Beyond Budgeting (BB). Budgeting related factors to achieve business agility

Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, The FOM University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, language: English, abstract: This paper poses the following questions. What is the concept of BB? What are the experiences in practice regarding the implementation of the BB (Beyond Budgeting) concept? How many companies implemented the concept successfully and how many did fail? What are budgeting related factors to achieve business agility? The objective of this assignment is to give answers to these questions by performing an analysis of current literature, journals and case studies related to that topic. To meet the objective a secondary research of current literature, case studies and scientific journals will be performed. The limitation of this paper is given by the research method and needs further validation by empirical studies. Additionally, alternative budgeting methodologies have not been examined, which could have resulted in a different conclusion regarding business agility in practice and need also be further researched. This paper is divided into two main chapters, beginning with theoretical foundations to better understand the topic, following by an analysis of the mentioned questions above. Hereafter, the research will be summarized by the author’s conclusion and outlook. Digitalization requires rapid organizational flexibility and adaptability to thrive in a more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, we face nowadays. In context with these developments, traditional budgeting is criticized that it does not work as intended, is too costly, has weak connections to strategy, often prevents from being effective and that it leads to unethical behaviors. Traditional budgeting seams not flexible enough to cope with the nowadays VUCA business environment. Therefore, new budgeting mechanisms for better contribution to business operation and performance are necessary. Beyond budgeting promotes to solve the problem by implementing a performance measurement system relative to competitors and a decentralized organization structure. But very little is heard about the new concept of BB.