Research On Budgeting: Its History, Essence And Budgetary Slack

This dissertation mainly studies around the problem"the essence of budgeting". Though budget is a common management tool in business at home and abroad nowadays, successful cases are few, and it is widely criticized by academic and business circles. Therefore, a thorough study of"the essence of budgeting"is helpful both to advance business circle's cognition and grasp of budget, and to improve the study of budget-related theoretical problems forward.In order to fulfill the study plan, this dissertation's research method is mainly based on the history of budgeting and its related cases. This dissertation adopts normative research method.The structure of this dissertation is as follow:Introduction: to introduce the research motivation and method, to clarify research thinking and to design research outline. Chapter1, The history of budgeting: to review the history of budgeting, so as to lay the foundation for the study of"the essence of budgeting". Chapter2, The essence of budgeting: to make a deep study of the unchangeable essence of budgeting, basing on the previous chapter. Chapter3, Budgetary slack: basing on the previous chapter and related literature, to summarize and analyze the cause and governance of budgetary slack. Chapter4, Beyond budgeting: basing on the previous chapter and going along the management thinking of beyond budgeting which emphasizes organization culture, to make a thorough study of budgetary slack's essential governance way from the perspective of manager's budgeting concept. And the research conclusion of"essential governance"also explains the inner meaning of"the essence of budgeting"from the other aspect. Chapter5, Summary: to summary this dissertation's content systematically, and point out its innovations, research limitations and opportunities for future research.This dissertation's main viewpoint: the essence of budgeting is"pursuing the truth of budgeting plan"; the correct budgeting concept held by managers is the essential governance way of budgetary slack; if the manager holds the"cooperative"budgeting concept, budget is no longer a tool for manager to control or manage subordinates, but a tool for subordinates themselves to exalt their life-state. At this time subordinates determine a plan from the bottom of their heart, basing onresponsibility for their own, this is the true meaning of"the truth of budgeting plan".This dissertation's main innovation: 1) to review the history of budgeting's development from three aspects, namely,"social economic state, management thought and theory and management accounting"; and conclude four budgeting models. 2) to make a deep study of"the essence of budgeting". 3) combined with related literature, to make a systematically study of the cause and governance of budgetary slack, bring forward budgetary slack's essential governance way from the perspective of manager's budgeting concept, and give the essence of budget and budgeting a new cognition.This dissertation's research limitations and opportunities for future research: 1) the four budgeting models are only drawn from history retrospect, and so lack of actual case evidence to support them. 2) as to the"truth"of budgeting plan and its assessment system, they are still opportunities of a deep study. 3) on how to assure the truth of budgeting plan, the four budgeting models need more cases evidence to support. 4) basing on managers'budgeting concept, budget is a self-management tool that help exalt subordinates'life-state, and from this point of view, other budget-related theoretical and practical matters can be rethought systematically. These above limitations and opportunities will be the author's future research realm.