Comparing American and British practices in AMT adoption

Abstract

This paper compares AMT adoption practices in large American and British companies, investigating their motives, size and nature of their investments, planning processes, fit between AMT and strategy, functional areas involved, nature of financial techniques employed and the anticipated benefits, risks and difficulties. Data collected from 93 large American companies and 67 British companies is used for this comparison. The results show that American and British companies invest in AMT for similar reasons, however, there are differences identified in terms of the nature and size of investments and the AMT planning process. American companies are more sophisticated in their evaluation of AMT proposals and place greater importance on many of the expected benefits of AMT than do British companies. In American companies there is more involvement in AMT adoption from managers in different functional areas than is the case in British companies.