Accounting for Research: Academic Responses to Research Performance Demands in an Australian University

This study examines the perceptions of individual academics about performance management systems (PMS) developed by an Australian university to meet government research assessment requirements. Using a case study method, the research examines the period 2006–2010 within a university, relying on academics’ responses to a survey on the effect of research PMS, contextualised with publicly available organisational documents. The case study university performed well in the Australian Government's first research assessment exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2010. However, academics reported increasing levels of stress and decreasing job satisfaction, consistent with research that identifies the commodification of academic research. This process of commodification has occurred as a result of the implementation of PMS designed to assess academics’ research‐focused performance and thereby strengthen the university's performance under ERA. In investigating in detail the responses of individual academics to Australia's research assessment initiative, the paper reveals a disconnect between the macro‐institutional demands placed on the higher education sector, university changes made to accommodate these demands, and the ability of academics to meet these demands in a sustainable way.     

The Impact of Research Assessment Exercises on UK Accounting and Finance Faculty

Published research outputs have for a long time been used to assess the performance of UK accounting and finance faculty. This process has been institutionalised and formalised through the introduction of Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs). RAEs have now become a central and recurring feature of university life. This research evaluates the perceptions of UK accounting faculty of the RAE. We surveyed 713 research active academics in November 1997 drawn from old and new universities, and from senior and non-senior faculty. The 182 academics who responded perceived that the quality of their individual and their department’s research had been increased. However, teaching and administration were believed to have been negatively affected. Overall, twice as many academics believed the RAE had a negative rather than a positive impact upon their jobs. The results across the university divide (old vs. new universities) were fairly homogeneous. However, the responses of senior and non-senior staff were significantly different. Non-senior respondents believed the RAE had a significantly greater negative impact on their teaching, administration, promotion prospects and job mobility than senior respondents. Overall, respondents perceived the RAE ratings to be fair. Publication in top UK research journals was perceived to be the greatest indicator of research quality. The findings have important implications, particularly for the recruitment and retention of non-senior accounting and finance faculty.     

Globalization discourses and performance measurement systems in a multinational firm

This paper examines the role of management control systems, in particular performance measurement systems (PMSs) such as the Balanced Scorecard and key performance indicators, in a multinational context. We begin by exploring how globalization discourses are engaged with, consumed, appropriated, re-produced, disseminated and promoted in a major multinational company. We link the adaptation and dissemination of global discourses of senior managers with Said’s (1975/1997) concepts of authority and molestation. We then examine how PMS are translated and customized within local manufacturing plants and sales units in the UK and China, the significance of benchmarking and the extent to which PMS render managerial discourses of globalization practical. We comment on the importance of discourse in understanding control systems in general and the way in which external discourses impact the internal practices of the organization. We also explore some of the sources that give rise to molestation (deviation of practice from global aspirations of senior managers). We conclude by stressing the potential for the globalizing effects of PMS through the interaction of the discourses of HQ and subunits, even in the absence of explicit statements about globalization.     

Institutional Logics and Responses to Performance Measurement Systems

Abstract: This comparative study analyzes institutional logics and categorizes organizational responses to performance measurement systems (PMSs) in two Finnish cities. We refine the typology of organizational responses and suggest how the choice of response depends on the institutionalized logic in the public sector accounting context (cf. Oliver, 1991 ). Further, we discuss and refine the types of successful co‐operation under competing institutional logics (cf. Reay and Hinings, 2009 ). Our study also sheds light on practice variation in public sector accounting such as how and why PMS use materializes in different forms in units with different institutional logics.     

DOES ORGANIZATION MATTER? A STUDY OF PHYSICIANS' IDEAL ORGANIZATION

It is a known phenomenon that it is difficult to make organizational changes within professional organizations. One recurring observation and experience from health care studies is that it is difficult to discuss the last organizational change with professionals because the most recent change is always perceived as the worst. In order to avoid this routine response, the authors of this article asked 56 senior physicians from the Swedish health care sector what their ideal organization looks like. The authors note that there is a strong institutionalized idea among the physicians of how health care should be organized. The image is not particularly complicated: the organization should be based on the meeting between doctor and patient. One conclusion in the article is that professionals dislike change, but nevertheless, they still want it. Actual change is not the problem – only changes that are not in compliance with the professionals' opinions of organization and management.     

Budgeting for legitimacy: The case of an Australian university

This paper reports a case study of budgeting at an Australian university to understand how accounting is involved in processes of legitimation. The university had been much enlarged and diversified in its educational offerings through a series of mergers. A response to the changes on the part of the vice-chancellor was to introduce a new budget system borrowed from the institutional environment. The intent was to convey to a key funding agency and to staff that the newly merged entity would be governed appropriately. We analyze a set of sequential and interlinked processes in which these aspirations were challenged repeatedly by senior academic and administrative staff. Finding the budget system to be inconsistent with their values and expectations for the university, staff undermined it through patterns of under- and over-spending. We show how these behaviors jeopardized the vice-chancellor’s efforts to legitimate the organization’s financial management practices for a key funding agency. A core contribution of our paper is to analyze empirically the importance of the institutional demands that an organization’s internal constituents may make of its accounting practices. We argue that managers, staff and other internal constituents should be seen as significant legitimating agents. We show how attention to their demands becomes all the more relevant when budget and accounting systems for internal use are loosely coupled from those used for external reporting. In such circumstances, conflicting demands by internal and external constituents may not be dealt with through the development of separate and compartmentalized systems. This makes it problematic to assume that adoption of accounting systems from an institutional field will result in a steady-state of organizational legitimacy.     

Impact of the interactive and diagnostic uses of performance measurement systems on procedural fairness perception,cooperation and performance in supply alliances

We examine the effects of interactive and diagnostic uses of performance measurement systems (PMSs) on two behavioural factors (procedural fairness perception and cooperation) in inter-firm alliances. We further investigate whether the two behavioural factors mediate the relationship between PMS uses and alliance performance. We find that both interactive and diagnostic uses of PMS are significantly related to procedural fairness perception but only the interactive use is significantly related to cooperation. The relationships between the two uses of PMS and alliance performance are serially mediated by procedural fairness perception and cooperation. These findings contribute to management accounting studies in inter-firm alliances.     

Managing Multiple Institutional Logics and the Use of Accounting: Insights from a German Higher Education Institution

This paper examines the use of accounting in managing the co-existence of different institutional logics in a German higher education institution (HEI), and its impact on the HEI. The study is of particular interest as the HEI analyzed pursued its own corporatization through a re-organization from a state into a foundation university. We show that this corporatization through the adoption of new public management related ideas leads to institutional complexity arising from the co-existence of extant state and emergent business logics. Our study suggests that HEIs may deploy particular accounting practices shaped by business logic only superficially, so as to satisfy stakeholders such as governmental authorities in order to enhance their legitimacy following a self-imposed reform, while the operation of the HEI remains rooted in state logic. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the case of actual changes to the budgetary process arising through the corporatization and an emergent logic, failure to replace abandoned accounting practices shaped by a previously dominant logic with equivalent practices adhering to either extant or emerging logic(s), may put the organization at risk. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of an organizational response to institutional complexity, referred to as reactive decoupling, in the management of institutional complexity and points to its negative impact on organizations' hybridization capability.     

The role of organisational concern for workplace fairness in the choice of a performance measurement system

Prior studies linking performance management systems (PMS) and organisational justice have examined how PMS influence procedural fairness. Our investigation differs from these studies. First, it examines fairness as an antecedent (instead of as a consequence) of the choice of PMS. Second, instead of conceptualising organisational fairness as procedural fairness, it relies on the impression management interpretation of organisational fairness. Hence, the study investigates how the need of senior managers to cultivate an impression of being fair is related to the choice of PMS systems and employee outcomes. Based on a sample of 276 employees, the results indicate that the need of senior management to cultivate an impression of being fair is associated with employee performance. They also indicate that a substantial component of these effects is indirect through the choice of comprehensive performance measures (CPM) and employee job satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of organisational concern for workplace fairness as an antecedent of choice of CPM. From a theoretical perspective, the adoption of the impression management interpretation of organisational fairness contributes by providing new insights into the relationship between fairness and choice of PMS from a perspective that is different from those used in prior management accounting research.     

Performance measurement systems in higher education: How levers of control reveal the ambiguities of reforms

This paper focuses on the introduction of new performance measurement system (PMS) for measuring teaching performance in Universities. The adoption of such PMS should prompt significant changes in existing control processes, but the goals of reform do not automatically translate into the desired organisational responses. Given the impact of PMS on management controls, the nature of such ambiguities may be better investigated using a framework that allows management control systems (MCS) to be taken in account. This paper investigates key actors' perceptions regarding the introduction of PMS through the lens of the levers of control (Simons, 1995, 2000). A qualitative analysis is conducted on interviews held with Italian university teaching managers and heads of programmes to examine the ambiguities arising from the implementation of a PMS.Several ambiguities emerge, both within and between the levers analysed, suggesting some reasons for the (partial) ineffectiveness of PMS reforms. In particular, the belief systems lever is crucial in making reforms acceptable, bureaucratic procedures are important in the diagnostic control systems lever, and performance indicators operate as a boundary system lever. Our findings show that administrative and academic actors perceive the interactive control capacity of PMS differently.     

Organizational Capital and Investment‐Cash Flow Sensitivity: The Effect of Management Quality Practices

This paper examines the influence of organizational capital, as evident in management quality practices, on the response of firm investment to internal cash flows. We provide novel and strong evidence that investment sensitivity to internal cash flows decreases in the presence of superior management practices. We also find that superior management practices reduce the firm's financing frictions, evident in lower capital constraints. Our results are robust to numerous tests. Overall, our findings suggest that intangible organizational capital is important for investment decisions and that superior management practices contribute to value‐maximizing behavior.     

A Balanced Scorecard for State U's Facilities Management Division?*

This case introduces students to building and implementing a balanced scorecard (BSC) in a setting with which they are familiar — cleaning, maintenance, management, and construction of a university's buildings and grounds. Students are asked to construct or critique a BSC for the facilities management division of a university. This may lead to a discussion of the causal linkages implied in the BSC and how one would implement a BSC in a governmental setting.     

Internal and external influences on IT control governance

This study provides empirical evidence on the effects of internal and external governance on IT control quality proxied by IT related material weaknesses. IT control governance is defined as the leadership and organizational structures and control processes which ensure that the company's IT sustains and extends the company's strategies and objectives. Specifically, we examine the influence of senior management, the board of directors, and audit committees regarding IT control governance. We find that companies with more IT-experienced senior managers, with CIO positions or longer tenured CIOs and with higher percentages of independent board directors are less likely to have IT material weaknesses. We also provide partial evidence that more IT-experienced audit committee members are associated with less IT material weakness. The results suggest that both internal and external governance serve important roles in IT control quality.     

Capital Allowances and the Incentive to Invest

In recent years many organisations have moved towards a total quality management (TQM) path in their quest for quality. Accounting researchers have become interested in understanding how accounting systems are implicated within a TQM environment. This paper reports on a case study of TQM adoption and changes in management accounting systems (MAS) within a New Zealand construction company. It evaluates organizational approaches to implement TQM as a strategic option and the subsequent change in MAS. The paper suggests that an organisation may initiate TQM practices to promote ‘institutional’ and ‘quality’ culture rather than for purely technical reasons. It also suggests that when an organisation adopts new management practices such as TQM, it may lead to changes in the organisation's internal control mechanisms, such as management accounting and reporting processes.     

Charity and finance in the university

In this paper we explore the financialisation of the university, and how it is possible that universities behave as if they were private corporations despite legally being corporations with a charitable status. We argue that this is largely attributable to financialisation, which creates tension with the university's charitable status. The paper commences with a brief history of incorporation, and examines developments in corporate governance. With the dominance of finance, and the treatment of institutions as mere nexus of contracts, distinctions between public and private become redundant. The paper continues with an account of the effects of financialisation on university governance, under which the university acts increasingly like a for-profit corporation, with its financial governance in direct contradiction to its charitable status. Here, the university emerges as a key site of neoliberalism, where financialised subjects are shaped. Finally, we examine to what extent the financialisation of the university may be halted through a reflection on its status as a charitable corporation.     

Performance measurement systems and their relation to strategic learning: A case study in a software-developing organization

Authors have often suggested that expert systems for measuring and assessing intangible and tangible resources fulfill strategic learning purposes. This role requires further theoretical discussion and empirical investigation since strategic learning does not automatically result from the implementation of performance measurement systems (PMS). PMS can be used for internal or external control purposes in addition their development and usage can lead to strategic learning processes. Depending on how PMS are conceptualized they can be related to different modes of learning. Thus, this article links different types of PMS enactment with specific modes of learning. Strategic learning is thereby defined as specific mode within the organizational learning approach by Bateson (1972) and Argyris and Schön (1978). Orlikowski's work on technologies (2000) provides a framework for the different types of PMS enactment. A strategic learning process initiated by the development of PMS is illustrated through a case study in the software development industry.     

Accountants divided: research selectivity and academic accounting labour in UK universities

This paper presents data from a postal survey designed to explore the impact of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) on academic accounting labour in the UK. The RAE is seen as integral to the growth of managerialism in UK higher education and to the increasing commodification of academic labour. The data indicates that academic accountants are divided in their perceptions of and reactions to the RAE. It is argued that in co-opting peer review for managerial ends, the RAE appeals to traditional academic identities, re-enforcing existing divisions within the academic accounting community and dissipating resistance to its perceived negative effects. The conclusion is that despite a significant degree of hostility to the RAE, UK accountants are themselves in large part responsible for enacting this particular managerial control strategy. In the process, there is a danger that academic accounting knowledge is being distorted, the profession divided and academics disillusioned by its power to direct what “counts" as high status academic research.     

Organizational identity change: managerial regulation and member identification in an accounting firm acquisition

This study creates a framework for analysing organizational identity change and examines the process in the context of a global accounting firm's acquisition of a UK mid-market accounting practice. It identifies the parallel processes which facilitate organizational identity change: identity regulation on the part of senior management and de- and re-identification on the part of organizational members. The study explores how changes in organizational identity are inextricably connected to organizational members' changing conceptualisations of professional identity.     

Top executive dismissal,ownership and corporate performance

This paper evaluates the empirical relationship between top executive turnover and firm performance. Based on a sample of the 460 largest UK listed companies during the period 1990–1998, we establish an inverse and robust statistical relation between the probability of a management change and a firm's performance: top executives are fired for poor performance. This can result from internal monitoring of management by the board or block share holders. Second, the data indicate that only very poor levels of performance affect significantly the turnover likelihood: corporate performance must fall dramatically to force a senior executive job separation. Third, the likelihood of managerial turnover for poor performance has not changed over time: today's senior managers face the same disciplining effects as those senior managers in earlier years. Finally, there seems to be no evidence that managerial stock ownership, measured as the proportion of ordinary shares owned by top managers, enables them to become entrenched.