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Factors associated with the use of long‐term plans in management compensation contracts and the choice between earnings‐based performance plans and market‐based long‐term plans are examined. Results indicate the firms using long‐term plans are large, have diffuse ownership and more long‐term growth. Furthermore, performance plans are more likely to be used when stock‐return variability is high relative to earnings variability. Firms using performance plans are also larger and have more diffuse ownership than firms with market‐based plans alone. Overall, the evidence is consistent with long‐term plans serving as incentive alignment mechanisms.

Several studies have highlighted the importance of management accounting practices such as formal short-term planning and formal long-term planning for SME performance. However, few studies have considered what actually explains differences in the use of formal planning (from a management accounting approach) in SMEs. Family ownership and EO are two plausible explanations for such differences. The purpose of this paper is therefore to examine how family ownership and EO are correlated to the use of formal short-term planning and formal long-term planning in SMEs.

In this study, the authors examined how family ownership and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) affect the use of formal planning by analyzing a sample of 156 Swedish manufacturing SMEs, using multivariate regression analysis.

As could be expected, the authors were able to validate the notion that family firms use less formal planning than non-family firms. However, in contrast to some previous studies, the authors found that there is a strongly positive relationship between EO and the use of formal short-term planning and long-term planning.

Whereas many previous studies on family business have assumed that family firms use less formal planning than non-family firms, the present study is one of few to actually confirm this notion. Also, this study has provided strong evidence that EO is positively correlated to the use of formal planning, in the short term and in the longer term.

Long‐term performance contracts are awarded to top management in order to provide incentives to maximize shareholder value. We test the incentive hypothesis using 350 firms, one half of which has adopted long‐term performance plans over the period 1971–80. The analysis uses performance indicators such as earnings per share (EPS), rate of return on assets (ROA), rate of return on equity (ROE), rate of return on investment (ROI), and stock returns (ASR). In addition to using a control group of firms that did not adopt plans, the test period consists of a control period (six years prior to plan adoption) and a test period (six years following plan adoption). The results support the incentive hypothesis in that all performance indicators for the test firms improved compared to prior performance, but the performance of test firms in the period subsequent to plan adoption when compared to the control firms was not significantly different.

The purpose of the current study is to examine how employees from different cultures respond to participative budgeting when the budget planning horizon is congruent or incongruent with their cultural time orientation. We conducted a 2×2 quasi-experiment in which cultural time orientation (short term or long term) was measured and budget planning horizon (short term or long term) was manipulated. A total of 164 employees participated in the experiment – 87 from China and 77 from the United States, representing long-term and short-term cultural time orientations, respectively. The results indicate that satisfaction with participative budgeting was greater when cultural time orientation and budget planning horizon were congruent, relative to incongruent. Also, the differential reaction between congruence and incongruence was less extreme for the Chinese participants than the U.S. participants, which is consistent with Confucian thought of “The Doctrine of the Mean.” The results of this study contribute to participative budgeting literature and suggest that managers who operate in different countries should be cognizant of cultural differences when employing participative budgeting processes.

Describes a model of a hierarchical planning system to provide a comprehensive approach to the complex production planning and scheduling problem. The model supplies a link between long‐term and short‐term planning; the three tiers of the hierarchy implement: long‐term inventory planning on a cost minimization basis; shorter‐term production planning; and daily sequencing. Emphasizes efficient processing and transmission of information.

One stream of research has claimed share price to be long‐term oriented, whereas, in contrast, another has found it to be short‐term oriented. Through in‐depth analysis, this study aims to reveal the grounds for each of these two claims by studying the time‐related constructs of two parties: executives of a company and outsider commentators of that company.

The study employs a social constructionist approach and incorporates the sociology of time in the analysis of case data focused on a publicly quoted company. Data drawn from outsider commentators provide additional focus.

The executives studied in the publicly‐quoted company construct share price as long‐term oriented through three processes: linguistic, practice‐oriented functional, and morality‐related functional. However, these executives construct time through a present‐based rationality, which means that effective and efficient present actions are assumed to form the basis for a successful future. Outsider commentators indicate two myopia‐related risks in this rationality: current, present day pressing issues are not deliberated upon in a wider framework of long‐term plans, and it is not possible to relinquish the present and focus only on the future, free from present concerns. The long‐term orientation of share price is constructed by executives as instrumental through processes that are tied to the present‐based rationality with its myopia‐related risks.

By showing the long and short time orientations of share price, the paper provides grounds for a subsequent analysis of the origins of these orientations within the minds of actors.

The study provides guidance on avoiding myopia when using share price‐related compensation systems.

The study contributes to the performance measurement and corporate governance literatures by analysing, for the first time, share price from the perspective of executives themselves. In addition, the views of outsider commentators are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to map the outcomes of four influential South East Queensland city visioning and foresight initiatives conducted by the cities of Maroochy, Logan, Gold Coast and Brisbane.

This paper applies causal layered analysis to map the outcomes of four city visioning and foresight initiatives.

It is averred in this paper that cities need to map their experiences of past futures initiatives for what worked and what has resulted today, and for recommendations of futures actions and innovations.

This paper deepens the discussion about the critical features of the four initiatives by focusing on their outcomes and alternatives they could produce to influence the futures of their cities.

Personal finance influences everything we buy and is a key driver of all economies. It has attracted significant research attention, mostly grounded in rational economics. However, it has not received adequate research attention in the consumer behavior literature. This study aims to address this gap by looking at some of the consumer-centric antecedents of short- and long-term personal financial planning, i.e. self-other orientation, cognitive style and time orientation.

A self-administered survey was used to collect data from full time employees. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analyses.

Both short- and long-term financial planning are positively associated with non-impulsive and analytical decision-making styles; whereas self and other orientation are only associated with short-term financial planning. Intuitive decision-making is not associated to either short- or long-term financial planning.

While analytical and long-term orientation are still important for personal finance, in the short run, consumers are also driven by self and other orientation.

The results are relevant for both products and services that have long-term and short-term financial implications for consumers.

This study explores financial planning decision-making from a consumer behavior perspective, and addresses a gap in consumer behavior literature.

Contemporary urban and regional planning practice and scholarship often fails to address the full implications of technological change (technology blindness), lacks a clear or consistent definition of the long term (temporal imprecision) and seldom uses formal foresight methodologies. Discussion in the literature of time horizons beyond 10 years is, therefore, based on profoundly unrealistic assumptions about the future. The paper aims to discuss why conventional reasoning about possible futures is problematic, how consideration of long-term timescales is informal and inconsistent and why accelerating technological change requires that planners rethink basic assumptions about the future from 2030s onward.

The author reviews 1,287 articles published between January 2010 and December 2014 in three emblematic urban and regional planning journals using directed content analysis of key phrases pertaining to long-term planning, futures studies and self-driving cars.

The author finds that there is no evidence of consistent usage of the phrase long term, that timeframes are defined in fewer than 10 per cent of articles and that self-driving cars and related phrases occur nowhere in the text, even though this technology is likely to radically transform urban transportation and form starting in the early 2020s. Despite its importance, discussion of disruptive technological change in the urban and regional planning literature is extremely limited.

To make more realistic projections of the future from the late 2020s onward, planning practitioners and scholars should: attend more closely to the academic and public technology discourses; specify explicit timeframes in any discussion or analysis of the future; and incorporate methods from futures studies such as foresight approaches into long-term planning.

This paper identifies accelerating technological change as a major conceptual gap in the urban and regional planning literature and calls for practitioners and scholars to rethink their foundational assumptions about the long-term and possible, probable and preferable futures accordingly.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of long-term thinking in a non-business context to gain deeper insights into bridging the gap between the theory of long-term thinking and its application as a management strategy.

To explore the concept of long-thinking further in a non-business setting, a grounded theory study was conducted with preschool leaders in a municipality in Sweden to examine how the leaders describe, define and apply the concept of long-term thinking in their schools. Interviews with school leaders, both written and oral, were used for data collection.

This study illustrates that the concept of long-term thinking can be twofold. First, the description can be as an anchor that reflects a mission. Second, the description can be a steering mechanism that guides decision-making. The findings also reinforce the importance of organisations developing an organisational culture that connect their vision and goals with the values and needs of their customers.

This study was carried out in a single organisation and shows a snapshot of the organisation's status at the time the data were collected. Therefore, the findings are not generalisable to all organisational settings; rather the findings may be transferable to other settings.

The results can be used to help identify areas where preschools in a municipal context can engage with sustainable quality development in order to build systems that support work with quality in a more structured way.

Long-term thinking is seen, within both theory and organisations, as necessary to achieve success in terms of sustainable development and quality, and this study contributes with knowledge about the current gap between theories of long-term thinking and practice in organisations.