Financialization as a strategy of workplace control in professional service firms

Recently, there has been an increased focus on finance as a form of control in corporations. In this paper, we explore financialization as an employee control strategy in a Big Four accountancy firm, and more specifically how it affects the everyday lives of the professionals within the firm. We found financialization involved attempts to transform employees working lives into an investment activity where work was experienced as ‘billable hours’ that are ‘invested’ in the hope of a high future pay-off. Employees sought to increase the value of their investment by skilful manipulation. If wisely managed, this investment could yield significant benefits in the future. We argue that financialization involves active employee participation and is a way of binding other forms of control together.     

The institutional work of hospital risk managers: democratizing and professionalizing risk management

The growing importance of risk management programs and policies in health care organizations has given rise to a new organizational figure, the risk managers. This paper seeks to better understand their role by looking at their risk work as a form of institutional work. From an inductive study of hospital risk managers in the Quebec health care sector, we provide a situated account of the risk work or ‘the effortful pattern of practices’ accomplished by hospital risk managers at the intra- and extra-organizational levels. The results show that they engage in two broader recursive forms of institutional work. At the intra-organizational level, it is by building bridges, autonomizing teams, legitimizing risk work, and pragmatizing interventions that hospital risk managers contribute to democratizing the risk management practices in their organization. At the extra-organizational level, it is by networking with colleagues, hybridizing knowledge, shaping identity, and debating solutions that they contribute to articulating a professionalization project. We argue that the recursive relationship between these two forms of institutional work, namely democratizing and professionalizing risk management, demonstrates how the risk work done at one level facilitates the risk work accomplished at the other. The paper provides three contributions. First, it opens the black box of the hospital risk managers’ roles by showing the complexity of their risk work, instead of formalizing expectations about their role in a normative way, as is generally the case. Second, this research provides evidence about how actors with limited collective power and resources such as hospital risk managers participate in disseminating risk management programs and policies. Third, the paper offers a multi-level understanding of the ways by which hospital risk managers work to institutionalize risk management program and policies. The paper ends by discussing the importance of gaining a better understanding of the risk managers’ role and their institutional work.     

Family learning in the workplace: nurturing lifelong learning

Lifelong learning must become a reality for all employees if we are to create and sustain organizations which can survive in the knowledge economy of the future. But how do we engage those who never access training and development opportunities at work? In this article it is argued that these people may be attracted back to learning by offering them opportunities at work to learn with their families.This different method of facilitating lifelong learning is examined here. The benefits to business and the wider community of encouraging families to learn together at work are explored. It is concluded that the addition of family learning in organisations to our current range of training and development activities can engage a new constituency in learning at work and can model the importance of lifelong learning to a new generation of future employees.     

企业金融化与劳动收入份额变动

本文从企业金融化的角度解释了上市公司劳动收入份额的变动,虽然基准结果显示,企业金融化能够促进劳动收入份额提升,但基于欧拉方程分解和中介变量法的验证发现,企业金融化一方面对工资水平产生正向溢出并提升了劳动收入份额,即表现出“盈利溢出”效应;另一方面,企业金融化却会抑制企业劳动生产率的改进,客观上造成劳动要素在生产中的地位上升进而带来劳动收入份额的提升,即表现出“技术抑制”效应。进一步分析发现,高管的劳动收入份额获益幅度小于普通员工(私营企业中更明显),说明经典的“委托-代理”框架并不能有效地解释中国企业的金融化行为;与此同时,企业金融化的影响和金融市场收益率具有强相关性,表明企业金融化的动力来自金融市场的收益激励。本文研究结论表明,企业金融化是企业在金融市场超额收益时期的“理性选择”,伴随金融市场回归并运行在合理区间,企业金融化对劳动收入份额的提升作用不仅不可持续,而且会对劳动生产率产生持续损害,借助趋利性的企业金融化来获得劳动收入份额的提升无异于“饮鸩止渴”。本文的研究结论可为我国进一步深化金融体系供给侧结构性改革,引导金融回归本源,更好地服务于实体经济提供有益参考。     

Energy efficiency complexities: A technical and managerial investigation

Increased concern about sustainability issues has been voiced in the accounting literature. Although environmental performance is only one dimension of sustainability, it is nevertheless a key factor, especially in sectors such as the process industry, which consume substantial volumes of materials and energy. Energy itself is important because its production is a major cause of carbon emissions. Hence efforts to reduce its use are important, and here energy efficiency measurement and management play a key role.Although the conceptual challenges posed by energy efficiency measurement are well known in the technical literature, there has been little discussion of energy efficiency management. This paper examines the complexities involved in the measurement and management of energy efficiency. In particular, it examines how these complexities impede effective use of management control systems to impact the ability and motivation of employees to work toward the goals of sustainable development. The study is a cross-disciplinary one, and combines technical energy efficiency research and environmental management accounting research in performance management. The study provides practical knowledge of what happens in organizations pursuing sustainable development, in this case environmental performance. The paper demonstrates a performance indicator that does not allow proper energy efficiency performance management because it is still technically underdeveloped. Setting targets for the indicator is especially problematic.     

Has the Public Sector Retained its 'Model Employer' Status?

The authors investigate whether public sector organizations can still be considered 'model employers' as they were before the late 1970s. Comparisons are made with private sector human resource management (HRM) practices to determine how closely the 'model employer' rhetoric approximates the public sector reality. The article focuses on recent changes in the core and traditional non-traded areas of public sector employment funded directly through either central or local taxation—the National Health Service, central and local government and higher education. Objective quantitative data on public sector HRM practices and flexible work patterns are examined from both primary and secondary sources. Central to the discussion is the question of which sector offers the greater job security to employees.     

The growing role of informal controls: does organization learning empower or subjugate workers?

Several management theorists have called for organizations to incorporate organization learning, empowerment, open-book management, and similar initiatives to generate better value from an important strategic resource: employees. What does this mean for the controlled? Do extensions of the management control system’s ability to implement the strategy of the firm offer workers a more central role in creating their future? Or is this “progress" just another means to extract extra effort from workers for the benefit of owners? This paper is developed in two parts. The first argues that seeking better value from workers is here to stay, and that the implications for management control system bear consideration. In particular, the five disciplines of Senge’s (1990) Organization Learning are introduced to illustrate growing ways informal controls enhance workers’ knowledge contributions. The second half of the paper examines implications of this increasing control. Some argue that it is naive to expect organization learning will lead managers to willingly realign existing lopsided rewards. However, as a natural response to change, these controls are themselves dynamic and evolutionary. This paper suggests that the growing dependence on employee’s superior knowledge recalibrates power arrangements. Further there is a growing awareness that many managers’ self-interest is mitigated by their sense of fairness. Consequently, an increasingly shared authority combined with the self-reflection and transparency of organization learning raises the possibility of an environment where those who perform the work share more equally in its rewards.     

The ‘performativity thesis’ and its critics: Towards a relational ontology of management accounting

This paper explores accounting's mediating role in bringing theoretical statements from economics into life. It addresses the so-called performativity thesis that claims that economic theory does not just observe and explain a reality, but rather shapes, formats and performs reality. Accounting mediates in that process by creating cognitive boundaries that embed societal practices in economic theory. However, the performativity thesis is not without criticisms. Its main criticisms concern a lack of proof of the thesis; an overestimation of the power of economics to extend beyond the virtual; and a lack of a critical stance. In order to bring more nuance in the discussion on the performativity thesis the paper reflects on evidence from the field of accounting. The review of accounting studies reveals how accounting, to different degrees, is implicated in strategic and operational activities in markets and organisations and how it is a performative mechanism of economisation. Moreover, in order to accentuate the ‘good’ in society and to challenge the ‘bad’, the paper suggests a further development of (critical) management accounting research into the performativity of both economics and other social theories. A relational ontology of management accounting that is in politics and that is sensitive to ‘unlocalisable’ virtual powers of social-historical formations of management accounting may be developed.     

Government audit supervision,financialization, and executives' excess perks: Evidence from Chinese state-owned enterprises

In recent years, the phenomenon of corporate financialization has become increasingly prevalent in China. This paper uses data from Chinese state-owned listed firms from 2006 to 2018 to investigate whether large-scale financial investments by companies facilitate executives' excess perk consumption, and whether government auditing, as an important component of the national governance system, can play a governance role in this behavior. The results show that corporate financialization behavior significantly exacerbates executives' excess perks, and government auditing can mitigate the effect of corporate financialization on executives' excess perk consumption. We find that increased cash flow is the mechanism by which financialization behavior positively affects executives' excess perks. Furthermore, this study reveals that the implicit corruption of state-owned enterprise executives through corporate financialization is primarily based on compensation psychology, which will reduce the effectiveness of monetary compensation contracts. However, government auditing can effectively constrain this influence.     

非高管股权激励与企业创新:公平理论视角

股权激励管理办法允许上市公司通过股权激励计划对部分非高管员工进行股权激励,但设定激励对象等方面的有关规定对企业的影响却鲜有研究关注。本文从公平理论视角分析我国非高管员工股权激励对上市公司创新的影响,并依据中国上市公司股权激励计划与专利数据实证检验了非高管员工股权激励有效性假说与不公平假说。研究发现,总体上我国股权激励计划能够显著促进企业创新,但非激励员工因薪酬不公平而产生的消极行为在一定程度上削弱了股权激励计划的激励效果。具体而言,在国有控股上市公司以及激励与非激励员工收入差距小的上市公司中,非高管股权激励弱化企业创新的影响明显小于其他公司;而在非高管员工覆盖比例较高的公司中,非高管股权激励计划弱化企业创新的影响不存在。因此适当提高员工股权激励覆盖的范围可以减少激励员工与非激励员工之间因激励错配导致的薪酬不公平问题,有助于提升我国上市公司股权激励计划的创新激励效果。     

Firm Investment and Stakeholder Choices: A Top‐Down Theory of Capital Budgeting

This paper develops a top‐down model of capital budgeting in which privately informed executives make investment choices that convey information to the firm's stakeholders (e.g., employees). Favorable information in this setting encourages stakeholders to take actions that positively contribute to the firm's success (e.g., employees work harder). Within this framework we examine how firms may distort their investment choices to influence the information conveyed to stakeholders and show that investment rigidities and overinvestment can arise as optimal investment distortions. We also examine investment distortions in multi‐divisional firms and compare such distortions to those in single‐division firms.     

悖论式领导对员工工作绩效的影响：二元工作激情和角色认同的作用

依据企业员工调查问卷数据,基于自我决定理论,考量悖论式领导对员工工作绩效的作用机制和边界条件。结果表明：悖论式领导与员工角色内绩效、角色外绩效均显著正相关,和谐型工作激情在其中发挥中介作用,强迫型工作激情仅中介悖论式领导与角色内绩效之间的关系;角色认同削弱了悖论式领导与和谐型工作激情的正向关系,但会强化悖论式领导对强迫型工作激情的负向影响。     

Impact of Replacing a Defined Benefit Pension with a Defined Contribution Plan or a Cash Balance Plan

Abstract

Four pension plan conversions are examined to determine the impact on retirement benefits of workers. The study was based on interviews with top management, employee surveys, and actuarial analysis of retirement benefits under the old and new pension plans. In general, workers who leave the firm prior to the age of early retirement can expect increased benefits under the new defined contribution and cash balance plans, whereas older, more senior workers can expect to accrue smaller benefits after the plan conversions. Recognizing these potential adverse effects, the employers in our studies provided various types of transition benefits to existing workers or gave employees the choice of remaining in the old defined benefit plan. Employee surveys reveal that younger workers are more supportive of the new pension plans than are older workers. These case studies also indicate that communication by managements with their employees is very important to the successful implementation of plan conversions.     

Aiming to connect: the business case for diversity in public organizations in The Netherlands

This paper examines the effectiveness of diversity policy and interventions in the Dutch public sector and shows that business case interventions can affect employees’ commitment to their organization, contributing to staff retention rates and improving overall performance. Leadership style, as well as organizational culture, are shown to play a crucial role in the effectiveness of the interventions that were analysed.     

中国实体企业金融化:货币扩张、资本逐利还是风险规避?

本文构建了一个刻画实体企业在流动性金融资产和固定资产之间进行权衡的投资组合选择模型,并创新性地将货币扩张的宏观因素引入微观模型,推演中国实业部门金融化的驱动逻辑。理论模型显示:货币扩张、资本逐利和风险规避本质上是宏观和微观两个不同层面的要素变量,但都卷入实业部门金融化的驱动机制中,然而驱动效应的表现形式要比已有文献的理论模型更加复杂。基于上市公司面板数据总体样本的实证结果表明:货币扩张、资本逐利和风险规避均是企业金融化的关键影响因素,但货币扩张表现为直接抑制和间接促进两种效应。进一步引入宏观风险因素和根据企业所有权性质划分样本的稳健性检验则给出了更为细致的信息:货币因素可能通过宏观风险因素间接作用于企业金融化;所有权性质不同的企业的金融化驱动机制也表现出明显的异质性:国有企业金融化主要受货币因素和风险规避因素影响;民营企业金融资产占比层面的金融化驱动因素是风险规避和资本逐利,而金融渠道获利占比层面的金融化则受到货币因素的显著影响;其他类型企业的金融化主要受货币因素的显著影响。     

Crisis communication. Lessons from 9/11

The sheer enormity of last year's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave new meaning to the term "crisis management." Suddenly, companies near Ground Zero, as well as those more than a thousand miles away, needed a plan. Because the disasters disrupted established channels not only between businesses and customers but between businesses and employees, internal crisis-communications strategies that could be quickly implemented became a key responsibility of top management. Without these strategies, employees' trauma and confusion might have immobilized their firms and set their customers adrift. In this article, executives from a range of industries talk about how their companies, including Morgan Stanley, Oppenheimer Funds, American Airlines, Verizon, the New York Times, Dell, and Starbucks, went about restoring operations and morale. From his interviews with these individuals, author and management professor Paul Argenti was able to distill a number of lessons, each of which, he says, may "serve as guideposts for any company facing a crisis that undermines its employees' composure, confidence, or concentration." His advice to senior executives includes: Maintain high levels of visibility, so that employees are certain of top management's command of the situation and concern; establish contingency communication channels and work sites; strive to keep employees focused on the business itself, because a sense of usefulness enhances morale and good morale enhances usefulness; and ensure that employees have absorbed the firm's values, which will guide them as they cope with the unpredictable. The most forward-thinking leaders realize that managing a crisis-communications program requires the same dedication and resources they give to other dimensions of their business. More important, they realize that their employees always come first.     

Mentoring and the tolerance of complexity

This paper explores mentoring in the light of complexity theory and the premium placed upon knowledge in organisational viability. A key question is “what is the role of mentoring, as a developmental and knowledge creating process, in a complex environment?” There are two parts to the discussion. First, we explore complexity at work, and what it means for the individual. We link the central ideas of complexity theory with the notion of a ‘corporate curriculum’, an inclusive concept intended to capture the complex nature of learning at work, in all its variants. Secondly, we speculate on the contribution mentoring can make in complex organisations where employees are part of a knowledge economy by virtue of being knowledge producers and being engaged in learning at work. The environments in which we work are becoming more complex and mentoring is also complex. There is a synergy here. For people living in complexity where there are few rules, no right answers and no predictable outcomes, we suggest that mentoring can play a distinctive role in helping people to ‘tolerate’ complexity and remain effective.     

Accounting information and managerial work

Despite calls to link management accounting more closely to management (Jonsson, 1998), much is still to be learned about the role of accounting information in managerial work. This lack of progress stems partly from a failure to incorporate in research efforts the findings regarding the nature of managerial work, as well as inadequate attention devoted to the detailed practices through which accounting information is actually used by managers in their work. In this paper I draw on prior research to develop a series of propositions focused on three primary insights into how and why managers use accounting information in their work. First, managers primarily use accounting information to develop knowledge of their work environment rather than as an input into specific decision-making scenarios. In this role, accounting information can help managers to develop knowledge to prepare for unknown future decisions and activities. Second, as accounting information is just one part of the wider information set that managers use to perform their work, it is imperative to consider its strengths and weaknesses not in isolation but relative to other sources of information at a manager’s disposal. Third, as managers interact with information and other managers utilising primarily verbal forms of communication, it is through talk rather than through written reports that accounting information becomes implicated in managerial work. These insights have important implications for how managers use accounting information, and, in particular, require reconsideration of the types accounting information that managers find, or could find, helpful. The paper also considers how existing experimental and field-based methods could fruitfully be adapted to focus on the detailed activities through which managers engage with accounting information.     

Reverse logistics in the UK retail sector: A case study of the role of management accounting in driving organisational change

This paper illustrates how interventionist research can be helpful in providing managerially relevant solutions and furthers the debate about the relationship between social science research and practice. Through this use of interventionist methods, the paper contributes to knowledge by illustrating the way in which management accounting was used alongside other managerial disciplines in a UK retail organisation to promote change and influence outcomes. Specifically, the paper focuses on changes to the reverse logistics processes of the organisation and the important role that management accounting played. It also illustrates the use of management accounting in the pursuit of strategic and commercial advantage. As researchers, our work was grounded in action rather than being just observers.     

加速折旧企业所得税政策与实体企业金融化——基于2014年固定资产加速折旧政策的准自然实验

本文选择2011-2017年我国沪深上市实体企业的样本数据,以2014年固定资产加速折旧所得税政策的出台为准自然实验,采用双重差分法实证检验了固定资产加速折旧政策对实体企业金融化行为的影响。研究发现,固定资产加速折旧政策出台带来的所得税抵税收益在提升实体企业固定资产和无形资产等实业投资的同时,会提升实体企业金融化水平。进一步研究发现,固定资产加速折旧政策的出台仅对现金流较贫乏、非国有企业、成长性较高以及规模较小的实体企业的金融化水平具有显著促进作用。研究结论不仅能够丰富企业金融化的理论研究,还有助于税务监管部门进一步调整优化固定资产加速折旧政策及相关配套税收政策,以便更好地防范、化解脱实向虚风险,促进实体企业高质量发展。