Accounting,management and organizational change: A comparative study of local government

This is a study of management accounting in local government in the context of significant change (managerial, organizational and environmental). The study is based on four case studies: two in Scotland and two in New Zealand. The paper explores two competing theories of organizational life—the instrumental view as espoused by New Public Management proponents, and the socially constructed, as advocated by new institutional theorists. This study locates management accounting at the centre of these changes in New Zealand with a more limited role in the U.K. where there is evidence of institutional isomorphism.     

Accounting decoupled: A case study of accounting regime change in a Malaysian company

Using a case study of accounting regime change in a Malaysian company, this paper analyses how an accounting regime was changed to overcome an instance of decoupling that management of the case company perceived to be problematic and, despite certain technological and managerial improvements, why the accounting regime yet remained decoupled from the control of core operations. Through an eclectic use of ANT, neo-institutionalism and political economy, it demonstrates that accounting remains decoupled from operational processes because of the particular manner in which accounting is constructed and enabled; the ostensive characteristics of accounting objects around which performativity of accounting is defined; and the organisational context, which involves certain ‘political imperfections’ that cannot be narrated within organisational apparatus of modernity. Accounting, being an apparatus of modernity, finds it difficult to codify such ‘imperfections’ and to offer an operational doctrine to govern the real business processes that are embedded within these ‘imperfections’. Hence, it remains decoupled from core operational activities but performs an important role of insulating ‘political imperfections’ with which business operates.     

Choice and change of measures in performance measurement models

This paper uses management control, resource-based, systems-based and contingency-based strategy theories to describe a large U.S. manufacturing company's efforts to improve profitability by designing and using a performance measurement model (PMM). This PMM includes multiple performance measures relevant to its distribution channel for products, repair parts and maintenance services. The PMM is intended to reflect the company's understanding of performance relations among strategic resources, operational capabilities, and desired financial outcomes. The PMM also reflects its intended distribution strategy, the types of performance necessary to achieve that strategy by its distributors, and its desired financial outcomes. Furthermore, the company uses the model to evaluate its North American distributors and intends to use these evaluations as a partial basis for annual and long-term rewards. Thus, the PMM embodies the measurable portion of the firm's management control system of its distribution channel.The study addresses four research questions: (1) Are measure attributes important considerations for performance measure choice? (2) Does the importance of attributes differ according to firm strategy? (3) Does the importance of attributes for design and use differ according to firm strategy? (4) Does a company trade-off some individual attributes for others? The questions are investigated using qualitative and quantitative analyses of archival documents and interviews with top managers and distributors. Principal findings are that measure attributes are important considerations for choice and change of performance measures, design attributes are more important than use attributes, the importance of attributes does not appear to differ according to strategy, and some individual attributes are traded-off for other attributes.     

Accounting and organizational cultures: A field study of the emergence of a new organizational reality

Organizations have long been known to have cultural properties. A more recent innovation is the study of organizations as cultures: systems of knowledge, beliefs and values in which action and artifact are vested with expressive qualities. We know little about the way in which accounting is implicated in organizations' cultures. This paper reports a longitudinal field study of organizational change, tracing out the way in which new accounting practices were implicated in an emergent reconstruction of the organization's culture.     

Accounting as an affective technology: A study of circulation,agency and entrancement

This paper argues that accounting is an affective technology. We show how people’s feelings and emotions are constructed through accounting practices and templates. Much research in accounting and economics is based on rationality assumptions that suggest that people act after working through cost–benefit calculations. Information may be imperfect and our cognitive abilities constrained but such modes of calculation and economic reasoning are assumed to drive action. Whilst not setting aside the significance of rationality and intelligibility, this study illustrates that it is affect and passion alongside cognitive calculation that generate movement and action in organisational networks. An in-depth case study of a very large and well known global American corporation spanning 4 years illustrates how affect is engineered by corporate executives through accounting templates and targets. In local sites, periods of excitement and elation ensue but so do anxiety and sleepless nights as yet again, budgets are cut and stated targets rise. Productivity spreadsheets, planning pyramids and human resource programs all contribute to the circulation of affect in the global network as new identities (both individual and collective) are defined and underperforming employees managed out. The committed and devoted ‘Players’ of the organisation express love for the firm, tolerate inconsistent instructions and overlook what might (by outsiders) be conceived as breaches of trust. As such, they collaborate in their own entrancement. We conclude that accounting technologies play on people’s passions and emotions rather than purely on their intellectual and reasoning skills, and that it is this emotive edge to accounting that generates and sustains action in organisational networks.     

Accounting as a social and institutional practice: perspectives to enrich our understanding of accounting change

In the past two decades, a body of literature has developed which depicts accounting as a social and institutional practice. Researchers adopting this perspective typically demonstrate an appreciation for the pervasive and enabling characteristics of accounting and an awareness of the importance of local, time-specific factors which shape accounting change within particular instances. This work examines this literature and classifies its content using the themes identified by Miller (1994 ). Drawing upon aspects of this literature, the final sections develop a broad, thematic framework to assist researchers in future studies directed at understanding the diverse and complex processes through which changes to the accounting domain can occur.     

Transformational change and the vacuum of performance measurement: How a story of success became a failure

Some local government organisations stand out in terms of their capability to adopt and use management accounting innovations and become a model for those struggling with issues such as performance measurement (PM). But what happens to the innovations if the organisation is forced into transformational change? This longitudinal case study is based on the theory that the use and impact of PM is influenced by (a) its contractibility and (b) how the performance management systems in place are configured and used. One conclusion is that transformational change can result in a vacuum of PM, even with a high degree of contractibility.     

论使用净价进行业绩考核之不合理性

净价虽然能够反映出债券市场收益率的变动和行情的变化,但是却不是一个精确的指标,在实践运用中往往会出现误差。特别是在收益率变动幅度较小的情况下,还会产生严重的方向性错误。因此,建立一个合理有效的债券投资考核体系,除了要继续研究如何推出更有指标意义的债券指数之外,深化金融机构的体制改革,建立内部全面的考核体系,也是必不可少的一环。     

Alignment of performance measurement to sustainability objectives: A variance-based framework

Meaningful incorporation of environmental and social responsibility goals into organizational strategic plans requires a mechanism to measure and reward performance contributing to that objective. This paper formulates such a framework using management accounting concepts. We demonstrate that the benefits of pursuing sustainability objectives can be decomposed into three parts. The first consists of what might be considered a natural outcome of pursuing the traditional economic goal of efficiency through cost-minimization (a “waste” variance). The second part consists of sustainability gains that produce societal benefit but may be incongruent with short-term economic goals (a “sustainability” variance). The third part stems from a change in optimal output level when that is considered endogenous to the firm (a “volume” variance). While elimination of waste variances can be encouraged using a traditional performance evaluation and reward structure, elimination of sustainability and volume variances requires redesign of performance evaluation tools and reward structures. We demonstrate that failure to recognize and incorporate the difference between the three variances can lead to inefficient allocation of resources, over- or under-production, and only partial fulfillment of environmental goals. Further, availability of shadow price information is essential to implementing such a performance measurement system; thus it is a public policy imperative to develop markets that establish such prices.     

Developing performance-measurement systems as enabling formalization: A longitudinal field study of a logistics department

This paper reports on a developmental approach to performance-measurement systems (PMS). In particular, we look at characteristics of a development process that result in the PMS being perceived by employees as enabling of their work, rather than as primarily a control device for use by senior management. We will refer to such a PMS as “enabling PMS”. The theoretical part of the study builds on ideas of enabling versus coercive formalization [Adler, P. S., & Borys, B. (1996). Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (March), 61–89]; on notions of organizational learning (e.g., [Zollo, M., & Winter, S. G. (2002). Deliberate learning and the evolution of dynamic capabilities. Organization Science 13(3), 339–351]); and on awareness of the incompleteness of performance measures (e.g., [Chapman, C. S. (1997). Reflections on a contingent view of accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society 22, 189–205; Lillis, A. M. (2002). Managing multiple dimensions of manufacturing performance—An exploratory study. Accounting, Organizations and Society 27, 497–529]). The empirical context entails a mixed-method, 3-year longitudinal study of the logistics department of a medium-sized company in the beverage manufacturing industry. Qualitative data were gathered through interviews, participation in meetings, action research, and review of company documents. We also analyzed two waves of quantitative survey data, gathered from a panel of 42 employees. We find that a development process that is experience-based contributes to the enabling nature of the PMS, as it builds on existing skills, local practices, and know-how on performance measurement to enrich the PMS step-by-step over time. Also, experimentation with specific performance measures was found to enhance the enabling nature of the PMS: testing, reviewing, and refinement of conceptualizations, definitions, data, and presentations of new performance measures. Professionalism was significantly related to positive attitude toward performance measures in our survey data. The results also illustrate that transparency of the PMS itself is key to enabling PMS.     

Managerial ownership and firm performance: A re-examination using productivity measurement

The role of productivity in firm performance is of fundamental importance to the US economy. Consistent with the corporate finance approach, this paper uses the ownership stake of a firm's managers as an argument in estimating the firm's production function. Accordingly, this paper brings together the corporate finance and productivity literature. Using a large sample of randomly selected manufacturing firms that does not suffer from any survivorship or large firm size biases, we find that managerial ownership changes are positively related to changes in productivity. We also find a higher sensitivity of changes in managerial ownership to changes in productivity for firms who experience greater than the median change in managerial ownership. These results are robust to including lagged estimates of production inputs, year dummies and separate dummies for each firm to control for unobservable firm characteristics. In addition, we find that the stock market rewards firms with increases in firm value when these firms increase their level of productivity.     

Accounting for retail land sales: Analysis of a mandated change

This study assesses the stock market's reaction to a series of events leading up to a mandated change in accounting for retail land sales. Evidence is found to support the conclusion that the market reacted to some of these events in a manner consistent with the effects of the accounting change on debt annagement contracts. A distinctive aspect of the analysis is the efficient use of security returns data to detect market reactions and to derive empirical distributions of test statistics employed. The analysis is extended by a model for grouping regression equations known as seemingly unrelated regressions. However, the gains from this extension are modest.     

Accounting and strategising: A case study from new product development

This paper explores the relationship between accounting and strategy in a context that is characterised by pluralistic demands and high uncertainty about outcomes. By way of an ethnographic field study in an R&D intensive company, we analyse new product development (NPD) projects and the way in which decisions and practices concerning these projects are accounted for. Building upon a practice theory perspective, we find that actors account for the appropriateness of NPD practices not only or primarily on the basis of accounting information, but also by “strategising”, i.e. by mobilising different strategic objectives to which these practices are supposed to contribute. We argue that this has to do with the ambiguous demands on NPD and the limits of calculability inherent in NPD design decisions. At the same time, accounting information is not necessarily irrelevant in such a case; it can enter the picture as a general understanding that guides actors’ strategising efforts by reminding them of the ultimate importance of financial numbers.     

Accounting education: A learning-styles study of professional-technical and future adaptation issues

In the fall of 1984 Baldwin and Reckers reported the results of an exploratory study of the learning styles of business students based on Kolb's Experiential Learning Model and its related empirical methodology.This study applies the same methodology to investigate the learning styles of accounting practitioners in addition to business students. The results are used to evaluate the potential merits of Kolb's approach for accounting education research and to consider the possible impact on learners of two orientations to accounting education evident in the literature.     

Accounting tele teaching lectures: issues of interaction and performance

This paper provides empirical evidence on two aspects related to using tele teaching to deliver accounting lectures. The first issue examines student opinion on whether tele teaching lectures provide educational interactions between the learner and the instructor similar to face-to-face teaching. The second issue examines the subject performance of students who were tele taught against a similar group that were lectured face-to-face. Results showed that students viewed the tele taught lectures as lacking in learner–instructor interactions however the performance differences were not significant.     

Trust and firm performance: A bi-directional study

This paper investigates the relationship between firm performance and trust in the firm. We use a trust measure based on the count of trust words in the Management Discussion and Analysis section of 10-K filings. Our regression results indicate that the current level of trust is associated with improved future performance, while current level of performance is positively related to future improvement in trust. We discuss these results and their managerial, investment and research implications.     

会计管理活动论的当代意义

会计管理活动论是新中国会计学术领域的一次重要理论创新。本文回顾了会计管理活动论产生的时代背景和理论内涵。"管理活动论"明确指出会计是一项价值管理活动,具有技术属性和社会属性的双重属性。这一理论突破了"信息系统论"的局限性,对于更好理解会计本质、会计职能、会计属性以及会计在宏观经济管理中的作用等都做出了重要学术贡献。过去四十年来,会计实践发展和实证研究证据都有力支持了这一理论的有效性和生命力。在信息技术和新商业模式快速发展的今天,"管理活动论"对于更好促进业财融合、更好发挥会计在企业价值创造中的作用、更好发挥会计在宏观经济管理中的作用等都具有重要的当代意义。在此基础上,本文还探讨了"管理活动论"对于我国会计理论创新的若干启发,旨在为建立具有中国特色、中国风格、中国气派的本土会计理论体系提供借鉴与参考。     

Accounting and business students’ approaches to learning: A longitudinal study

This study reports the results of an investigation into the learning approaches of undergraduate accounting and business students from three universities in Ireland who were exposed to a learning environment, namely the case study method, which aimed to encourage a deep approach to learning. In order to assess the effectiveness of the intervention, the ASSIST research instrument was used to investigate changes in students’ approaches to learning over time. Consistent with previous research, this study considers whether gender is related to students’ approaches to learning over time and if there are differences between students majoring in accounting or business in their approaches to learning. The results of the study indicate that the case study intervention was successful in some respects. However, contrary to expectations, an overall statistically significant increase in students’ surface approach to learning was found. Additionally, it is reported that changes in students’ approaches to learning over time are not associated with gender or degree program. The results of this study offer insights to accounting educators developing educational interventions to encourage deep approaches to learning.     

Integrating sustainability performance measurement into logistics and supply networks: A multi-methodological approach

This paper seeks to address the way in which economic and environmental performance can be measured simultaneously, taking a multi-methodological approach to the logistics and supply chain management field in order to address sustainability challenges. The multi-methodological approach relies on the merits of different methodologies, provides more flexibility in tackling problems under investigation, and tolerates inaccurate estimation of parameters during the process. An illustrative case study (Westgate Ports) is undertaken in Australia in order to examine the ways in which the multi-methodological approach is applied, and how it assists during the decision making process in the adoption of green practices for freight transport logistics. The case validates the applicability and usefulness of the approach and highlights comparative outputs of costs and carbon emissions in freight transport logistics. Rail transport is identified as giving the opportunity to study the short distance container and freight distribution network, although initially this does not appear to be the most cost-effective option. This study finds that it is better to simultaneously consider performance indicators from different perspectives and to integrate them into one model of system measurement in order for corporations to improve their sustainability performance.     

Economic Value Added in performance measurement: A simulation approach and empirical evidence

With increasing criticism on measuring executive performance based primarily on Total Shareholder Return (TSR), some academics and practitioners have revived discussions on using Economic Value Added (EVA) as an alternative. But if EVA failed to gain traction over the past two decades, is there any new evidence for it or different approaches to better implement it in corporate settings? In this study, we start by confirming EVA-related metrics' significant positive relationships with long-term TSR in the Australian market. Our empirical findings also address EVA's major drawback – too much complexity arising from accounting adjustments. Our results suggest that accounting adjustments are generally not necessary, and efforts should be re-directed to designing direct and intuitive plan mechanisms. In addition, we develop a pseudo environment to illustrate EVA's managerial benefits and potential to cultivate sustainable growth. To study this influence, we leverage capital-based simulation techniques and mimic executive decision making under different performance measurement conditions, which was typically only discussed in a qualitative or theoretical sense. We find that EVA-related metrics naturally induce long-term, strategic and sustainable decision making without limiting executives to overly focus on short-term profitability. This simulation approach not only provides quantitative evidence, but also gives practitioners in different market environments an expandable and scalable pseudo framework to test the effect of different incentive plans and inform performance target setting, a useful but often overlooked feature in, for instance, the Australian market, where data is relatively scarce.