Assumption Base Planning; A New Approach to Identify Assumptions and Reduce Budget Deviations (Case Study: Mobarakeh Steel Company)

Budgeting has faced the challenge of rapid changes and high levels of uncertainty during recent years, and has been criticized by researchers for not using appropriate tools to identify budget assumptions. Futurists, on the other hand, recommend and used tools such as assumption base planning to investigate and address future risks and reduce uncertainties. This study aims to establish a sustainable budgeting approach by identifying budgeting challenges on one hand, and the potential of futurology on the other. Accordingly, the load-bearing and vulnerable assumptions in the budget of the company under study has been identified using a critical approach, and the extent of its relationship with the budget deviation was determined. For this purpose, panel of experts, questionnaires, and break point criterion were used as qualitative and quantitative research tools applying the post planning approach, to identify 27 underlying assumptions in the budget of the company under study at the first phase, 14 of which were identified as Load-Bearing based on experts' consensus. Then, at the second phase, the vulnerability of each Load-Bearing assumption was determined and prioritized by the panel members through extracting 22 surprising events in the year of 1399. The findings indicated that there is a direct relationship between vulnerable assumptions and budget deviation.