Budgeting in an open system

Budgeting is broadly used as a tool for organizational management. And this is a reason for continuous looking for budgeting essence. In the paper the systems approach is applied to investigating the nature of budgeting. The systemic aspect of an organization and the systems approach to management were taken into account. Budgeting is seen as the process of prediction and communication of systemic attributes of an organization. It seems that the results reached point to the systems approach as a basis for general theory of both budgeting and accounting.O orçamento é amplamente utilizado como uma ferramenta de gestão organizacional. Este é um dos motivos pela busca permanente da essência do orçamento. Neste estudo, a abordagem sistêmica é aplicada à análise da natureza do orçamento. Foram considerados o aspecto sistêmico de uma organização e a abordagem sistêmica à gestão. O orçamento é entendido como o processo de previsão e comunicação de atributos sistêmico de uma organização. Parece que os resultados alcançados indicam a abordagem sistêmica como base de uma teoria geral de orçamento e contabilidade

Voluntary disclosure of corporate strategy: determinants and outcomes. An empirical study into the risks and payoffs of communicating corporate strategy.

Business leaders increasingly face pressure from stakeholders to be transparent. There appears however little consensus on the risks and payoffs of disclosing vital information such as corporate strategy. To fill this gap, this study analyzes firm-specific determinants and organisational outcomes of voluntary disclosure of corporate strategy. Stakeholder theory and agency theory help to understand whether companies serve their interest to engage with stakeholders and overcome information asymmetries. I connect these theories and propose a comprehensive approach to measure voluntary disclosure of corporate strategy. Hypotheses from the theoretical framework are empirically tested through panel regression of data on identified determinants and outcomes and of disclosed strategy through annual reports, corporate social responsibility reports, corporate websites and corporate press releases by the 70 largest publicly listed companies in the Netherlands from 2003 through 2008. I found that industry, profitability, dual-listing status, national ranking status and listing age have significant effects on voluntary disclosure of corporate strategy. No significant effects are found for size, leverage and ownership concentration. On outcomes, I found that liquidity of stock and corporate reputation are significantly influenced by voluntary disclosure of corporate strategy. No significant effect is found for volatility of stock. My contributions to theory, methodology and empirics offers a stepping-stone for further research into understanding how companies can use transparency to manage stakeholder relations

Going public in the 1980s: Evidence from Sweden

The paper explores the going public decision in a sample of family-owned corporations in Sweden, 1970-1991. the issuers' motivations for going public are documented and contrasted with economic theory. We find that the average firm is old, that a significant portion of the shares are sold by existing shareholders, that most going public activity took place after an exceptionally sharp stock price increase, and that going public activity is not related to the business cycle. the findings suggest that firms were taken public by their owners who wanted to liquidate their investment to finance consumption or portfolio diversification. the findings strike the common view that firms go public to finance growth. Data from other European countries exhibit similar patterns and suggest that our findings for Sweden may extend to other markets as well. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1995.

Financing the Entrepreneurial Venture

We model financial contracting in entrepreneurial ventures. In our incomplete contracts framework, the entrepreneur can design contracts contingent on three possible control right allocations: entrepreneur control, investor control, and joint control, with each allocation inducing different effort levels by both the entrepreneur and the investor. We find that a variety of contracts resembling financial instruments commonly used in practice, such as common stock, straight and convertible preferred equity, and secured and unsecured debt, can emerge as optimal, depending on two key factors: entrepreneur/investor effort complementarity and investors' opportunity cost of capital. The results of our model are consistent with, and yield new explanations for, empirical regularities such as (a) the prevalence of equity-type contracts in high-growth ventures and of debt-type contracts in lifestyle ventures; (b) geographical and temporal differences in equity-type instruments used in high-growth ventures; and (c) the impact of firm and loan characteristics on the choice between secured and unsecured debt.entrepreneurial finance, incomplete contracts, debt versus equity