• Highly detailed budgets across responsibility centers and
the involvement of lower to senior levels of management
(our TOUCH variable);
• A strong culture for managing for the long term;
• A long-term planning system that is strategically oriented;
• Operational (budgetary) plans that are linked to the longterm
(strategic) plan;
• Multiple revisions (mainly of tactics);
• A budget system that is managed interactively, not diagnostically
(Simons, 1995);
• A culture of information sharing; and
• A strongly decentralized management structure.