Management Controls that Anchor other Organizational Practices

How do management control practices structure other organizational practices? This paper proposes a theory of practice hierarchies. The key idea is that organizations possess constitutive rules that define their character. They are enacted by the practices at the top of the hierarchy. These “anchor practices” contain objectives and established ways of doing things that control, or structure, subsidiary practices. They do so by defining key social relationships in the organization, often ones that are antagonistic. The paper uses illustrations from a longitudinal field study of a retail bank and draws on insights from cultural sociology.     

商业银行内部控制服务于授信后风险管理的路径与方法

本文通过对当前商业银行授信后风险管理的现状的认识,和解析授信后风险管理与内部控制之间的关系,期望内部控制能够运用有效的路径和方法来提高授信后管理水平。本文提出内控通过协助和服务于客户经理、管理层、风险经理和授信后审查委员会这三条路径,以营造内控氛围、实施内控评价、加强内控制度建设、提升内控信息系统、纠正内控缺陷等方法,产生决策有用的管理成果,从而实现授信后风险得以控制和预防的目的。     

Productivity Measurement and the Relationship between Plant Performance and JIT Intensity*

The management accounting and operations management literatures argue that the adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, such as just‐in‐time (JIT), necessitates complementary changes in a firm's management accounting and control systems. This study uses a sample of JIT and non‐JIT plants operating in the Canadian automotive parts manufacturing industry to study the interaction among performance outcomes, intensity of JIT practices, and productivity measurement. This study provides evidence that productivity measurement mediates the relationship between performance outcomes and intensity of JIT practices. Specifically, both JIT and non‐JIT plants that use a broader range of productivity measures are more efficient and profitable than other plants. Also, plants that employ industry‐driven productivity measures are more profitable and efficient than plants that employ idiosyncratic productivity measures, especially if the former are more JIT‐intensive than the latter. Furthermore, plants that employ quality productivity measures are less efficient and less profitable than those that do not, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. The latter result is consistent with JIT‐intensive plants overinvesting in quality. This study also finds that plants that invest more in buffer stock are less efficient and less profitable, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. Despite the fact that plant profitability and efficiency are highly correlated, JIT‐intensive plants are more profitable but less efficient than plants that are not JIT‐intensive, after controlling for productivity measures, plant size, and buffer stock. This result suggests that despite wasting resources, JIT‐intensive plants are still able to generate relatively higher profits than plants that are not JIT‐intensive.     

物流服务供应链管理控制体系框架研究

借鉴组织间关系治理研究的成果与现代控制论关于复杂系统的管理控制思想,根据对物流服务供应链的结构模式及组织间关系分析认为物流服务供应链管理控制体系具有复杂的动态控制体系特性,提出了物流服务供应链管理控制体系框架模型,分析了物流服务供应链不同主体间的管理控制方式的演变过程,并后提出了进一步研究的方向.     

The need for more appropriate forms of urban management: The case of land use controls and home businesses

The problems which confront urban management in South Africa are likely to change significantly in the near future, as we are faced with cities here which compare far more closely to Third World cities elsewhere. This article focuses on one aspect of urban management, that of land use control and the management of home businesses, to demonstrate the nature of the problems emerging in our cities and the demands which these will place on the urban administrative systems. Drawing on a survey of home businesses in six residential areas in Cape Town, the article argues that present systems of land use control have broken down in both wealthier and poorer areas. However, the widespread (and unexpected) support for home businesses in these areas suggests that a more flexible approach to land use control, and a higher degree of use mix, will gain public acceptance. Some basic principles are put forward to inform a different approach to land use control.     

Professionalization in Action: Accountants' Attempt at Building a Network of Support for the WebTrust Seal of Assurance*

This paper examines the attempts by the North American accounting institutes to develop a new market in e‐commerce assurance based on their claims to professional expertise through the WebTrust project. Employing actor‐network theory in an in‐depth longitudinal field study, we investigate how WebTrust was originally developed and promoted as a seal of business‐to‐consumer assurance, which largely failed to generate support in the marketplace. Proponents were subsequently able to generate more interest in the eyes of managers of online organizations by reshaping WebTrust as a flexible set of principles and criteria for systems advice and business‐to‐business assurance. Our analysis suggests that attempts to expand the accounting profession's domain of expertise reflect a trial‐and‐error process where the outcome achieved may be far from the vision that motivated the institutes into undertaking the project in the first place. We further show that the initial network of support for such projects can be quite fragile and dynamic as various actors reposition themselves around the shifting meanings attributed to the project.     

中国外汇储备过多的对策分析

2008年3月底,中国的外汇储备已经超过1.6万亿美元,如何合理有效地管理和利用它,将是一件很值得研究的问题。本文用外汇管理理论分析得出中国外汇储备已经过量,并在制度上和策略上提出有效利用外汇储备的一些方法。     

基于战略的业绩评价系统理论框架——管理控制的视角

尽管业绩评价和管理控制领域的问题比较复杂并且相互交叉,但是研究却基于简单且片面的背景进行。简单化使研究工作比较容易实施,但却造成了不同研究的发现含糊不清且相互矛盾。为了消除这类问题,文章提出了基于战略的业绩评价系统理论框架作为研究工具,以一个更为全面的方式来描述业绩评价系统的结构和运行。文章的框架基于相关文献以及个体观察和经验进行开发,为那些研究业绩评价系统设计和运行的研究者提供了一个有用的工具,通过框架模板帮助研究者描述系统的每个关键要素。文章还运用实地研究资料来说明系统框架能够被用于综述一个企业业绩评价的重要问题。     

多元化公司管理控制系统研究——一个权变理论研究框架

本文认为管理控制能力是企业多元化的根本动因,管理控制系统是影响多元化公司业绩的关键因素,因而根据多元化公司的管理特点,以权变理论为基础,从管理的计划、组织、领导、人事和控制五大职能出发,在预算技术、集权与分权、报酬激励系统、业绩评价系统、内部协调与整合和信息系统等方面构建了一个多元化公司管理控制系统研究框架。     

金融危机下我国中小型工业企业内部控制与风险防范分析

随着经济的快速发展和现代化企业管理方法的运用,内部控制已发展到企业经营管理的各个领域,在企业管理中的作用日益增强。如今,内部控制被视为现代企业管理的重要手段。我国中小型工业企业内控管理并不容乐观,在金融危机条件下,极易受到风险的冲击而影响经营活动。这些企业需要结合自身特点,进一步优化控制环境,明确控制目标,改善控制技术,并不断完善内部控制系统,提高内部控制的效果。     

不确定环境下的财务柔性理论及其本质

不确定环境下,企业需要具备一定的财务柔性。企业财务柔性的本质是以柔性组织理论、资源约束理论、动态能力理论、权变理论及融资理论为基础,与财务保守、财务冗余有着本质区别;不确定性和环境波动是财务柔性的前提条件;为应对不确定性和环境波动,企业需要通过不同的融资渠道和融资方式获取柔性财务资源,储备财务柔性;财务柔性具有缓冲、适应及创新的功能。对财务柔性本质的探讨踏实了财务柔性的理论基础,丰富了财务柔性的理论,对财务柔性实践具有一定的理论指导意义。     

It depends: Planning and managing induced innovation in uncertain environments; a contingency approach to extension reforms in Lesotho

Uncertain environments and much innovation typically characterise agricultural extension education programming. Hence, rational approaches to planning may not be as effective as more incremental types. Organic management strategies premised on a contingency planning approach may prove more useful Effective decentralisation of management, improved communication between the farmer, extension personnel and technical specialist, and appropriate skills levels of staff are common extension concerns. The concept of organisation as open systems serves a useful management mindset. In Lesotho this mindset, coupled with an interactive management and contingency planning strategy, provided the foundation for a single eclectic programme dealing with all of these issues.     

The Multiplicity of Performance Management Systems: Heterogeneity in Multinational Corporations and Management Sense‐Making

This field study examines the workings of multiple performance measurement systems (PMSs) used within and between a division and Headquarters (HQ) of a large European corporation. We explore how multiple PMSs arose within the multinational corporation. We first provide a first‐order analysis which explains how managers make sense of the multiplicity and show how an organization's PMSs may be subject to competing processes for control that result in varied systems, all seemingly functioning, but with different rationales and effects. We then provide a second‐order analysis based on a sense‐making perspective that highlights the importance of retrospective understandings of the organization's history and the importance of various legitimacy expectations to different parts of the multinational. Finally, we emphasize the role of social skill in sense‐making that enables the persistence of multiple systems and the absence of overt tensions and conflict within organizations.     

Fiscal lessons from the East Asian financial crisis

This paper examines the financial crises experienced in East Asian countries beginning in 1997. A common thread of these occurrences is the failure to address the risks of positions and policies by either the public or private sector, suggesting that there is a need to improve fiscal flexibility, to better understand public sector assets and liabilities, and for a more flexible public cash management or control system. The international community may need to establish fast-disbursing assistance systems to support this increased flexibility.     

Transparency,Information Shocks,and Tax Avoidance

This study helps provide clarity to the prior mixed findings on the association between financial reporting transparency and tax avoidance by studying the effect that transparency has on tax avoidance in a cross‐country sample through aggregate‐ and firm‐level tests. Results using firm‐ and country‐level (aggregate) measures of transparency and tax avoidance show that countries and firms with greater levels of transparency exhibit lower levels of tax avoidance and that the effect of country‐level transparency is incremental to firm‐level transparency. Furthermore, results of difference‐in‐difference tests using the adoption of IFRS and the initial enforcement of insider trading laws around the world as exogenous shocks that increase transparency find that transparency has a statistically and economically significant effect on tax avoidance and address empirical concerns regarding endogeneity and reverse causality not fully addressed in the prior research. The results of these tests as well as tests that address potential correlated but omitted variables suggest that financial transparency is an important tool which regulators can use in battling tax avoidance.     

When ‘community’ is not enough: Managing common property natural resources in rural South Africa

Common property natural resource management (NRM) informer ‘bantustan’ rural areas can provide important pointers for current and future land reform and local government policy. Using Tyefu Location in the Eastern Cape as a case study, this article outlines three of the constraints that currently fashionable ‘community‐based’ NRM models are likely to face in coordinating the use of common property resources in these areas. These three constraints are first, the entrenched socio‐economic differentiation that results in local people having varied, but generally weak incentives for contributing to collective action resource management. Second, are the high levels of institutional contestation that exist in these areas and third, the fact that the ‘fuzziness’ of existing NRM regimes allows for maximum flexibility in resource use, with the result that most rural (and urban‐based) people are unlikely to support the introduction of more formalised NRM regimes.     

Director Monitoring of Expense Misreporting in Nonprofit Organizations: The Effects of Expense Disclosure Transparency,Donor Evaluation Focus and Organization Performance

This study examines whether three factors—the transparency of expense disclosures, donor evaluation focus, and organization performance—influence how directors monitor management expense misreporting in nonprofit organizations. An experiment with 189 nonprofit directors finds that the enhanced transparency of expense disclosures increases director monitoring by reducing the tendency to accept management expense misreporting. Further, an organization's nonfinancial performance and the perceived fairness of donor evaluation focus interact to influence director monitoring practices. Specifically, when directors know an organization's nonfinancial performance is poor and understand that this performance will negatively influence the willingness of donors to contribute, directors monitor less if they think that donors are adopting a more balanced approach to organizational evaluation that focuses on both financial and nonfinancial performance; that is, there is a reverse fair process effect as this donor approach is perceived as being fairer than if donors focus solely on financial performance. However, monitoring is equally strong regardless of donor evaluation focus when directors know that an organization's nonfinancial performance is good and a donation is forthcoming.     

Enterprise Risk Management Program Quality: Determinants,Value Relevance,and the Financial Crisis

This paper investigates factors associated with high‐quality Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs in financial services firms, and whether ERM quality enhances performance and signals credibility to the financial markets. ERM, developed with the assistance of the accounting profession, provides a framework and plan to integrate management of all sources of risk. Challenged by measurement difficulties common to research on management control systems, prior ERM studies present mixed findings. Using ERM quality ratings of financial companies by Standard & Poor's, we find that higher ERM quality is associated with greater complexity, less resource constraint, and better corporate governance. Controlling for such characteristics, we find that higher ERM quality is associated with improved accounting performance. Results show a market reaction to signals of enhanced management control from initial ERM quality ratings and rating revisions, and a stronger response to earnings surprises for firms with higher ERM quality. Focusing on the recent global financial crisis, our analysis suggests that there is no relation between ERM quality and market performance prior to and during the market collapse. However, returns of higher ERM quality companies are higher during the market rebound. Overall, results reveal that firm performance and value are enhanced by high‐quality controls that integrate risk management efforts across the firm, enabling better oversight of managers' risk‐taking behavior and aligning that behavior with the strategic direction of the company.     

The impact of limited liability on ownership and control: Irish banking, 1877–19141

Limited liability is regarded as the sine qua non of the modern company, enabling firms to raise capital from a broad spectrum of investors who have well‐diversified portfolios. This article uses the ownership records of an Irish bank, which converted to limited liability in 1883, to explore the impact of introducing limited liability upon ownership and control. We find that ownership becomes more dispersed amongst individuals from a broader social and geographical spectrum. However, there appears to be little impact on portfolio diversification. Furthermore, although limited liability appears to contribute to the rise of the professional director, the evidence suggests that managerial incentives may have been weakened.     

中国外汇储备过多的利弊分析

外汇储备对于平衡国际收支、干预外汇市场，维护本国汇率稳定有着重要的影响，同时外汇储备还是举债和偿还外债的保证。截止2008年3月底，中国的外汇储备超过1.6万亿美元，面对如此巨额的外汇储备数字，中国如何合理有效地利用之将是一件很值得研究的问题。本文用几种外汇管理理念分析判断得出中国是外汇储备已经过多，文章同时分析了外汇储备过量对中国经济产生的利弊影响。