Dissident opinions on budgetary control systems in the 21st century: evidence from a multinational retail organization located in the UK

Although the tertiary sector, is one of the main components of developed Western European economies, such as UK, management accounting research in this sector is limited (Sharma, 2002). “The shift in the economies of advanced Western nations from manufacturing to service industry bases is largely ignored by accounting theoreticians and practitioners” (Lowry, 1990, p.160). Therefore our understanding of how various management controls, in particular budgets, function in this context is modest (Auzair and Langfield-Smith, 2005). Despite budgets being regarded a cornerstone of management controls(Hansen et al., 2003, Sandalgaard, 2012) “dissident voices” suggest that they are “out of kilter” with a competitive environment in the third wave economy (Hope and Fraser, 2003c, Brander Brown and Atkinson, 2001, Ekholm and Wallin, 2000, Hope and Fraser, 2003b, Hope and Fraser, 2003a, Bogsnes, 2009, Player, 2003). Nevertheless, due to the lack of management accounting research in the service sector, especially in the retail industry, it remains unclear whether these critiques also hold in modern retail organisations. To expand our knowledge and understanding of the budgets, this study enhances previous manufacturing context research by investigating the budgeting practice in a multinational retail organisation based in the UK.