Antecedents of Participative Budgeting – A Review of Empirical Evidence

Participative budgeting is one of the most intensively researched budgeting variables in management accounting. Research has stalled, however. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate further research by providing an overview of antecedents of participative budgeting and suggesting ways to build upon extant research.

We assess 22 studies published prior to 2011 that offer statistical insights into why organizations use participative budgeting by theorizing and modeling it as a dependent variable.

This work answers two research questions regarding why organizations use participative budgeting: (a) Which antecedents of participative budgeting have been analyzed so far? (b) Which causal-model forms are used in extant research regarding the antecedents of participative budgeting?

This paper provides a detailed overview of empirical studies and respective findings aiming to explain why organizations use participative budgeting. Many prior studies have measured the association between contextual antecedents and participative budgeting. However, from a theoretical perspective, objectives of employees and supervisors are often used to explain the relation. Based on our literature review, we propose that all objectives identified so far intervene in the relationship between context and use of participative budgeting and also further detail these objectives. Consequently, our review analyzes the status quo of research on why organizations use participative budgeting and adds additional suggestions of underlying causal processes that can be tested in future studies.