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This study examines how the strong emphasis placed on the purposes of budgeting, referring to a comprehensive focus on budgeting, is related to top managers' education and tenure while controlling for their functional positions in their respective firms and ages, as well as several company-specific predictors (information quality, firm size, information technology, importance of profit and strategy).

Survey data were collected from senior managers of large manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden.

The results suggest that academic business education is positively associated with a comprehensive focus on budgeting, but tenure as well as functional position in the company (Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or not) and age are not. Overall, the company-specific control variables in general and information quality in particular are shown to have greater explanatory power than the top management characteristics analyzed.

This study identifies several empirically supported factors that seem to contribute to a comprehensive focus on budgeting. The effects of information quality, business education, the importance of profit and firm size could be considered in future research.

Academic business education matters more than the other top management characteristics analyzed. If organizations want to make comprehensive use of budgets, they should employ business graduates and be mindful of company-specific variables.

This study is the first to address a comprehensive focus on budgeting and some of its determinants. Future research could investigate a broader set of such determinants in different contexts.

Merchant and Van der Stede (2006) produced a comprehensive analysis of 24 years (1981–2004) of field-based accounting research. This study aims to analyse how the publication of field research in accounting has changed since 2005. In addition, it aims to analyse contributions from specific individuals, institutions and countries, and whether the field studies have contributed to accounting research and textbooks.

The authors identified and classified 1,115 field-based accounting articles published in 14 accounting journals from 2005 to 2022 to uncover any changes. Thereafter, bibliometric analysis was conducted using data from SciVal.

The results show several significant changes. Firstly, the growth of field studies has more than trebled as nearly all journals published at least some field studies. Secondly, field research is no longer as confined to management accounting as before. It is gaining increasing traction in auditing, financial accounting and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Thirdly, while interview-based accounting research was clearly the most popular, the fastest growth was seen in mixed-methods non-management accounting research. While public sector management control case studies and content analysis of CSR were the most popular topics of interview-based studies, audits were the most popular topic in mixed-methods research. Authors based in large universities in large English-speaking countries have been most productive, followed by authors based in Europe and Asia. Based on citation analysis, the field studies have contributed to academic research substantially more than to textbooks.

An analysis of changes and trends improves the understanding of what has happened in accounting research and the development over time.

The need to change budgeting has been frequently debated. Drawing on the literature on management accounting and budgeting change, this study aims to explore changes in budgeting and whether experienced success of budgeting varied with time and budget type. Changes in the use of the following budget types were investigated: fixed, revised, rolling, flexible and hybrid budgets.

This study uses a mixed research methodology. Survey data was collected from the same business units of large Finnish manufacturing firms in 2004 (Time 1) and 2016/2017 (Time 2) (N = 28). In addition, some of the respondents of the latter survey were interviewed in 2023 (Time 3).

Almost all business units were found to have remained loyal to budgeting. However, changes in budget types were not uncommon and varied considerably. Overall, the use of fixed budgets continued strongly, the use of revised and hybrid budgets declined, and the use of rolling budgets increased over time. Moreover, the joint use of budgets declined. The perceived success of budgetary processes was, initially, weakened by the use of fixed budgets and, later, by the use of revised budgets. The interview data further illustrates some of the patterns of, and reasons behind, the changes.

Longitudinal analysis of change in the same business units was useful in revealing the patterns of change in budgeting and on relationships between the variables analysed over time. Further research could be carried out using more extensive case studies in companies or sector-focused surveys longitudinally.