Financial Planning and Corporate Development: Attitude Analysis of Selected Enterprises in Uzbekistan

Financial planning has become an integral part of corporate development strategy in businesses in developed and emerging economies. Despite the rapid spread of advanced business practices, enterprises in transition and developing economies still have been lagging behind in absorbing some elements of modern business conduct skills and methods. This weakness is visible in corporate planning and forecasting practices. Although key elements of the market economy have already been introduced and a business environment is functioning favorably, enterprises in transition economies of the post-Soviet area are facing difficulties in applying and adapting changeable and regularly updating economic climate due to changing business psychology in the society and ongoing gradual structural reforms. Entrepreneurs and finance officers possess basic knowledge and understanding of income-cost and input-output planning. But corporate and business expansion planning, forecasting and risk analysis skills are out of their capabilities when it comes to applying in decision-making processes. It should be admitted that people’s business mind changed significantly and nowadays business sector is a backbone of any post-communist or transition economy. However, it does not suffice to run the business, to stay active in the market and to keep the stable financial structure. In this paper, we examined the attitudes of decision-makers of 24 enterprises in Uzbekistan towards financial planning and its possible benefits for enterprises they are running. The Likert scale-based survey showed that attitudes towards the financial planning are positive since its effect on corporate policy matters is treated comparatively less favorable.