Purpose

This study aims to investigate the influence of budgeting design characteristics on perceived budgeting usefulness, based on the enabling-coercive framework.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper develops a survey in one large publicly-listed Brazilian company that operates in the electric utility industry. The sample comprises 75 middle managers from different areas of this organization. This study uses structural equation modeling as the data analysis method.

Findings

The results indicate that internal and global transparencies determine middle managers’ perceptions of budgeting usefulness, while no relationship was found for repair capacity and flexibility characteristics. This paper shows that managers, when provided with global and internal transparencies and independently of their level discretion regarding target revisions or the reallocation of resources, perceive budgeting systems as being useful for decision-facilitating and decision-influencing roles.

Practical implications

The findings might be relevant for budgeting professionals to review or design the budgeting system in terms of dribbling potential flaws and increasing its use in the organization.

Originality/value

The study explores the multidimensionality of the enabling-coercive budgeting design construct. This study provides a theoretical contribution to the literature by showing that budget alignment, integration, learning and information sharing are relevant such that an organization could improve the assertiveness using budgeting systems. Besides, this paper provides an opposing view about the supposed relation between flexible budgeting design and budgeting usefulness. Frequently, some management directions are offered by the literature and no guarantee is provided in terms of the connection between the adoption and the usefulness of those mechanisms. Therefore, the findings shed more light on the practical developments in budgeting.

中文翻译：

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启用设计特征和预算实用性

目的

这项研究旨在基于使能强制框架，调查预算设计特征对感知预算有用性的影响。

设计/方法/方法

本文对一家从事电力行业的大型巴西上市公司进行了一项调查。该样本包括来自该组织不同领域的75位中层管理人员。本研究使用结构方程模型作为数据分析方法。

发现

结果表明，内部和全球透明性决定了中层管理者对预算有用性的看法，而与维修能力和灵活性特征之间没有关系。本文表明，管理人员在获得全球和内部透明胶片时，不考虑其在目标修订或资源重新分配方面的级别决定权，便认为预算编制系统对于促进决策和影响决策的角色很有用。

实际影响

这些发现可能与预算专业人士从盘算潜在缺陷和增加其在组织中的使用方面审查或设计预算系统有关。

创意/价值

该研究探索了强制执行预算设计结构的多维性。这项研究通过显示预算的一致性，整合，学习和信息共享是相关的，从而使组织可以使用预算系统提高自信，从而为文献提供了理论上的贡献。此外，本文对弹性预算设计与预算有用性之间的假定关系提出了相反的看法。通常，文献提供了一些管理方向，而在采用这些机制与它们的有用性之间并没有提供任何保证。因此，调查结果为预算的实际发展提供了更多的启示。