Yes / Purpose – The objective of this study is to understand the budgetary role of national legislatures in Euro Area (EA) countries and to analyse implications for fiscal discipline. Design/methodology/approach – Building on the budget institutions literature, a legislative budgetary power index for all the 19 EA countries is constructed using OECD and European Commission data as well as data generated from questionnaires to national authorities. A two-way fixed effects panel data model is then used to assess the effect of legislative budgetary power on the budget balance in the EA during 2006-15. Findings - Overall, in the EA, formal legislative powers vis-à-vis the national budgetary process are weak but there is more legislative involvement in SGP procedures and legislative budgetary organisational capacity is generally quite good. In contrast to the traditional view in the budget institutions literature, our empirical findings show that strong legislative budgetary power does not necessarily result in larger budget deficits. Research limitations/implications – Data on legislative budgeting was available from different sources and timeseries data was very limited. Practical implications – There is scope to improve democratic legitimacy of the national budgetary process in the EA, without necessarily jeopardising fiscal discipline. Originality/value – The constructed legislative budgetary power index covers all the 19 EA countries and has a broad scope covering various novel institutional characteristics. The empirical analysis contributes to the scarce literature on the impact of legislative budgeting on fiscal discipline.

Based on the human ecological pyramid described by Robert Ezra Park, the founder of Human Ecology at Chicago School of Sociology around 1920 (Park 1952; visualized by Teherani-Krönner 1992), Duncan developed his model for comprehensive research on changes in human societies. He believed that scientific analysis had to include the interplay and interaction of the following components: population (P), organization (O), environment (E) and technology (T). This research frame – POET - became known as the Ecological Complex visualized as a rhombus (Duncan 1959; Teherani-Krönner 1992; Teherani-Krönner 2014). Such an approach needs inter- and transdisciplinary research methodologies. Combining this human ecological model with theoretical and conceptual approaches in gender studies (Boserup 1970, Teherani-Krönner 2014) will open a new perspective to gender sensitive environmental researches. As the UNDP has stated: “human development if not engendered, is endangered”. This simple but far-reaching message of Human Development Report (UNDP 1995) should be taken more seriously into account in theoretical and practical work (gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting). The gender gap (FAO 2011) will be a roadblock to sustainable environmental development (Jacobson 1992) under climate change conditions. Therefore the POET model needs to be engendered. The paper will present a new concept and a methodological framework to discover natural and cultural resources with regard to climate change accommodation. / Trên cơ sở tháp sinh thái nhân văn có lồng ghép giới được xây dựng bởi Robert Ezra Park, nhà sáng lập ngành học về sinh thái nhân văn tại trường Khoa học xã hội Chicago vào khoảng năm 1920 (Park 1952; do Teherani-Krönner thể hiện năm 1992), Duncan đã phát triển một mô hình nghiên cứu toàn diện về sự thay đổi trong xã hội loài người. Ông cho rằng các phân tích khoa học cần phải bao gồm sự tương tác qua lại giữa các thành tố sau: dân số (P), tổ chức (O), môi trường (E), và công nghệ (T). Khung nghiên cứu này được gọi tắt là POET, được biết tới với tên gọi tổ hợp sinh thái, và được thể hiện bằng hình ảnh của một hình thoi (Duncan 1959; Teherani-Krönner 1992; Teherani-Krönner 2014). Cách tiếp cận này cần phải sử dụng các phương pháp nghiên cứu liên ngành và đa ngành. Kết hợp mô hình sinh thái nhân văn với các cách tiếp cận về lý thuyết và định nghĩa trong các nghiên cứu về giới (Boserup 1970, Teherani-Krönner 2014) sẽ mở ra một hướng nghiên cứu mới đối với các nghiên cứu về môi trường có liên quan tới nhạy cảm giới. Tổ chức Phát triển LHQ (UNDP) đã nêu rõ: “Nếu sự phát triển của con người không tính đến vấn đề giới, sự phát triển đó sẽ gặp trở ngại”. Thông điệp đơn giản nhưng hàm chứa này được nêu trong báo cáo: Phát triển con người của UNDP (1995) cần được xem xét một cách nghiêm túc hơn trong lý thuyết và thực tiễn (lồng ghép giới và lập ngân sách có tính đến vấn đề giới). Khoảng cách về giới (FAO 2011) sẽ là một cản trở trên con đường phát triển môi trường bền vững (Jacobson 1992) trong các điều kiện biến đổi khí hậu hiện tại. Do đó, mô hình POET cần được xem xét cả từ góc độ giới. Bài viết đưa ra một khái niệm mới và một khung phương pháp logic nhằm phát hiện các nguồn lực tự nhiên và văn hóa trong bối cảnh biến đổi khí hậu.

Consumers often fail to consider the alternative ways to spend money when making decisions to buy consumer goods, this is called opportunity cost neglect. In this experimental study, our objective was to replicate the previous research of Frederick et al. (2009) showing that reminding individuals about the opportunity cost affects their decisions. Furthermore, we also wanted to extend the knowledge about this behavior by investigating whether individuals neglect the opportunity cost when making financial decisions or decisions about time allocation. In addition, we hypothesized that individuals who conduct mental budgeting (i.e., they categorize-, budget-, and track expenditures to mental accounts), are more likely to neglect the opportunity cost since they do not treat money as fungible. In an online experiment, we measured how being reminded about the opportunity cost would affect the probability of an individual buying a cheap and an expensive consumer goods, of investing money, and of watching a movie. Furthermore, we measured how being reminded about the opportunity cost affects the decision of those who conduct mental budgeting and those who do not. Our results showed that individuals neglect opportunity cost of the expensive consumer good and time (p=0.1). We found a positive relation between conducting mental budgeting and opportunity cost neglect for the expensive consumer good (p=0.1) and the deposit account (p=0.05), but no such effect in the other three scenarios. Our results imply that, due to opportunity cost neglect of time, people might be even further from optimal decision making than previously suggested since it extends to decisions about time allocation, and perhaps to investments; and people who conduct mental budgeting sometimes spend less/save more when reminded about the opportunity cost.

In the present day planning and budgeting is a vital and an irreplaceable instrument for managers. Through planning and budgeting they control management and development of a company. Planning and budgeting no longer is a competitive advantage, but has become a necessary condition for an efficiently run company. Increasing complexity of the environment impacts the requirements for planning and budgeting -- the need to be more complex, the need to include more relations and more specifications. Company's reaction to these demands is usually an implementation of special tools that allow the company to accomplish these requirements. Although, implementation of these instruments along with planning and budgeting generally troubles many companies, some are already looking for new ways to further develop planning; better said budgeting. Today companies are believed to receive a competitive advantage from compiling consolidated budgets for a business unit that is to say from the possibility to budget a business unit as a whole. The main purpose of this research paper is to develop a methodology for budgeting a business unit and its technology support. This methodology due to its newness of this issue has not yet been defined. Reaching the set goal depends on completion of predefined sub goals. The main content of sub goals, as defined in literature and based on my own experience with planning and budget analysis, is to describe this issue and thus enable the reader to understand and be able to implement this methodology on the job. The text of this research paper is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter the reader is introduced to the issue of planning, and learns about the goals, results and conceptual solutions of this paper. The second chapter is dedicated to the issue of planning and budgeting -- it explains its importance, analyzes its functions and aspects that are influenced by it. The third chapter ties back to the general definitions of budgeting from the second chapter and provides further details. This chapter identifies and describes techniques of compiling budgets, the techniques' strengths and weaknesses. The chapter describes the most common shortfalls of budgeting and its solutions; also, outlines the best budgeting practices. The fourth chapter stems from chapter two and three -- following the issue in which the reader is introduced to the characteristics of budgeting for a business unit, and moreover defines the methodology presumption and the methodology itself. The end of the chapter evaluates the results of the execution of the presumed methodology and its usability on the job. The fifth chapter summarizes the conclusions and the level of success on execution of this paper. Keywords: Planning, Budgeting, Budgeting Techniques, Consolidation, Business Unit, Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Best Practices.

This study describes the status of zero-based budgeting in institutions of higher education in the United States. Purposes were to determine (a) knowledgeability of the chief financial officers about concept and techniques of ZBB, (b) Institutions' use of ZBB and other widely-used budgeting techniques such as Incremental, Formula, Planning, Programming and Line-item budgeting system, and (c) the chief financial officer's perceptions of ZBB. A questionnaire constructed from literature was mailed to two hundred randomly-selected institutions of higher education in the forty-eight contiguous states and authorized to offer at least a one-year program of college level studies toward a degree. The 136 returned useable responses were tabulated according to institution type, size, and amount of budget.

Although participatory budgeting (PB) was introduced in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, it has yet to be widely adopted. While PB has great potential to enhance citizen participation in the democratic process, little academic research has focused on the utility of PB as a mechanism for citizen empowerment in the region. The purpose of this case study was to gain further understanding of the role of civil society in educating and empowering the citizens of Ijede LCDA in Lagos State, Nigeria to participate effectively in budgetary decision-making processes. The data were gathered from 15 semi-structured, one-on-one interviews of purposefully selected participants that included adult citizens of Ijede, government officials, politicians, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) connected to the budget process, two follow-up focus groups with participants, and analysis of government budgetary documents. Using Avritzer's theory of participatory institutions as the foundation, the study explored stakeholder perceptions of how citizens can be effectively educated and empowered to participate in the PB process. The data revealed the fragility of PB when local government officials suspended the process because other financial demands were considered more expedient than PB, a situation made possible in the absence of a legal framework institutionalizing the process. Another major theme uncovered is that PB must engage community-based organizations to be effective. Positive social change in the form of enhanced citizen participation in the political process can come about in Nigeria if PB is implemented under an institutionalized legal framework that guarantees sustainability.

It is argued that the future of the workforce will be ‘humans and machines’ but not ‘humans vs machines’ due to the drift from ‘workforce planning’ to ‘work planning’. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its sub-fields have enabled the development of a new form of automation that is described as Intelligent Automation. It is the application of AI in ways that can learn, adapt and improve over time to automate tasks that were formally undertaken by a human. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework on the necessity of agility within the capital budgeting process for Intelligent Automations, as the traditional approaches ignore the effects of new or disruptive technologies like Artificial intelligence. This study provides advice to managers on the strategic fit of traditional capital budgeting models vs. alternatives like beyond budgeting in the context of Intelligent Automations for knowledge work (consulting, education, etc.) and service work (retail, cleaning, etc.). The approach to conduct this study will be mixed methods. From the outcomes of qualitative analysis through semi-structured interviews, the conceptual framework is formulated. This framework is tested using the survey responses data and quantitative methods. From the preliminary analysis of the pilot study conducted with 7 participants at the c-suite level, the consistent themes that are observed in this phenomenon are a) lack of data for planning due to non-linearity in the resource models in projects where AI is applied, b) use or misuse of the discretionary pool funding model and c) lack of adoption to new ways of working due to organizational climate. The two conflicting themes are the disagreements on ethics council, whether internal vs external and the expectations on human skills that cause the burden of change in large firms. A survey instrument is developed for data collection to analyze the conceptual model, which results from the qualitative study and literature review. A random sample of 217 respondents is chosen during the period from Nov 2020 to Mar 2021. A structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis is applied to investigate the research model. The measurement model is first examined for instrument validity, followed by an analysis of the structural model for testing associations hypothesized by the research model. The main findings show that – a) relationship between intelligent automation and agility in capital budgeting is positively significant b) the relationship between intelligent automation and agility in capital budgeting is negatively moderated by demand unpredictability. These findings provide advice to practitioners and decision-makers that one size fits all capital budgeting models are not recommended for projects with increased levels of intelligent automation. The novel contribution to theory is that ‘Demand unpredictability’ is a useful decision input parameter, which can be counter-intuitive at times when managers allocate capital or prioritize projects during capital budgeting cycles. This suggests that firms need to adapt to hybrid strategies by picking the best-fit approach to allocate capital towards Intelligent Automations or AI projects. It is not necessary to have one size fits all approach for capital budgeting. / Business Administration/Strategic Management / Accompanied by three files: 1) SurveyResponseData -Excel file 2) SPSS Data Analysis Output.spv 3) Data Analysis (all data) (2).Rmd

The budgeting debate concerns that traditional budgets have become dysfunctional in today’s volatile business environment. Thus, it can seem logical that organisations would implement alternatives, and beyond budgeting has become popular. Nevertheless, knowledge of beyond budgeting’s practical implications is limited, and future research needs to study organisations that have implemented beyond budgeting. This study, therefore, investigates beyond budgeting in practice through a qualitative multiple case study with eight semi-structured interviews, whose respondents come from four retail organisations. The study intends to research reasons for choosing beyond budgeting, how the beyond budgeting solution is designed and what consequences beyond budgeting implies. The study finds that organisations choose to implement beyond budgeting for several reasons, some similar, such as budgets being time-consuming and aiming for higher adaptability, and some more organisation specific. The study also finds that the beyond budgeting solutions differ, for example, the companies’ management processes are designed differently. However, no organisation intentionally implemented all beyond budgeting principles, and all have a high focus on the management processes. Further, the study finds that the company's consequences implies some similarities and differences. For example, higher adaptability was a consistent outcome. Moreover, the study shows that all companies experienced consequences that were unanticipated. Lastly, the study implies that an organisation’s contingencies affects reasons, beyond budgeting solution and outcomes as beyond budgeting should be adjusted to its situation.

Based on the human ecological pyramid described by Robert Ezra Park, the founder of Human Ecology at Chicago School of Sociology around 1920 (Park 1952; visualized by Teherani-Krönner 1992), Duncan developed his model for comprehensive research on changes in human societies. He believed that scientific analysis had to include the interplay and interaction of the following components: population (P), organization (O), environment (E) and technology (T). This research frame – POET - became known as the Ecological Complex visualized as a rhombus (Duncan 1959; Teherani-Krönner 1992; Teherani-Krönner 2014). Such an approach needs inter- and transdisciplinary research methodologies. Combining this human ecological model with theoretical and conceptual approaches in gender studies (Boserup 1970, Teherani-Krönner 2014) will open a new perspective to gender sensitive environmental researches. As the UNDP has stated: “human development if not engendered, is endangered”. This simple but far-reaching message of Human Development Report (UNDP 1995) should be taken more seriously into account in theoretical and practical work (gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting). The gender gap (FAO 2011) will be a roadblock to sustainable environmental development (Jacobson 1992) under climate change conditions. Therefore the POET model needs to be engendered. The paper will present a new concept and a methodological framework to discover natural and cultural resources with regard to climate change accommodation. / Trên cơ sở tháp sinh thái nhân văn có lồng ghép giới được xây dựng bởi Robert Ezra Park, nhà sáng lập ngành học về sinh thái nhân văn tại trường Khoa học xã hội Chicago vào khoảng năm 1920 (Park 1952; do Teherani-Krönner thể hiện năm 1992), Duncan đã phát triển một mô hình nghiên cứu toàn diện về sự thay đổi trong xã hội loài người. Ông cho rằng các phân tích khoa học cần phải bao gồm sự tương tác qua lại giữa các thành tố sau: dân số (P), tổ chức (O), môi trường (E), và công nghệ (T). Khung nghiên cứu này được gọi tắt là POET, được biết tới với tên gọi tổ hợp sinh thái, và được thể hiện bằng hình ảnh của một hình thoi (Duncan 1959; Teherani-Krönner 1992; Teherani-Krönner 2014). Cách tiếp cận này cần phải sử dụng các phương pháp nghiên cứu liên ngành và đa ngành. Kết hợp mô hình sinh thái nhân văn với các cách tiếp cận về lý thuyết và định nghĩa trong các nghiên cứu về giới (Boserup 1970, Teherani-Krönner 2014) sẽ mở ra một hướng nghiên cứu mới đối với các nghiên cứu về môi trường có liên quan tới nhạy cảm giới. Tổ chức Phát triển LHQ (UNDP) đã nêu rõ: “Nếu sự phát triển của con người không tính đến vấn đề giới, sự phát triển đó sẽ gặp trở ngại”. Thông điệp đơn giản nhưng hàm chứa này được nêu trong báo cáo: Phát triển con người của UNDP (1995) cần được xem xét một cách nghiêm túc hơn trong lý thuyết và thực tiễn (lồng ghép giới và lập ngân sách có tính đến vấn đề giới). Khoảng cách về giới (FAO 2011) sẽ là một cản trở trên con đường phát triển môi trường bền vững (Jacobson 1992) trong các điều kiện biến đổi khí hậu hiện tại. Do đó, mô hình POET cần được xem xét cả từ góc độ giới. Bài viết đưa ra một khái niệm mới và một khung phương pháp logic nhằm phát hiện các nguồn lực tự nhiên và văn hóa trong bối cảnh biến đổi khí hậu.

Tidigare forskning har identifierat ett gap mellan teori och hur företag använder kapitalbudgeteringstekniker i praktiken. Forskning tyder på att gapet är särskilt stort vid SME-företag, eftersom de tenderar att använda de enkla kapitalbudgeteringsteknikerna. Genom att försöka förklara förekomsten av fenomenet the theory-practice gap  har forskare reflekterat kring vilka bakomliggande faktorer som ligger till grund för valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik i SME-företag. En bakomliggande faktor som påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik är en individs humankapital, i form av utbildningsnivå och yrkeserfarenhet. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur humankapitalet påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik vid strategiska investeringar i svenska SME-företag. För att undersöka och analysera studiens syfte har en kvantitativ datainsamlingsmetod använts i form av en internetbaserad enkät. Studien har en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi som utgår från en deduktiv forskningsansats som används för att möjliggöra hypotesprövningar. Studiens resultat baseras på 56 respondenter vilka är beslutfattare vid strategiska investeringar i svenska SME-företag, där resultaten illustreras med hjälp av statistiska analysmetoder. Studiens resultat och slutsats visar att beslutfattare i svenska SME-företag med högre utbildningsnivå eller högre grad av yrkeserfarenhet ökar användningen av avancerade kapitalbudgeteringstekniker. Dock kan inte studiens resultat signifikant påvisa att en beslutsfattare i svenska SME-företag med låg utbildningsnivå eller lägre grad av yrkeserfarenhet använder enkla kapitalbudgeteringstekniker. / Previous research has identified a gap between theory and how companies actually use capital budgeting techniques in practice. Research highlights that the gap is particularly large among SMEs, as they tend to use simpler capital budgeting techniques. By trying to explain the phenomenon of the theory-practice gap, researchers have reflected on underlying factors that influence the choice of capital budgeting techniques in SMEs. An underlying factor, that influences the choice of capital budgeting techniques, is on the individual level in terms of educational degree and occupational level of experience. The aim of this thesis is therefore to increase the understanding of how the human capital influences the choice of capital budgeting techniques in Swedish SMEs. To examine the aim of the study, a quantitative method is used by a web-based survey. Furthermore, the study is based on a positivism research philosophy that evolve from a deductive research method in order to draw general conclusions. The result of the study is based on 56 responses from decision makers for strategic investments in Swedish SMEs, where the results are illustrated using statistical analysis methods. The results and conclusions of the study shows that decision makers in Swedish SMEs with higher degree of education or higher level of occupational experience increase the use of more advanced capital budgeting techniques. However, the results do not support that decision makers in Swedish SMEs with a lower degree of education or lower level of occupational experience use more simple capital budgeting techniques.