Traditional
budgeting has been criticized for a long time now for its inadequacy as a
means of management control. Criticisms concerning its inadequate
practices in a changing business environment emerged as early as the mid
1980’s with Johnson and Kaplan (1987) seminal book relevance lost? It
called also note from the work of Allen (1998). Who stated that the
rapid changes in today’s business environment renders a rigid approach
to budgetary control obsolete. It is no longer helpful in his anything
up to 15 months previously. He argues that amongst the requirements of a
more appropriate system, would be the building in of accountability to
explain the differences between actual and planned performance. This
demands a more immediate time frame of information reporting. Thus,
there is a need to integrate strategic management and budgeting. The
works of C. Adams et al (200) called be pointed to this regard. These
author, conceptualized that to be effective, budgets must aligned with
the organization’s strategies, appropriate strategic planning, and
performance management process introduced, and must involve processes
that are value based, consequential and continuous. The work of Tim
Blumentritt (2006) called be viewed as further contributions to the
above stand point as he recognizes the need for organizations to
integrate strategic management and budgeting. What seems rather
unfortunate according to Tim Blumetritt (2006) is the fact that most
organizations still great the budgeting and strategic management
processes separately and also, a significant portion of small and medium
sized enterprises do not engage in strategic planning (Tim Blunetritt
2006, p 74). Hence, the reason for this research work which is to
investigate the question; “what is the budgeting practice in Nigerian
manufacturing company?” The motivation for this study also comes from
the work of Herath and Indrani (2007) who investigated on the “roles of
Budgetary Control System (BCS) as a component of the Management Control
System (MCS) in creating and sustaining competitive advantage” and came
up with a positive conclusion. They concluded that though BCS called
play a leading role in establishing an efficient MCS for creating a
sustainable competitive advantage, budgeting will not function in
isolation (P 79). “Instead, it can be used more effectively oriented
knowledge enterprise” (Herath and Indrani; 2007, P179) The choice of
Nigerian Breweries is related to the fact that it is a manufacturing
company in a very competitive industry and lots of challenges faces
Nigerian manufacturing companies as they struggle with economic
depression and high inflation resulting form IMF world bank led
structural adjustment plan (SAP) implemented by the Nigerian government.
These programs were initiated to promote the liberalization of the
domestic economy, operations efficiency, productivity growth, privately
owned enterprises development, economic growth, trade and investment.
The economic liberalization policies have nurtured on upon economy and
have minimized the hurdles that the manufacturing companies need to
clear in order to obtain raw materials and inputs, and other resources
for productive activities. However, it has created an unprecedented
change in their business environment through increased competition both
in the domestic market and from need to development and implement a well
conceived strategic plan is order to be competitive in the business
environment.
Statement of the Problem
No matter ho well a plan is organized, it cannot produce results on
its own, thereby the need for control strategy through budgeting
practices to check compliance and excesses in the manufacturing industry
with particular reference to Nigerian Breweries. What is the budgeting
practice in the Nigerian manufacturing companies?