Budgets have historically played a key role in management control; however, recently
they have become the subject of considerable criticism and debate. Some argue that the
problems with budgeting stem from the way budgets are used (Horngren et al., 2004)
while others argue that budgeting processes are fundamentally flawed (Hope and Fraser,
2003a). Hansen et al. (2003), among others, have called for a systematic examination
of these issues against empirical evidence. In this paper, we present the results of two
surveys of mid- to large-sized North-American organizations to 1) update the literature on
North-American budgeting practices, 2) collect empirical evidence to assess the criticisms,
and 3) begin to identify strong tendencies or patterns in budgeting practice to inform
future academic research. Overall, we find for the majority of firms that budgets continue
to be used for control purposes and are perceived to be value-added. While problems exist
with budgets, organizations are adapting their use to account for these problems rather
than abandoning budgets altogether.