R$.$ Murray Lindsay and Theresa Libby

ABSTRACT: Svenska Handelsbanken was the large national Swedish bank that pro$-$

vided the exemplar case for the idea that organizations could abandon budgets and

operate successfully, or perhaps operate even more successfully, without them. In this

case, Nancy Cartwright, a senior executive in a large Canadian financial services cor$-$

poration, had just been introduced to the Handelsbanken case and the Beyond Bud$-$

geting idea. She was intrigued by the idea that companies could abandon budgets

while implementing a new more decentralized model of management control. She won$-$

dered whether these ideas could work beyond Handelsbanken and, in particular, out$-$

side of Scandinavia.

Keywords: beyond budgeting; decentralization; management control systems;

empowerment.