Budget and budgeting have become more than just control mechanisms over the past few years. They are seen as functions for strategic planning and a method to implement or assist the strategy implementation. The research report investigated whether the budget is a strategic enabler though different contributors of the budgeting process.In previous research the dissatisfactions of the budgetary process were identified, but this excluded the impact that the budget process had on the strategic plans of an organisation. Other research was done on how strategy was done in organisations, but not which methods or instruments were used to implement strategy in organisations. This study investigated the experiences and the views of financial and non-financial senior managers and executives on the budgetary process factors that would influence the implementation of the strategic plan of the organisation. In order to understand the views of the participants, a qualitative research approach was taken in the form of semi-structured expert interviews.The findings reflect that some of these factors that were identified do contribute to the budgeting process and to the budget for being a strategic enabler in an organisation. The surprising findings were that the non-financial respondents did not believe that the use of balanced scorecards would attribute to the implementation of a strategy and that the respondents did not agree to the cycle time of the budgets proposed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur svenska storföretag ser på sitt arbete med budget som ekonomistyrningssystem. Tidigare forskning indikerar på att trots den omfattande kritik som finns mot budget så tenderar företag att inte instämma i den. Kritikerna hävdar, bland många saker, att budgeten skulle vara resurskrävande, inflexibel, inaktuell och ge upphov till manipulering. Alternativet, menar de mer radikala kritikerna, skulle vara att överge budget och arbeta fullständigt med alternativa lösningar. Empiriska studier visar att budget används av företagen men förbättras och omvärderas med tiden för att anpassas bättre till verksamheten. Tidigare forskning har visat att de alternativ som förespråkas i budgetlös styrning inte förutsätter att budgeten överges för att bli användbara. Tidigare studier om företags inställning till budgetering har gjorts i bland annat Nederländerna och Nordamerika. Det finns alltså ingen studie som mäter svenska företags inställning. Svenska företag utmärker sig dels genom kulturen men framförallt genom att annorlunda ledarskap. Komplexiteten i storföretag har för den här studien inneburit att urvalsgruppen att undersöka blev svenska storföretag. Urvalsgruppen undersöktes genom ett oberoende slumpmässigt urval. Det positivistiska synsättet har lett till ett kvantitativt tillvägagångssätt med enkät som verktyget för att nå populationen. Populationen svenska storföretag utgjordes 2013 av 1850 företag och vårt stickprov bestod av 250 företag. Genom att jämföra stickprovet i den här studien mot hela populationen kunde vi konstatera att omsättning och antal anställda inte avviker nämnvärt mellan grupperna. En bortfallsanalys utfördes mellan respondenterna som svarade innan och efter att en påminnelse skickats ut och resulterade i statistiskt säkerställda resultat där grupperna svarade homogent. Majoriteten av storföretagen arbetar med budgetering. Resultaten baserades på 41 respondenters svar och kan i en hög grad sägas vara statistiskt säkerställda. Det finns några påståenden där en alltför stor osäkerhet finns men slutsatsen blir utifrån de statistiskt säkerställda resultaten att budgeten är här för att stanna. Budgetens syfte är att skapa ekonomisk överblick och den förbättras och kompletteras med hjälp av de verktyg som budgetlös styrning förespråkar. Kritiken kunde i stor utsträckning förkastas. Vi tror att vidare forskning handlar om ett kvalitativt tillvägagångssätt för samma population eller ett byte av målgrupp men med liknande forskningsfråga för att se om mindre företag delar storföretagens åsikter om budget. / The purpose of this study was to examine large Swedish corporations approach on their budgets as management control systems. Recent research indicates that corporations tend to disagree with the widespread criticism against budgeting. Critics claims, among many other things, that the budget is costly, inflexible, outdated and give rise to manipulation. The more radical critics argue that the alternative would be to abandon the budget and work completely with alternative solutions. Resent research indicates that corporations are still working with budgeting but with an improved version that is re-evaluated over time to adapt better to the business. Another important aspect that previous research shows was that the preferred option in beyond budgeting does not require the budget to be totally abandoned to become useful. Previous studies on corporations attitude towards budget were made, inter alia, in the Netherlands and North America. Thus, there was no study that measured the Swedish corporate attitude towards budgeting. Swedish corporations distinguish themselves partly by culture but mostly by their leadership. The selection group in this study was based on the complexity of large corporations. We examine the population by an independent random sample with a positivistic view. That means a quantitative approach with survey as a tool to reach the population. In 2013 the population of large Swedish corporations consisted of 1850 corporations. By comparing the sample in this study to the entire population, we found that turnover and number of employees does not differ significantly between the groups. A non-response analysis was performed between respondents who answered before and after a reminder were sent out and resulted in statistically reliable results where groups responded homogeneously. The majority of large corporations are currently working with budgeting. This results includes answers from 41 respondents' and in a largely, it is to be said, statistically significant. There are some statements in which too much uncertainty exists but the conclusion was based on the statistically significant findings that the budget is here to stay. The budget aims to create economic overview and is improved and supplemented with the help of the tools beyond budgeting advocates. Largely the criticism could be rejected as false. We believe that further research examine budgeting through a qualitative approach to the same population or a change of the population but with similar research question to see if the smaller corporations share larger corporations' opinion about budgeting.

Budgeting has a long tradition within management control but has faced criticism for being too expensive, time-consuming and irrelevant due to the inflexible nature of traditional fixed budgeting. In an increasingly volatile business environment, organizations need to move beyond the historical view inaugurated by the traditional budget and towards a more dynamically conducted budget that adapts to the environment. The proposed solution to the budget issue has been alternative budgeting methods such as beyond budgeting, rolling forecasts and zero-based budgeting, which are argued to excel with the utilities offered through emerging technology such as business intelligence, which has been on top of organizations agenda in over a decade. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the awareness of how business intelligence can improve the budgetary process to become more adaptive to the environment. This thesis takes a qualitative approach where six respondents were interviewed to form three groups; BI Experts, BI Prospects and BI Users, to elicit different perspectives of BI utility on the budgetary process. These perspectives were analyzed against the proposed purpose of budgeting to provide good targets, efficient resource allocation and reliable forecasts. The result of this thesis show that business intelligence can improve the budgeting process by providing more reliable forecasts through increased data accessibility and more reliant data, as well as ease of reporting. The budget process becomes less costly and time consuming in terms of data errors and reporting activities. An additional finding for this thesis is that there is a visionary discrepancy between the three defined groups.

Inledning: Traditionell budget har fått mycket kritik under åren vilket har resulterat i att nya alternativa metoder har växt fram. Ett alternativ till den traditionella budgeten är rullande prognoser, vilket också har erhållit en del kritik. Det är vanligt att kombinera dessa metoder men däremot finns det inte mycket forskning om hur detta gör samt varför företag väljer att kombinera dessa styrmedel. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att skapa en förståelse för hur och varför ett företag styr sin verksamhet genom att använda en kombination av en traditionell budget och rullande prognoser. Metod: Studien utgår från en kvalitativ metod med ett abduktivt angreppssätt. Den empiriska datan har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med respondenter med olika befattningar på företaget. Intervjuerna har även kompletterats med internt material som har tillhandahållits från fallföretaget. Slutsats: Fallföretaget använder sig av en traditionell budget och rullande prognoser som ett komplement till varandra. Företaget har synkat processerna vilket har gjort att två processer blir en. De använder styrmedlena till störst del till samma syften, däremot används de för olika tidsaspekter. Att kombinera dessa styrmedel har inte visat sig vara tidskrävande för företaget, vilket kan vara till följd av att de har en gemensam process för båda styrmedlena och för att de används för liknande syften. De orsaker som identifierades till att företaget använde sig av en kombination av styrmedlena är för att styrelsen vill det, de är vana vid det och för att de ska kunna erhålla en bättre kontroll över verksamheten. / Introduction: Traditional budgeting has received much criticism over the years, which has resulted in the emergence of new alternative methods. An alternative to the traditional budget is rolling forecasts, which have also received some criticism. It is common to combine these methods, but there is not much research on how this is done and why companies choose to combine these instruments. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to create an understanding of how and why a company manages its business by using a combination of a traditional budget and rolling forecasts. Method: The study is based on a qualitative method with an abductive approach. The empirical data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with respondents with different positions at the company The interviews have also been supplemented with internal material provided by the case company. Conclusion: The case company uses a traditional budget and rolling forecasts as a complement to each other. The company has synchronized the processes, which has made two processes one. They mostly use the instruments for the same purposes, however, they are used for different time aspects. Combining these instruments has not proved to be time consuming for the company, which may be because they have a common process for both instruments and because they are used for similar purposes. The company uses a combination of the instruments because the board wants it, they are used to it and because they want to obtain better control over the business.