Empirical Study on the Impact of Business Strategy on Annual Budget Performance

Abstract

Empirical Study on the Impact of Business Strategy on Annual Budget Performance 1. Introduction Business strategy is defined as all the decisions and actions performed by a business to accomplish its objectives and goals. It is also the actions taken to secure a competitive position in the market (Agbenyo, Frank & Wang, 2018). Business strategy is seen as the backbone of the business because it's the roadmap that leads to the desired goals. Researches have shown that any fault in this roadmap can result in the business getting lost to competitors (Agbenyo et al., 2018). On the other hand, budgeting is one of the central management accounting control systems (CMACS) used in generating information needed for coordinating, controlling, planning and for performance evaluation (Wael & Jordan-Al-Karak, 2016). Budget strategy and its tools are a major tool for checking business performance to ensure the implementation of managerial policies and decisions (Andrews, 2016). Budgets can be used diagnostically or interactively (Abernethy & Brownell, 1999). There have been several contingency theory perspectives that argued that there is no specific business strategy model that could help enhance the budget performance of an organization. This was emphasized that different organization pursue different goals and therefore uses different strategies to enhance the organization's budget performance (Chenhall & Langfield-Smith, 1998). Therefore, in order to improve budgetary efficiency, a business must plan and implement its business strategies th at are constantly monitored by structured systems to ensure their achievement. (Atkinson et al., 1997; Van der Stede et al., 2006). Performance can be maximized by an organization by striving to be the low-cost producer or by differentiating its line of services from those of other organizations to enhance better performance of its budgetary plans (Hartmann and Moers, 2003). An organization's strategy for maintaining high budget quality includes constant monitoring and awareness of environmental variables and classifying them as opportunities and threats (Walter et al., 2016). These business strategies involve knowing the nature of the threats of other organizations as either serious or casual thereby providing an understanding of the business environments. The impact of business strategy on the annual budget performance has been the subject of some research papers as it's a norm that budget performance can be successfully enhanced if an organization align with its business strategies and ensure appropriate performance measurement (Lee and Yang, 2011). It is proofed that business strategy is as urgent as the organization's budget itself and any waste or expenses done without following the budget could lead to the poor performance of the organization. This paper was therefore aimed at examining the effect of the business strategy on the annual budget performance among selected private organizations in Okitipupa Local Government area, Southern region of Ondo State, Southwestern Nigeria wi...