Capital Budgeting Practices: A Survey of Two Industries

Abstract

This research examines the capital budgeting practices used by small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in two Portuguese industries, footwear and metalworking, aiming at answering the following research questions: How much knowledge do managers have about capital budgeting practices? What are the most used practices? How much importance do they attribute to applying them? The research was conducted through an online survey with a response rate of 14.9%. The results document that most companies in both industries are familiar with capital budgeting practices, despite differences between the two. The footwear industry recognizes the importance of these indicators but makes little use of them, and many companies prefer using payback period (PBP). The metalworking industry, on the other hand, makes greater use of capital budgeting practices, with net present value being the favored indicator and PBP being used as supplementary. This study contributes to the capital budgeting literature in two ways: first, by focusing on SMEs instead of only large firms, and second, by exploring data from two industries rather than multiple, heterogeneous industries.