Adair Company Has Been Busy Over the First Few Years

Essay

Adair Company has been busy over the first few years of its existence in penetrating its market and gaining a respectable market share. To facilitate this, Mr. Adair, the CEO, and his controller, Mr. Brown, have been developing the annual master budgets. To date this approach has worked well.
Adair has been acquired by a company in a related business but will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary. The CFO of the acquiring company, Mr. Horwitz, has suggested to Mr. Adair that, since it was expected that his company would continue to grow, it adopt a departmental budgeting system; a suggestion Mr. Adair agreed to readily. Mr. Horwitz explained to Adair's departmental managers the concepts of a departmental participative budgeting system and their involvement. The managers were encouraged to take the information and come back with suggestions which could then be put into a formal budget process.
a. What benefits will accrue to Adair under this new budgeting system?
b. What behavioral issues might arise for departmental managers and for production workers?
c. What is the most probable long-term reaction of Adair's people to the participative budget system?