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Bakgrund: Konventionell budgetering har fått utstå betydande kritik under de senaste decennierna, där många menar att den inte är lämplig i dagenssnabbrörliga och globala marknad. Ett flertal organisationer har övergett konventionell budgetering, och rörelsen eller filosofin berördetta kallas för Beyond Budgeting (BB). Grundprinciperna i denna filosofi är en organisationsstruktur där mer ansvar och tillit placeras hos den operativa delen av organisationer. Detta är menat att ge mer frihet till enskilda medarbetare men väcker frågor om agentteori och organisatorisk kontroll. Controllers traditionella roll har setts som ett verktyg för ledningen att utöva kontroll och motverka agentteorins moraliskarisk. Frågan är hur denna roll påverkas av en allt mindre strikt form av kontroll, vilka faktorer som kan tänkas påverka denna roll och hur rollen redan har förändrats. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur controllerrollen och budgetarbete ser ut i dagens organisationer samt om kritiken mot budgetarbete, så som filosofin BB beskriver den, faktiskt stämmer i dagens organisationer. Ytterligare undersöker studien till vilken grad BB som metod har implementerats i dessa organisationer. Metod: Semi-strukturerade intervjuer med sex stycken respondenter inom flertalet olika organisationer har agerat som empirisk data. Denna data harsedantranskriberats och analyserats i enlighet med den deduktiva ansatsen, där de teorier vi funnit har applicerats. Analysen skedde genom en tematisk analys där teman och kategorier funnits för att påvisa samband inför slutsatsen. Slutsats: Studien tyder på att controllers idag har en hög grad av kontroll över deras arbete samt att arbetet huvudsakligen är analytiskt och framåtblickande. Delar av respondenterna anser sig ha en beslutsfattande roll och arbetar huvudsakligen enskilt men har ett brett kontaktnät. Rollen kan till viss del beskrivas som en affärspartner men vi fann stora skillnader mellan respondenterna. Bland respondenterna var det vanligast att använda en toppstyrd budget, där enskilda affärsenheter har mindre inflytande. Denna budget kompletterades sedan med prognoser. Vi fann att delar av kritiken mot konventionell budgetering stämde in bland respondenternas organisationer, samt att aspekter av BB har implementerats. Background: Conventional budgeting has endured a lot of criticism in the last decades as many argue it is not suitable for today's agile and globalized market. Several organizations have taken the step to abandon conventional budgeting and the movement, or philosophy, regarding this matter is known as Beyond Budgeting (BB). The core principle of this philosophy are an organizational structure where a higher degree of responsibility and trust is placed on the operative sections of the organization. By doing this a much higher degree of liberty is granted to partners in the organization, but it raises questions regarding agent theory and organizational control. The traditional role of the controller has been to function as a tool for upper management to exercise control and counteract the moral hazard of agency theory. The question then is how this role is affected by a much less strict form of control, and which factors can be seen to affect the role as well as which factors that have already affected it. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine the role of the controller and how budgeting of modern organizations are handled as well as how the accurate the critique aimed at budgeting is, as it is described by the philosophy of BB. Furthermore, the study aims to examine to which degree the subject organizations has implemented or embraced the principles of BB. Method: The study is built on semi-structured interviews with a total of six participants, based in several organizations, which have acted as the empirical data. This data has been transcribed and analyzed in accordance with the studies’ deductive approach upon which our studied theories have been applied. The analysis has been based on a thematic analysis where the goal has been to find common themes and categories. Conclusion: The study has found that controllers today have a high degree of control regarding how they choose to perform their work, which has been found to be primarily analytical and forward-looking in nature. Some of the controllers consider themselves to have a decision-making role, and while their work is primarily done alone, they have a wide array of contacts. The role can to a degree be described as a business partner, but the study has found large differences among participants in this regard. Among the participants it was most common to use a conventional budget, set by upper management where local business units have limited influence. This budget was complemented with forecasts. The study also found that among the participant’s organizations, some of the critique towards conventional budgeting was accurate to a certain degree. In addition, we found that aspects of BB had been implemented.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are playing an increasingly important role in the process of industrialization in the developing world. To support SMEs, many developed countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, have implemented an audit exemption regime for SMEs, while, in Malaysia, the policy makers and regulators have announced that the audit for SMEs will remain a legal obligation that they will revisit sometime in the future. Thus, this paper aims to shed light on this issue by exploring the relationship between the ownership structure of SMEs and audit exemption. The objective is to determine whether SMEs will still opt for an audit if it becomes voluntary, and, if they do, what would be the reason for the sampled SMEs to behave in such a manner? This research is exploratory in nature and employs the questionnaire survey method to collect data from a random sample of 200 SMEs in both the manufacturing and service industries. The survey results indicate that there is a significant difference between the ownership structure of firms and the decision of SMEs to opt for voluntary audit. Moreover, the lack of resources is significantly related to opting for a voluntary audit. Therefore, based on the resource-based theory, SMEs in Malaysia mainly opt for auditing, not to fulfil a mandatory obligation but to compensate for their lack of tangible (professional/qualified accountants) and/or intangible (accounting and business expertise) resources. This study provides new insights into the way Malaysian SMEs view auditing. It highlights the implications of the policy directives of the Malaysian regulators and the accounting fraternity. Furthermore, the Malaysian experience is useful for consideration by other developing nations that are contemplating moving towards an audit exemption regime.