AN EXPLORATORY STUDY REGARDING THE RELEVANCE OF BUDGETS AMONG ROMANIAN COMPANIES

Budgets always played an important role in the business companies over the years. Budgeting is used for many purposes: planning, performance appraisal, employee motivation, allocation of the company resources, control. In the current literature studies, there is a debate if the budgets are still relevant or not for companies, some authors lean towards a management without budgets and others are proposing that budgets should be improved and used together with other controlling instruments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current trends regarding the budgeting practice among the Romanian companies. Is the traditional budgeting approach predominantly used by the firms? Is there a tendency to abandon this tool? Is budgeting still adding any value to the companies? Are companies taking into account a management without budgets? To answer to all of these questions a survey was used as research method. Results show that Romanian companies are still using budgets, for planning aspects, control (means performance evaluation) and resource allocation. Fixed budgeting model is still used by most of the companies, followed by rolling budget and incremental budgeting. The budgeting process is still adding value in reaching the company goals. Budgets are still important for management during the decision making process especially for costs purposes, invests and strategic aspects. Companies do not want to abandon budgets as a tool but are also open to make some improvements to the classical approach.