An Examination of Budgetary Roles in the Context of Sponsorship Management: A Contingency Perspective

This study examines budgetary roles in the context of sponsorship management and identifies factors affecting the importance of budgetary roles in the sponsorship investment decision-making context. This has been pursued through the analysis of qualitative field data as well as a survey of Australian organisations with active sponsorship agendas.

It was found that authorisation of sponsorship expenditure is the main sponsorship management budgetary role. It was also found that planning, forecasting and motivation are relatively important sponsorship management budgetary roles. Trust and risk were identified as significant factors affecting the importance of budgetary roles in this context. These findings give credence to Sidhu and Roberts (2008) call for further research of the marketing/accounting interface as it appears the relative importance of budgetary roles in a sponsorship management context differs to the relative importance of budgetary roles that have been reported in the literature.