Reasons why managers play budget games and their perception of budgets at a local bank in South Africa

Abstract

Recent surveys done in the field of budgeting indicate that budgeting is alive and well in many organisation; however there continues to be academic research and writing on the problems experienced in budgeting. This research report investigated the views of finance and non-finance managers on reasons why managers play budget games such as low balling and sand bagging and their perceptions of budgeting.Previous research has on focused on international companies thus leading to a literature gap within the South African context. This provides opportunity to deeply understand the budget problems within the local context, South Africa. This study investigated the experiences and views of both financial and non-financial managers at a local bank as banks are notorious for huge management incentives. In order to understand the views of both types of managers and unpack this topic, Qualitative research, in the form of semi-structured expert interviews was undertaken.The findings reflect that managers believe in budgets and the budgeting processes. Budgets are viewed as an indispensable management tool. The budgeting games are largely as a result of leadership issues within organisations as opposed to process issues.An additional dimension to the topic was uncovered; budget games are not only linked to incentives, managers’ egos and their need to protect their bonuses. A large part of this process is dependent on the manager sub-ordinate relationship: Where there are reasonable trust levels, managers do not play games such as low balling and sand bagging. However in cases where the relationship is mainly mechanical and there are low levels of trust, budget games are more apparent.“Management enables a robust budgeting process; however leadership creates the space and environment to have robust strategic discussions”