The Implementation of Budgeting in the ICT Environment: A Case Study of Competing Logics

 
The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiple competing logics at work in an attempt by the European Union (EU) to institutionalize performancebased budgeting (PBB) as part of an Industrial Modernization Programme (IMP) in Egypt. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as one of today’s modern information and communication technologies (ICT) was introduced to facilitate the management of PBB in the Industrial Modernization Centre (IMC), the executive arm of the IMP. A recent theoretical framework that analyzes discourses in term of social, political and fantasmatic logics was used. Case study materials were collected from interviews, site visits and observations and documentary evidence. The findings of this study revealed the failure to institutionalize PBB fantasy imposed by the EU as a condition of funding and the ERP that supposedly supports the diffusion of PBB led to its failure. The competing political logics at all levels (the EU, the Egyptian government and the IMC) rendered the PBB fantasy impossible. The social logics of PBB are very different from the social logics of line item budgeting. This study is based on studying the introduction of performancebased budgeting  and  the role  of  ERP  in  its implementation in an Egyptian enterprise, the IMC. The debate needs to continue on the desirability and means of instilling accountability cultures in different countries. This study contributes to debate on the role of supranational organizations like the EU and the World Bank in the globalization of performancebased budgeting. It also introduces a new theoretical framework, Logics of Critical Explanation, as a useful tool in understanding change and stability of management accounting systems.