A comparative study of budgetary controls in Chinese state and foreign-owned enterprises

Foreign investment in China typically occurs through partnerships with state owned enterprises. An understanding of management control similarities and differences between these entities is crucial to joint venture success in China. This paper compares budgetary controls between Chinese state and foreign owned enterprises. Significant multivariate budgetary control differences were found. Interestingly, several of the hypothesized univariate differences were not confirmed. These included cen-tralization, hierarchy, budget participation, controllability filters and incentives. State enterprises differed however with respect to several other budgetary practices, including divisional interdependence, standard difficulty, environmental uncertainty, standard operating procedures and relative performance evaluation.