The budget is widely criticised for consuming time and resources without adding sufficientvalue, however, it is undeniably one of the most important tools for planning andcoordination. This case study examines a company that has abandoned the budget andreplaced it with new planning and forecasting processes to achieve a dynamic process with aforward-looking mentality and less focus on details. The objective of the study is toinvestigate the experiences of the new processes and how the ways of working have beenaffected from a management accounting change perspective, with a focus from thecontroller’s perspective. The changed planning processes are conceptualised as a part of theorganisation’s rules and routines.The findings showed that the purpose of the new processes was unclear in some respects,and although the new rules were accepted, many old routines had not yet changed.Perceived lack of system support combined with a conviction that certain aspects of the oldprocesses were essential to perform qualitative work, are two explanatory factors. The levelof detail had decreased in many aspects, but time has not yet been freed up for thecontrollers in favour of value-adding activities.

Bakgrund: Konventionell budgetering har fått utstå betydande kritik under de senaste decennierna, där många menar att den inte är lämplig i dagenssnabbrörliga och globala marknad. Ett flertal organisationer har övergett konventionell budgetering, och rörelsen eller filosofin berördetta kallas för Beyond Budgeting (BB). Grundprinciperna i denna filosofi är en organisationsstruktur där mer ansvar och tillit placeras hos den operativa delen av organisationer. Detta är menat att ge mer frihet till enskilda medarbetare men väcker frågor om agentteori och organisatorisk kontroll. Controllers traditionella roll har setts som ett verktyg för ledningen att utöva kontroll och motverka agentteorins moraliskarisk. Frågan är hur denna roll påverkas av en allt mindre strikt form av kontroll, vilka faktorer som kan tänkas påverka denna roll och hur rollen redan har förändrats. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur controllerrollen och budgetarbete ser ut i dagens organisationer samt om kritiken mot budgetarbete, så som filosofin BB beskriver den, faktiskt stämmer i dagens organisationer. Ytterligare undersöker studien till vilken grad BB som metod har implementerats i dessa organisationer. Metod: Semi-strukturerade intervjuer med sex stycken respondenter inom flertalet olika organisationer har agerat som empirisk data. Denna data harsedantranskriberats och analyserats i enlighet med den deduktiva ansatsen, där de teorier vi funnit har applicerats. Analysen skedde genom en tematisk analys där teman och kategorier funnits för att påvisa samband inför slutsatsen. Slutsats: Studien tyder på att controllers idag har en hög grad av kontroll över deras arbete samt att arbetet huvudsakligen är analytiskt och framåtblickande. Delar av respondenterna anser sig ha en beslutsfattande roll och arbetar huvudsakligen enskilt men har ett brett kontaktnät. Rollen kan till viss del beskrivas som en affärspartner men vi fann stora skillnader mellan respondenterna. Bland respondenterna var det vanligast att använda en toppstyrd budget, där enskilda affärsenheter har mindre inflytande. Denna budget kompletterades sedan med prognoser. Vi fann att delar av kritiken mot konventionell budgetering stämde in bland respondenternas organisationer, samt att aspekter av BB har implementerats. / Background: Conventional budgeting has endured a lot of criticism in the last decades as many argue it is not suitable for today's agile and globalized market. Several organizations have taken the step to abandon conventional budgeting and the movement, or philosophy, regarding this matter is known as Beyond Budgeting (BB). The core principle of this philosophy are an organizational structure where a higher degree of responsibility and trust is placed on the operative sections of the organization. By doing this a much higher degree of liberty is granted to partners in the organization, but it raises questions regarding agent theory and organizational control. The traditional role of the controller has been to function as a tool for upper management to exercise control and counteract the moral hazard of agency theory. The question then is how this role is affected by a much less strict form of control, and which factors can be seen to affect the role as well as which factors that have already affected it.   Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine the role of the controller and how budgeting of modern organizations are handled as well as how the accurate the critique aimed at budgeting is, as it is described by the philosophy of BB. Furthermore, the study aims to examine to which degree the subject organizations has implemented or embraced the principles of BB.  Method: The study is built on semi-structured interviews with a total of six participants, based in several organizations, which have acted as the empirical data. This data has been transcribed and analyzed in accordance with the studies’ deductive approach upon which our studied theories have been applied. The analysis has been based on a thematic analysis where the goal has been to find common themes and categories.    Conclusion: The study has found that controllers today have a high degree of control regarding how they choose to perform their work, which has been found to be primarily analytical and forward-looking in nature. Some of the controllers consider themselves to have a decision-making role, and while their work is primarily done alone, they have a wide array of contacts. The role can to a degree be described as a business partner, but the study has found large differences among participants in this regard. Among the participants it was most common to use a conventional budget, set by upper management where local business units have limited influence. This budget was complemented with forecasts. The study also found that among the participant’s organizations, some of the critique towards conventional budgeting was accurate to a certain degree. In addition, we found that aspects of BB had been implemented.