The budgeting process în the context of an integrated business plan approach

ABSTRACT

Presentation of the research area: The purpose of this study is to identify the budgeting mechanism within public companies and to recommend the ways to implement budgeting systems in public organizations.

Research purpose: How does the budgeting process impact the performance of public companies?

Methodology: The study was based on Literatures and an empiric study.

Key Results: Mostly positive correlation between the budgeting process and the performance of ACROPO.

INTRODUCTION

The current research seeks to provide further information on how budgeting influences the efficiency of public organizations. In this study, the preparatory objective bring to light three main areas of concern, that of budgeting in a company organization, (Romanian) public organizations and performance measurement. The following section provides a brief review of the individual areas.

Organizations typically work utilizing several resources like economy, human, capital and others. Financial resource has become one of the key elements in achieving the goals and objectives of an organization, which means that the budget goals have to be appropriately prepared and abided to in order to achieve them. Often a budget is defined as a quantitative representation of plans and hence the process of translating plans into budget is known as budgeting. Budget is one of the most commonly used instruments for business planning and management. Also, the budgeting process is very systematic in a really big organization, as committees are usually formed to carry out the budgeting activities. On the flipside, the owner can write down the budget on a piece of paper in a very small company or purely budget in his head about the stuff he can easily identify that is needed in running his operation.

Public companies budgets are much more relevant than other businesses as they are symbols of public policy, the enhanced value of the budgets being demonstrated by a mandatory audit contrasting expenditure and real sums of policy financial reporting. Understanding the process of how a budget influences the operations of a public company may provide an insight into the workings of the government budget and how this affects the performance of public companies.

In Romania, the public organizations must follow the Methodology regarding the medium-term strategic planning system of the public administration institutions from the central level, in which the General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) implements the strategic planning process, introducing the obligation of all subordinate organizations to elaborate strategic plans (SGG, 2008). The present methodology is the basis for the elaboration of the second component of the strategic plans: the budget programming component (CPB). Regarding the elaboration of the budget, the instrument by which the budgetary programming is carried out is represented by the budgetary program, whose content, presentation form and structure are established by the

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Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) (Ministerul Finantelor, 1991). The goal of the strategic planning process is to strengthen the link between public policy planning and budgeting, as well as increasing the efficiency of public spending.

The aim of this study is to identify the budgeting mechanism within public companies and to recommend the ways to implement budgeting systems in public organizations. Budgeting could be used to verify that the company is on the trajectory for reaching the strategic breakthroughs as it is set as the year one of the strategic plan (long-term plan).

The research question that this dissertation will analyze is: How does the budgeting process impact the performance of public companies?

Budgeting is one of the essential instruments for implementing the policies and objectives of companies, which mean that accounting information helps make significant contributions to the budgeting process, as through financial accounts, companies can obtain past data on revenues, costs and expenses, which is helpful in designing future budget objectives. Accountants are responsible for submitting the management budgeting objectives in financial terms, which means that they transcribe the management strategies and communicate the budget to staff across the company. They compile regular budget reviews that provide a framework for evaluating success and contrasting real outcomes with planning goals. The management is entirely responsible for the budget itself, and therefore the administration of the budget.

This research intends to evaluate the prevalent characteristics of budgetary controls in public institutions, create the mechanism of budgetary control in public entities, recognize issues concerning budgetary control and how this affects the performance of the public company and decide the human factors under budgetary controls. Ideally the anticipated results would show that there is a positive relationship between budgetary control and financial performance of public corporations. The question how budgeting process impacts the performance of ACROPO (the chosen company, as detailed in the Methodology section) will be explored. An important task in this study is to argue the importance of participation in the budgeting process, the factor that is overlooked in the prior budgetary literature of ACROPO, and how it affects performance.

The literature review will analyze the material that was used to define the concept of budgeting and how this relates to public organizations. The methodology section will describe

how the research was conducted, as well as the budgets used as examples for the study. The results of this research will be structured around the hypothesis that budgets have an impact on public organizations, with only results that are relevant to the objectives and research question. The dissertation conclusion will concisely answer the main research question.