Beyond budgeting: innovation or rescue of old concepts of the business budget?

Abstract

This research analyzes the approach known as “beyond budgeting” and questions the “traditional” company budget approach, as well as evaluates whether it can be taken as an innovation. The development of this study was guided by a bibliographical research, which constituted the basis for a critical analysis. This analysis deals with the questions brought up by critics and confronts classical authors on the subject, in an attempt to identify possible innovations and new problems that may derive from the new approach. In general terms, it can be suggested that this new cycle tries to recover the classical qualitative aspects of budgeting, which, if fulfilled, would not require a new label to be managerially effective. Besides leaving unsolved a number of problems that may be entailed by the non-existence of a budget, the approach ends up creating other problems.