Business budget: a survey of scientific production in the period from 1995 to 2006

Abstract

This research looks at scientific production (theses and dissertations) in the field of business budget from 1995 to 2006. The main purpose is to rescue studies on entrepreneurial budget. The information was collected from Brazilian postgraduate programs, recognized and recommended by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - CAPES. In the research and data interpretation, content analysis based on Bardin was used. The titles of the 1257 dissertations and 112 theses were analyzed and categorized a priori in the following thematic sub areas: public budget, business budget, operational budget, financial budget, considering the presence or absence of the word "budget". It was verified that, from a total of 1257 dissertations and 112 theses, only 26 dissertations and 1 thesis approach the theme of budget, specifically focusing on business budget. Only 16 dissertations focused on the theme, meaning 1.27% of scientific production. The results show that the theme "budget" receives very little attention within the most expressive scientific production in college institutions. It is inferred that the low production in the field is related to researchers' difficulties to obtain data to perform the empiric research, since the information related to the budgetary process are a strategic issue for the organizations. The most frequent research approach is budget application, more precisely turned to unique cases, which shows academic concern with verifying how the companies do it in practice. In the public field, researches most frequently focused on public administration organs' budgets.