Diverse management practices— a study of clinical managers

This article examines whether changes in the governance of public hospitals in Norway have affected the perceived practices of operational managers. A study involving a survey of and interviews with clinical managers in Norwegian hospitals has shown that managers considering themselves highly involved in management control practices. The managers' perception of their control activities was related to such institutional pressures as budget deficits, as well as to contextual variables such as department size. This article shows that clinical managers also use accounting information for purposes other than simply being accountable for meeting budgets.     

商业银行财务集中的管理框架与创新思路

商业银行财务集中有效解决了财务核算主体分散、监控管理不到位的问题,使财务信息核算质量提高,但是,其仍然存在以下隐忧：受管理环境的制约,财务集中的基础性定位、单一的核算职能与商业银行价值管理的发展要求存在差距,财务信息与商业银行预算管理、绩效评价等管理会计的相关性较弱。财务集中的创新应通过全面的成本控制来发挥财务资源配置...     

Budget repair or budget spectacle? The passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10

Strategic planning processes use budgets to implement control and accountability. However, budgets can also be used to generate support for strategic decisions, for example by creating a political spectacle. A political spectacle is a problem engineered to have a specific political impact. This paper investigates politicians’ use of a state budget as a political manoeuvre to defend strategic decisions regarding public employee unions in Wisconsin. The analysis shows how the 2011 state budget in Wisconsin was used to create a political spectacle to generate support for eliminating collective bargaining for public workers, especially public (state) school teachers.     

Reflections of an Australian Contemporary: The Complementarity of Entry and Exit Price Current Value Accounting Systems

One of the great controversies in accounting concerns the use of current value accounting systems in place of historical cost systems, and the relative merits of the two current value systems proposed—CCA and CCE. Chambers developed and argued the case for CCE. In this essay, the fundamental nature of each system is outlined and related to the economic theory of the firm and its associated theory of optimum resource allocation. It is shown that both CCA and CCE theories are conceptually valid and provide necessary information for efficient resource allocation decisions; however, neither system can provide all the ex post information required and they complement each other.     

Investment-Based Cost Accounting as a Fundamental Basis of Decision-Oriented Management Accounting

Decision making concerns over cost allocations, especially common cost allocations, have a long history. They are well canvassed in Thomas (1969 ) and Wells (1978 ). This article revisits the cost allocation debate, albeit in a new setting, and rehearses arguments relevant to long- and short-term decision contexts. Here a means is proposed to address those problems, namely to adopt the investment-based approach to cost accounting. This approach draws on ideas of Hotelling (1925 ), Preinreich (1938 ) and Schneider (1961 ), and applies the notion of net present value in another setting, namely to cost accounting theory. Research has revealed no discussion of this in the Anglo-American literature. This article shows analytically that the investment-based approach offers a general basis for decision-oriented cost accounting, as it combines investment theory with cost accounting and thereby connects long-term with short-term decisions. While reviewing primarily European literature, it also examines several Anglo-American works. The analysis reveals how for three classical decision problems—production program planning, purchase order lot sizes, and break-even price limits—two different types of costs, namely depreciation and material costs, have to be based on cash flows and net present value. The proposed investment-based approach permits an examination of the extent to which cost accounting concepts and cost information are relevant to those decisions. This theoretical concept is used to derive pertinent cost dimensions and to solve traditional problems of cost allocation. A caution is that the investment approach is limited to decision facilitating cost accounting. Whether it may be possible to couple it with agency theory and its focus on decision influencing has not been explored and is an issue for further research.     

Product innovation, budgetary control, and the financial performance of firms

Organizations are increasingly calling for greater budgetary oversight of the product innovation process. A major focus of their concern is the costs associated with product innovation together with their need to enhance their financial performance through these endeavours. However, the literature has raised a number of issues arising from such budgetary proposals, suggesting that the creativity of those involved in product innovation should not be constrained by cost concerns, that the use of management control systems is incompatible with product innovation, and that budgets may stifle innovation. It is argued in this paper that the extent to which product innovation has a positive impact on the financial performance of firms is dependent on the manner in which budgets are used in organizations. If budgets are used predominantly as a planning mechanism, then such budget planning facilitates product innovation resulting in enhanced performance. In contrast, if budgets are used primarily as a control mechanism, then it is unlikely that product innovation will contribute to financial performance. The results of the study are consistent with these expectations. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the impact of budgets in the context of product innovation.     

MULTILEVEL FRAMING: AN ALTERNATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF BUDGET CONTROL IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISES

This paper addresses the question as to why there tends to be recurring budget deviations in public sector service organizations. In the public sector, budgets and actuals are loosely coupled, and budgets may serve other institutional functions than control purposes. However, little research has addressed how the framing of budget information may explain the different functions of the budgets as control devices. The paper argues that the valence of budget deviations varies between organizations, and that organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget surpluses have a propensity to underspend the budgets. Consequently, organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget deficits tend to overspend the budgets. The empirical part analyses the budget situations in the Central Bank of Norway and in a large university hospital in Norway. In the case of the Bank, it was found that underspending of budgets was framed as performance measures indicating high organizational efficiency. The Hospital, on the other hand, showed a different picture as budget deficits were the situation during all years studied. One main finding was the key actors’ roles as translators of the society's expectations as to the fulfilling of the organizations’ missions. These translators function as mediators between the institutional context and pressures, the organizations’ goals and the internal budget processes. The conventional wisdom that the budget also acts as a means of communication and as symbols and ritual acts that reflect the institutional contingencies of the organizations, is further developed by describing how organizations’ goals valence the role of budgets.     

Measuring Compliance with the Golden Rule

The golden rule of public finance is based upon the notin that intergenerational equity requires that the cost of public expenditures be spread over time in a manner that reflects the intertemporal distribution of the benefits generated by those expenditures. This is often translated into a rule that the budget be structurally balanced in accrual accounting terms. This article considers the form of accrual accounting that is most suited to the task of measuring the consistency of fiscal policy with the golden rule. It recommends a combination of the real capital maintenance approach (also known as ‘current purchasing power accounting’) and annuity depreciation. Such an approach differs from ‘current cost accounting’, which has dominated public sector models of accrual accounting in recent years. The meaning of balance-sheet measures is also considered, and it is concluded that the golden rule is more appropriately expressed as an accrual balanced budget requirement than as a requirement for the maintenance of constant net worth. JEL classification: H6, M40.     

Budget Development and Use in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: A Field Investigation

We examine the process by which operating budgets are developed and how they are used for control, evaluation, and reward purposes in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs (i.e., fewer than 500 employees) represent the dominant organizational form in North America but surprisingly little research has examined how these companies develop and use management controls. Our study focuses on a key element of the management control system, operating budgets, because prior research on SMEs indicates this as an important and commonly used control tool in such companies. Prior research on budgeting practices, while extensive, has almost exclusively examined larger companies. We conduct in‐depth field interviews at 12 participating SMEs to address four theory‐based research questions intended to provide insights regarding the development and use of budgets by SMEs. Our first question examines how budgets are developed, top‐down versus collaborative. Our second, third, and fourth research questions examine, respectively, whether budgets are used tightly or loosely for results control, performance evaluation, and reward purposes. As a first step in providing a deeper understanding of budget development and use in SMEs, our results have implications for practice, theory development, and management accounting education.     

会计准则的产生与制定权归属的经济学解释——来自企业所有权理论的观点

本文从新制度经济学的企业所有权理论出发,对会计准则的产生及其制定权的归属提出经济解释。会计准则的产生与制定权的归属缘于降低交易费用的需要。为什么可以降低交易费用,有学者从索取权出发进行了分析,本文则从控制权的角度进行了讨论:为了遏制经理的“特定控制权收益”,政府拥有了会计准则的制定权,而经理仅拥有了在会计准则框架内作出会计判断的权力。本文认为控制权角度的解释在以股份公司为主的经济环境中是更加有力的。     

Managerial Accounting Early in the British Industrial Revolution: The Carron Company,a Case Study

Traditional accounting histories date the advent of sophisticated cost accounting to the mid-1880s. Research in recent years, however, has provided evidence of purposeful cost management during the British Industrial Revolution. Given the advances in capital accumulation techniques, market structure development, and technology, it might have been expected that British entrepreneurs would have appreciated the advantages that effective costing could provide. This article is a case study of the Carron Company, the huge Scottish ironworks, whose cost accounting methods were notably innovative during the period for which plentiful archival records exist: 1759–1786. Carron's utilisation and practice of cost management is examined in the areas of expenditure control; responsibility and departmental cost management; overhead allocation; cost comparisons and transfers; costs for decision-making; budgets, forecasts, and standards; and inventory control. The positive findings in all these activity areas contribute to the growing rehabilitation of British Industrial Revolution cost accounting as a precursor of ‘the costing renaissance’ a century later.     

高校科研经费间接成本核算模型构建--基于政府会计制度背景

科研经费间接成本是对高校开展科研活动的成本补偿,随着《政府会计制度》的实施,高校在会计核算模式、财务报告编制方面都发生了重大的变化,新制度为高校成本核算提供了制度保障。本文阐述了科研经费间接成本的构成及研究现状,梳理了从资源归集、作业中心成本计算及科研项目成本分摊的整个核算流程。根据资源消耗的不同特点,运用作业成本法和权重比例法的理论和方法,科学地对科研经费间接成本进行分类和分摊,构建了比较完整地高校科研经费间接成本核算模型。同时提出了与模型运用相配套的建议:制定具体行业的间接成本核算规定,规范间接成本的核算;构建并完善高校成本管理系统并加强财务人员的培养;根据高校自身特点,制定科研经费间接成本核算体系。     

An exploratory study of operational reasons to budget

Budgets are used widely but criticized, mainly for performance evaluation reasons. We find that organizations regard budgets as more important for planning and control than evaluation, thus proposing a rationale for their continued use irrespective of evaluation‐based criticisms. This finding is also important, because most extant budget research focuses on evaluation, suggesting a potential disconnect between budget research and practice. We also find that rolling forecasts are used in tandem with the annual budget in most organizations, and for the same reasons. This was unexpected, as coexistence suggests their adoption for different reasons.     

A study of the linkages between rolling budget forms,uncertainty and strategy

Addressing the dearth of studies on rolling budgets, we investigate how the importance of rolling budgets for various planning, control and evaluation reasons relate to a business unit's strategy and uncertainty, and report on the variation in these responses when partitioned into quarterly and monthly rolling budget types. We use a survey instrument with responses from 182 rolling budget firms in our investigation. Our findings reveal consistencies as well as deviations between our sub-samples (quarterly and monthly rolling budgets), and the total rolling budget sample. We report that the way rolling budgets relate to uncertainty and strategy in organisations are substantively different for monthly and quarterly rolling budget types, and vary across planning, control and evaluation budget reasons. Our findings show a greater sensitivity between monthly rolling budgets and uncertainty/strategy, and virtually nil relations between quarterly rolling budgets and uncertainty/strategy. We posit that monthly rolling budgets are used in a manner more traditionally associated to rolling budgets in prior studies, while quarterly rolling budgets might be used relatively more symbolically or in response to external pressures such as earnings forecast requirements, and are less sensitive to established organisational antecedents such as uncertainty/strategy.     

财政预决算信息公开问题研究综述

本文从预决算信息公开的概念、重要性、评估、建议四个方面,对预决算信息公开问题进行综述。预决算信息公开在保障公众知情权,加强监督、防治腐败,加快政府转型、促进“服务型”、“责任型”政府建设,推动政治体制改革、提高政府治理能力,实现“中国梦”方面具有重要意义。预决算信息公开的评估主要是根据具体原则要求,设立相对应的评价指标体系进行评估。建立预算公开的顶层制度设计、完善预算公开的相关法律法规、提高预算信息公开的质量和获取的便利性、引入公民参与机制等措施能够提升预决算信息公开的程度。通过综述,得出,即重视和分析预算、决算两方面信息的重要性,并对其进行对比绩效分析来促进财政信息公开。     

论会计信息资源的配置机制——对会计信息公共物品论的反思

本文以经济学中的公共物品理论和信息经济学相关理论为基础 ,对当前的会计信息公共物品属性的观点进行了反思。通过界定“复合品”和“核心效用”两个概念 ,本文推导出会计信息产品在特定消费群内仍是私人物品 ,市场机制是配置会计信息资源的基本手段。但会计信息产品的质量具有难以检验性 ,关于会计信息产品质量的信息在企业与投资者之间分布不对称 ,为政府管制提供了理由。     

参与式预算行为实验研究

本文介绍了序贯的讨价还价理论,并通过分析企业参与式预算活动与讨价还价行为的相似性,利用讨价还价模型,构建了本实验的基本模型。依据序贯理论研究参与式预算活动,设定了国有企业与民营企业背景下管理者角色的支付函数,与传统预算激励制度相比,对下属实行真实导向的预算激励制度时,会产生更高的预算值和更低的预算松弛,且预算成本小、效率高。     

The construction of mental accounts in benefits decision making.

Mental accounting describes the psychological creation of separate accounts or budgets for categories of decisions. This process simplifies complex budget decisions in ways that significantly affect consumer behavior (Kahneman and Tversky 1981, 1984) and has been incorporated into economic theory (Shefrin and Thaler 1988). The impact of mental accounts on benefits decisions is likely to be significant. The creation of these accounts is context dependent, and prior work has demonstrated that the source and timing of payments affects the allocation of resources into mental accounts. Results from this work demonstrate that other normatively unimportant factors of the choice such as presentation order impact the construction of mental accounts. These results describe mental accounting biases within the context of health care benefits and demonstrate that the construction of mental accounts is highly unstable and easily manipulated within this domain.     

Testing a Model of Cognitive Budgetary Participation Processes in a Latent Variable Structural Equations Framework

Previous accounting research has suggested that subordinate participation in the budgetary process has two cognitive aspects: (1) participation enhances budget quality, and hence the utility of budgets, by allowing subordinates to introduce private knowledge into the budgetary process, and (2) participation enables subordinates to obtain information that is relevant to performing their jobs. This study tests a model that encompasses both cognitive aspects of budgetary participation. Data were gathered with a questionnaire distributed to managers from a variety of different national origins who were working in many different global locations. The data were analysed with latent variable structural equation modelling, which provides several advantages over more conventional analytic methods generally used in budgetary participation and other behavioural accounting research. The results indicated that participation enhances budget quality and that budget quality, in turn, has a positive effect on budget utility. Participation was also found to have a direct and positive effect on job-relevant information. The results failed to support a proposed indirect effect of participation on job-relevant information through the enhancement of budget quality.     

China's Healthcare Costing in Times of Crisis: Conflicts,Interactions, and Hidden Agendas

This paper presents a longitudinal interpretive case study on the development of healthcare costing in China over the period 2002 to 2015. Adopting a middle-range theory lens, the study explores dynamic interactions in the use of cost information among societal institutions and organizations. It reports the successful internalization of costing systems in public hospitals in Beijing, which supports the effectiveness of a hybrid steering mechanism combining both transactional and relational features; however, such successful internalization does not indicate the success of steering the lifeworld of institutions and organizations towards change. Notably, hospitals' responses to steering alter over time, from passive absorption to active manipulation, revealing how cost information may underpin hospital beliefs in marketization. At an institutional level, the paper provides empirical evidence for relational steering among societal institutions, where a reaction of ‘rebuttal’ is observed. It offers insights on how accounting can be a powerful tool in legitimizing such rebuttal, while keeping political considerations as hidden agendas. The findings suggest the importance of understanding lifeworld complexity at both societal and organizational levels, and cross-institutional collaboration in using accounting as a steering mechanism. The findings have important policy implications for public sector reform, both in China and worldwide.