Title:
|
An integrative model of macro and micro level factors affecting budgetary control : a cross-cultural study
|
The effect of budgetary participation on managers' performance and
satisfaction has received a considerable amount of attention over the past three
decades. Accounting literature has witnessed many contributions that attempted to
check the nature of these two relationships and to investigate the variables which
may have clear or hidden effects on them.
Researchers went beyond accounting literature to study organisational and
psychological theories and adopted some dimensions from each and tested these
dimensions on those relationships. Scholars found different organisational variables
(e. g. organisation size, environment uncertainty, technology, information asymmetry)
and also behavioural. variables (e. g. locus of control, budget goals difficulty and
clarity, motivation, slack) which affected the relationship between budgetary
participation and both managers' performance and satisfaction.
Culture has been also used as a possible contingent variable which may play a
role in this conflicting area. Behavioural accounting research witnessed many efforts
which investigated the effect of culture on budget-related behaviour. Nevertheless,
the results were inconclusive.
Prompted by the inconsistent results reported in the previous work, this study
was designed to provide more insight for this area through three main purposes:
0 Constructing an integrative model which consists of eighteen variables
which have been frequently used in the previous work.
0 Testing the proposed model using sample of managers from different
cultures.
0 Testing the proposed model using two analytical approaches
"moderating and intervening".
Twenty eight hypotheses were used to develop the proposed model. Some
hypotheses have been replicated, whereas others have been developed because they receivedli ttle attentioni n the previouss tudiesU. K and SaudiA rabiaw erec hosena s
sitest o test the proposedm odelb ecauseth ey arec ulturallyd ifferent.I n SaudiA rabia
two sampleso f managersS audi( locals) and Arab (non-locals)w ere also used.T he
purposeo f usingt wo samplesin SaudiA rabiaw ast o seew hethero r not the resultso f
the proposedm odel within the single countrya re different betweenl ocals and nonlocals.
The results of this study showed that both macro and micro level variables
interact with budgetary participation affecting managers' performance and
satisfaction. The results have highlighted the importance of using an integrative
model as a way to reconcile the contradictory results reported in the previous work.
With respect to the culture, the results provided evidence that budgetary control
practices are different between UK and Saudi Arabia in some aspects, whereas no
cultural differences were observed in others. For example the results showed that the
effect environment uncertainty on budgetary participation, and the effect of budgetary
participation on managers' satisfaction are culturally independent. The results of the
proposed model showed that some relationships (e. g. the effect of leadership style on
budget emphasis) are different between locals and non-locals within the single
country.
The results of this study also provided evidence that the contradictions in the
previous work could be reconciled by using the appropriate analytical approach.
Some hypotheses were supported using the moderating approach whereas others
were supported using the intervening approach. Therefore, this study showed that
these two approaches are complementary and both should be used either to support or
reject a hypothesis.
|