Current Budgeting Practices in U.S. Industry: The State of the Art

Umapathy, in conjunction with the National Association of Accountants, surveyed over 400 companies nationwide to compile a profile of budgeting practices and budget manager qualifications. He also sought to determine whether there are significant variations in practices in different industries, different management philosophies and between financially successful and unsuccessful companies. In the last two chapters he provides a number of suggestions for improving budgetary practices by examining those used by successful companies and exploring the implications of the research for managers and academics. He briefly describes a model of effective planning and control systems taht combines the perspectives of accounting, organizational beharior, and strategic policy. Accountants in industry will find this an interesting work with a lot of useful information to help appraise the relative state of their companies' budgetary practices. Academic accountants will encounter much interesting data and a good syntheses of recent research on the subject. "Journal of Accountancy"