in rituals to reduce their level of anxiety, and budget planning is indeed a ritual that acts as an agent for reducing anxiety. Long-term budgets guard against anxieties that build over the prolonged uncertainty of the future, and short-term budgets take care of the stresses of the immediate present uncer tainties. Managers in a high uncertainty avoidance culture can be expected to spend much time and effort in formulating long-range budgets that cover broad time horizons, in addition to having budgets that cover a year or less.
Japanese managers, being high on uncertainty avoidance, are likely to reduce their anxiety by formulating long-term budgets more so than the U.S. managers, who operate in a low uncertainty avoidance culture. In fact, Daley et al. [1985] found this to be the case. Hence the next hypothesis formulated, based on the uncertainty avoidance dimension, is: