182 rolling budget firms in our investigation. Our findings reveal consistencies as well as deviations between our sub-samples (quarterly and monthly rolling budgets), and the total rolling budget sample. We report that the way rolling budgets relate to uncertainty and strategy in organisations are substantively different for monthly and quarterly rolling budget types, and vary across planning, control and evaluation budget reasons. Our findings show a greater sensitivity between monthly rolling budgets and uncertainty/strategy, and virtually nil relations between quarterly rolling budgets and uncertainty/strategy. We posit that monthly rolling budgets are used in a manner more traditionally associated to rolling budgets in prior studies, while quarterly rolling budgets might be used relatively more symbolically or in response to external pressures such as earnings forecast requirements, and are less sensitive to established organisational antecedents such as uncertainty/strategy.     

The effects of budget goals and task interdependence on the level of and variance in performance: a research note

The effects of goal setting and task interdependence on both the level of and variance in performance are examined using a laboratory, resource allocation task. The results show, consistent with existing research, main effects for goal setting and task interdependence on the level of performance, but no goal setting by task interaction effect as hypothesised. The results also show that an increase in task interdependence increases performance variance but that goal setting reduces it with important implications for budget setting.     

Slack in participative budgeting: The joint effect of a truth-inducing pay scheme and risk preferences

An incentive problem in participative budgeting occurs when a worker has private information about factors that influence his or her performance and the pay scheme is budget- or standard-based. This information, if communicated accurately by the worker, may be valuable to a manager for planning and control purposes. However, the worker has an incentive to bias its communication such that a relatively easy standard is set, thereby creating slack. To alleviate this problem, analytical research has proposed truth-inducing pay schemes that provide incentives for accurately communicating private information and maximizing performance. A conventional assumption underlying these schemes is worker risk neutrality, despite the wide-spread belief that risk aversion is more typical in organizational settings. This paper reports an experiment demonstrating that, when a (conventional) truth-inducing scheme is introduced, slack decreases for risk-neutral subjects but not for risk-averse subjects.     

Managing budget emphasis through the explicit design of conditional budgetary slack

Budgetary slack plays an important role in the functioning of budgets in organizations. While theory has found negative as well as positive elements associated with its presence, the empirical literature has interpreted it as being dysfunctional to organizations. In this paper, we present empirical evidence on how a company purposefully budgeted additional financial resources with a motivation intention (Lukka. Budgetary biasing in organizations: Theoretical framework and empirical evidence. Accounting, Organizations and Society 13 (1998) 281–302) to facilitate the managers’ task in achieving the goals of the company. Using quantitative and qualitative data from four logistic sites of a disk drive manufacturer for 24 months, we examine how the company accepted more slack as the demand on business processes increased and goals other than budget targets––in particular, service quality––became harder to achieve. By allowing this practice, headquarters made it clear to local managers that product quality and service were at least as important as meeting budget objectives. We also find that not only was budgetary slack purposefully built during the budgeting process but also in the budgeting system itself through the underlying cost accounting assumptions. The results of this paper provide empirical evidence on the positive aspects of budgetary slack and on the role of cost accounting models used in the budgeting system to facilitate managerial work.     

Beyond budgeting or budgeting reconsidered? A survey of North-American budgeting practice

Budgets have historically played a key role in management control; however, recently they have become the subject of considerable criticism and debate. Some argue that the problems with budgeting stem from the way budgets are used (Horngren et al., 2004) while others argue that budgeting processes are fundamentally flawed (Hope and Fraser, 2003a). Hansen et al. (2003), among others, have called for a systematic examination of these issues against empirical evidence. In this paper, we present the results of two surveys of mid- to large-sized North-American organizations to 1) update the literature on North-American budgeting practices, 2) collect empirical evidence to assess the criticisms, and 3) begin to identify strong tendencies or patterns in budgeting practice to inform future academic research. Overall, we find for the majority of firms that budgets continue to be used for control purposes and are perceived to be value-added. While problems exist with budgets, organizations are adapting their use to account for these problems rather than abandoning budgets altogether.     

Institutional Pressures, Monopolistic Conditions and the Implementation of Early Cost Management Practices: The Case of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (1820–1887)

In spite of our increasing understanding of the underpinnings of early cost management systems, little is still known about the reasons for the implementation of such systems in firms operating under monopolistic conditions. This article studies the enforcement by law of cost and budgeting systems in the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (Spain), a manufactory of the state-owned monopoly. By doing this, we seek both to enhance understanding of the state's motivation to enact institutional pressures aiming at the implementation of early cost management practices as well as to study different organizational responses to simultaneous pressures arising from a single institutional source. It is suggested that the state's motivation to legally enforce the implementation of early cost and budgeting systems may be attributed to (a) the seeking of legitimacy by the state regulatory body, (b) the active agency of senior employees of the state regulatory body to keep their jobs and compensation packages on the eve of the privatization of the industry, and (c) the interest of the regulatory agency to instil the basis of mimetic isomorphism within the monopoly. Different responses by the RTF to pressures for reporting cost and budgeting information were explained by (a) the expected diffusion of firm's non-conformity within the institutional area, (b) the expected impact of institutional rules and norms on organizational goals, and (c) the extent to which the institutional source is consistent in its demands.     

Effects of budgetary participation conflict on job performance of Mexican and US managers

This study extends the stream of participative budgeting literature by introducing a new variable, Budgetary Participation Conflict (BPC). BPC occurs when the level of budget participation experienced by a manager differs from a desired level. We propose a model where BPC is the independent variable to further evaluate the effect of budget participation on job performance. Using path analysis, we measure the direct effect of BPC on job performance, and the indirect effects between BPC and performance that run through job satisfaction and job tenure in two countries, Mexico and the US.While the results do not indicate that BPC either directly or indirectly affects the performance of US managers, the results indicate that BPC negatively affects the job performance of Mexican managers indirectly through the effects of BPC on job satisfaction and job tenure. The relationship between tenure and performance is much stronger among the Mexican managers than among their US counterparts, which is the largest single difference between the Mexican and US results.     

In which direction is budgeting moving? A report in large firms of Spain

In this paper we provide evidence on the budgetary practice of 135 large firms located in Spain. The results have allowed us to evaluate a wide range of weakness attributed to the traditional budgeting approach, still called into question, as well as to discern towards what emerging paradigm budget is aligned the practice analyzed. Evidence shows that the budgetary approach used by the firms have managed to resolve many of the weakness imputed to the traditional budgeting. At the same time, we note that in the most of the cases studied these procedures are in line with the conceptual ideas defended by the Better Budgeting.