Attitudes Toward Financial Control Systems in the United States and Japan

Abstract

Recently researchers have begun to investigate issues of differences in the use of managerial accounting tools across differing national environments. Much of this research is of the case study approach documenting actual practices for a small group of firms, or a distillation from numerous observations but using anecdotal evidence to support various conjectures.

The study uses a survey of attitudes toward various aspects of budgeting and control systems to gain insight into the existence of differences for a large sample of Japanese and United States controllers and line managers. Respondents were drawn from the 500 largest industrial firms in these two countries. The major findings suggest that the Japanese controllers and managers 1) prefer less participation, 2) have a more long-term planning horizon, 3) view budgets as more of a communication device, and 4) prefer more budget slack than their American counterparts.