The prevalence of Beyond Budgeting in Denmark: - in a contingency perspective

 

The annual budget has been criticised in recent years. The critics claim, among other things, that the annual budget is not suitable for today's business environment, that annual budgets stimulate dysfunctional behaviour and furthermore that the use of budgets is too costly. This paper examines this critique as well as the current status of the traditional annual budget in a contingency perspective by using data from a survey among the largest Danish companies. The conclusion is that only 4% of the companies claim to have abandoned the traditional, annual budget, 2% have decided or are in the process of doing so and 11% are considering abandoning it. These "Beyond Budgeting" companies are more critical towards the traditional budget than other companies. The study also shows that the critical attitude towards annual budgets as well as the decision of abandoning the budget cannot be associated with contingencies as perceived environmental uncertainty, size or decentralization. Instead increased competitive pressure is associated with supplementing the budget with rolling forecasts.