Current trends in Czech firm's budgeting practices: The survey results

Abstract

Budgeting and planning belongs to the traditional tools of management accounting which are essential for the successful control of the business organizations. In recent decades we observe growing dissatisfaction with traditional budgeting concepts, based on annual bases and control functions. Traditional budgeting methods are very often criticized for the inflexibility and strong focus on resource allocation. Many research studies points at the necessity of adopting more sophisticated budgeting methods, which could contribute to better performance management and control of business organizations. Current trends lie in adopting flexible, decentralized budgeting systems, focused on the use of key performance indicators (KPI). The paper presents the initial results of the survey of Czech enterprise budgeting practices. The objective of the study was to compare firm's approach to their budgeting systems and intention of abandoning the traditional way of budgeting. The paper presents the results of the survey of Czech enterprise budgeting practices. The objective of the study was to analyze the current budgeting practices of the Czech firms and analyze the importance of the budgeting systems for company management. The first part of the paper presents the analysis of the trends in budgeting practices worldwide, which are based on shift from traditional budgeting methods and increasing use of alternative methods based on performance measurement. The main part of the study presents the results of the questionnaire survey of the Czech enterprises' budgeting practices performed by the authors with focus on the approach to the used budgeting system and its quality perception. Main objective of the survey is to find out if the Czech budgeting practices are featured with similar discontent which we can observe in literature and some foreign studies.