Budgeting Beyond Budgeting

While for quite a long time the budget was considered a crucial management tool, it has always been subject to criticism. The criticism has become stronger in the past couple of decades, with an alternative system going by the trade name Beyond Budgeting. In this paper, we review the history and foundations of budgeting to show how, typically, criticism of budgeting has addressed a bad management style and not the technique itself. Then an example is given of how budgeting can be used to a firm's advantage in many fields but mainly so it can avoid unpleasant surprises, create trust between the firm's different hierarchical levels, and enhance learning in the positive sense. This allows the firm to avoid the vicious circles that are often found in budgeting practice because of bad management, not because of the budgets themselves.