Depends on the culture. I worked at a place that did $100 million in sales a year and if the cost was less than $5k for something we needed, management said just fuckin do it, don't even ask. I also worked at a place that did $2 billion a year and they required multi-level approval for MS project pro licenses. All depends.

Edit: Why is this downvoted? Different corp cultures have different ideas about what is worthwhile. Some places value innovation and experimentation and some places don't.