Price Department Store is small business. During the past year the president, J. C. Price, gave each manager in the five sales departments a detailed sales plan (goal) and a selling expense budget. Price told the case writer: “My people do much, much better under a budget program if I give them sales budgets quite a bit in excess of what I really expect them to be able to do. Of course, they don’t know what I really expect; therefore, the high budget goals that I give them keep the pressure on.” The quarterly sales budgets are usually set at 15 percent above what Price really expects.
The case writer asked about the selling expense budgets: “Do you over-state them?” “Of course not, on most expense their own salaries, I give them a tight budget - about 10 percent below - and for the same reason.” “And how do they react to the quarterly performance reports?” was the case writer’s query. Price’s response was, “They usually say, ‘I did my best.’ Two managers did exceed by secret quarterly budgets on both sales and expenses, but no one fully me the budgets that I gave them.”