This article examines how corporate reliance on budgets is affected by major changes in the economic environment. We combine survey and archival data from the economic crisis that began in 2008. The results indicate that budgeting became more important for planning and resource allocation but less important for performance evaluation in companies affected more strongly by the 2008 economic crisis. Additional evidence from interviews and data gathered in a focus group further illustrate these results and show the changes organizations have introduced to respond to the economic crisis. Taken together, and contrary to more general conclusions from the literature such as an overall increase or decrease in the importance of budgeting, we find that companies emphasize certain budgeting functions over others during economic crises.

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International audienceDrawing on a framework of deinstitutionalisation, this study explores the abandonment of budgeting through a multiple-case study of four companies. The findings illustrate how a number of antecedents to deinstitutionalisation acted in each setting and show that abandonment was only achieved through skilful agency by dominant insiders to construct the need and manage for change. In addition, a finding of the study is that two of the four companies reversed the deinstitutionalisation and reintroduced traditional budgeting. This is explained by highlighting the role of remnants of formerly institutionalised practices and by demonstrating the importance of administrative and cultural controls which can support the abandonment of a central accounting control practice in the first place. Overall, this research extends previous studies of deinstitutionalisation by analysing a taken-for-granted practice at the micro-level and by giving a more agentic account of its processes

Accrual Output‐Based Budgeting (AOBB) in government has been disputed intensely among academics and practitioners. While normative, conceptual, or theory‐based literature made promising claims about which benefits can be expected from reforming government accounting and budgeting, recent empirical research finds that at least some of these expectations have been massively overstated. The observed gap between promises and reality poses the question for the true benefits anew. Basing our analysis on practitioners’ judgment, we suggest a general and prioritized landscape of perceived benefits (taxonomy). Our findings are derived from 42 interviews conducted in the context of two German federal states. Mapping our results to prior claims in the literature, we reveal that the practitioners interviewed do not see upsides in areas that former research deems to be important while other and previously not emphasized areas, such as mindset changes, seem to convince in practical life. The results of our analysis offer a profound basis for further exploration of the benefits and/or even cost/benefit evaluations.