The role of the human resources department in budgeting: evidence from Greece

The purpose of this study is to examine the involvement of the human resources (HR) department throughout the budgeting process and furthermore to investigate the use of budgets for motivation, communication, performance evaluation and control in the Greek business environment, from the perspective of the HR department managers.

Empirical evidence is based on the responses received from HR department managers in 100 Greek companies with a distinct HR department to a structured questionnaire.

Results suggest that the HR department has limited involvement in the budgeting procedures, which in turn could explain the limited use of budgets as a means of performance evaluation and communication from a HR management perspective. Nevertheless, both the size of the HR department and the number of employees have a positive effect on the HR management and budgeting interaction. The survey presented in this paper provides corroborative evidence that HR departments in Greece do not fully exploit the wide potential offered through budgeting as a means to achieve their goals.

The study contributes to the literature by analyzing the responses of HR department managers and their views towards the budgeting function from a HR management perspective in Greek companies.