Puzzling out the choice of capital budgeting techniques: Among high-growth small and medium sized firms

The aim of this dissertation is to explore the drivers of practitioners’ choices of capital budgeting techniques (CBT). The mainstream literature suggests that sophisticated CBT (SCBT) will best guide organizations in evaluating important strategic investments. Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) choose to go against that “wisdom” and choose non-sophisticated CBT (NSCBT).

Instead of following the prescriptive path of the mainstream literature, this dissertation adopts an explorative design, exploring qualitatively and quantitatively the reasons SMEs choose NSCBT or SCBT to evaluate strategic investments. Based on the findings in the included papers, the dissertation describes when and under which conditions Swedish high-growth SMEs choose different types of CBT. The focus on Swedish high-growth SMEs listed on First North allowed the capture of choices for both SCBT and NSCBT.

Institutional and firm-specific forces, decision-maker–specific attributes, market and contextual factors emerge as important drivers of the choices of CBT made by high-growth SMEs. The dissertation suggests that these multi-level determinants define the limits of decision-makers’ discretion and how they inform the choices of CBT made by high-growth SMEs.