Arkus
Vol. 11 No. 2 (2025): Arkus

Technical Precision as the Guardian of Governance: The Independent Roles of Budget Accuracy and Enterprise Risk Management in Mitigating Budgetary Slack

Donny Arif Kurniawan (Unknown)
Masiyah Kholmi (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
15 Jan 2026

Abstract

In the complex governance landscape of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), budgetary slack represents a significant agency cost that undermines public resource efficiency. While behavioral determinants of slack are well-documented, the mitigating roles of technical budget quality and formalized risk controls remain under-explored in emerging markets. Adopting a quantitative explanatory design, this study collected data from 50 key personnel, including management accountants, risk officers, and internal auditors, across five subsidiaries of a prominent Indonesian Marine Service SOE. To address the sample size limitation, a post-hoc G*Power analysis (alpha = 0.05, Power = 0.99) confirmed sufficient sensitivity for the observed effect sizes. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM-PLS) with a full collinearity assessment to rule out common method bias. The empirical analysis reveals that budget accuracy (p = 0.014, f-square = 0.32) and risk management (p = 0.022, f-square = 0.28) exert a significant negative influence on budgetary slack. Conversely, budget clarity and evaluation demonstrated no significant effect. Crucially, risk management did not moderate the relationship between budget quality and slack (p > 0.05), functioning instead as a powerful, independent determinant. In conclusion, reducing slack in SOEs relies less on soft goal clarity and more on the ex-ante precision of financial estimates and the parallel integration of risk protocols. SOEs are advised to transition from historical-based budgeting to driver-based forecasting models to reduce information asymmetry.

Copyrights © 2025






Journal Info

Abbrev

arkus

Publisher

Subject

Religion Humanities Law, Crime, Criminology & Criminal Justice Medicine & Pharmacology Social Sciences

Description

Arkus publishes original articles, article reviews, and case reports and is designed as a place of dissemination of information and scientific knowledge to develop human wealth. Arkus publishes all manuscripts in multidisciplinary fields (social sciences, sciences, technology, engineering, health, ...