A Study of Management's Budget-Oriented Behavior in Tunisian Business Enterprises

218 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1981.Budget Systems are important managerial tools that help define and achieve organizational goals. The budget is the primary accounting technique for allocating inputs and measuring outputs. That budgeting affects behavior is self-evident. What is not always self-evident is "how" and "why". Despite the apparent importance given to budgeting in management accounting, the latter has come under heavy criticism, especially during the last decade, for its continuing disproportionate concern for techniques, and for its failure to give appropriate consideration to the behavioral implications of those techniques.Most research in managerial accounting in general, and in budgeting in particular, has been conducted in either the United States or a country with a developed corporate environment. If research efforts are deployed with the hope that the findings will contribute to the development of a body of knowledge and the improvement of management practice, it is reasonable to conclude that, in many respects, this type of research is of even greater use for developing countries than for developed ones. The specific country that was involved in this research in Tunisia. The aim of this research was to explore the extent to which the budget-oriented behavior of Tunisian managers is dependent on some individual, organizational and environmental factors. The specific objectives were (1)to identify and measure managers' budget-oriented behavior in the Tunisian business environment, i.e., to identify and measure in behavioral terms the managerial actions and interactions that are brought about by companies' use of budgeting, (2)to identify and measure some of the variables (e.g., personal, interpersonal and organizational) that might have an effect on managers' budget-oriented behavior, and (3)to identify and measure the relationships that might exist between these variables and managers' budget-oriented behavior.To achieve these objectives, a field study was conducted in the Tunisian business environment. Six organizations representing about three quarters of the chemical industry participated in this study. Two methods of data collection were used. Personal interviews with top management were conducted to gather information about the companies' organizational structure while questionnaire instruments were used to obtain data on managers' budget-oriented behavior, their organizational climate, and their personality and demographic characteristics. Two methods of data analysis were used. Factor analysis was used to identify and measure the underlying dimensions of manager's budget-oriented behavior and their organizational climate while stepwise regression analysis was used to identify and measure the effects on management budget-oriented behavior of the various organization, personality, and demographic variables.The results of this study showed (1)The predominance of the control and evaluation aspects of budgeting. This suggests that in the Tunisian business environment, the control and performance measure aspects of budgeting offer a richer field for investigating managers' behavior than the participation aspect. (2)The highly centralized nature of the organizations in the sample. (3)The importance of the organization structure, personality and demographic factors in explaining managers' budget-oriented behavior. These results supported many of the a priori expectations. The implications of these results for management accounting and future research as well as the limitations of this study were outlined. Because of the exploratory nature of this research, replications and extensions of this study are urgently called for.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD