Gianluca F Delfino and Berend van der Kolk
The authors examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working, triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, on management control (MC) practices in…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working, triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, on management control (MC) practices in professional service firms (PSFs). In addition, employee responses to these changes are explored.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors carried out a field study of MC changes in PSFs in Italy, the first country in Europe that was severely impacted by COVID-19. Interviews with PSF employees form the primary data source. Pattern matching was used to identify similarities and differences and investigate how employees respond to the MC changes.
Findings
As a response to the shift to remote working, managers at PSFs made various MC-related changes. For instance, they increased the number of online meetings and made use of technologies to monitor employees from a distance. Employees reacted to this by engaging in “voluntary visibilizing practices”, i.e. by trying to make sure they got noted by their superiors, for instance by doing overtime. In addition, collected evidence suggests increased stress levels among employees, changes to employee autonomy, changed perceptions of hierarchies and a weakened sense of relatedness with others in the organization.
Originality/value
This is one of the first studies to examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working on MC. In addition, this paper contributes by exploring employee responses to the MC-related changes. The findings add to the growing literature on MC and motivation, and the notion of voluntary visibilizing practices is mobilized to warn against over-commitment and self-exploitation.
Details
Keywords
Kai DeMott, Nathalie Repenning, Fanny Almersson, Gianluca Chimenti, Gianluca F. Delfino, Nelson Duenas, Cecilia Fredriksson, Zhengqi Guo, Thomas Holde Skinnerup, Leonid Sokolovskyy and Xiaoyu Xu
The purpose of this paper revolves around the informal coming together of various doctoral students in the area of qualitative accounting and management research and the attempt…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper revolves around the informal coming together of various doctoral students in the area of qualitative accounting and management research and the attempt to learn from their respective experiences. Together, the authors share personal reflections and valuable insights in revealing their vulnerabilities, aspirations and how they make sense of the PhD journey and their becoming as academics.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper builds on an open discussion and written reflections among the authors, who represent a diverse set of both doctoral students at various levels and recent graduates from different countries, schools and backgrounds.
Findings
The discussion highlights the struggles the authors experience as doctoral students, how they learn to cope with them as well as how they are socialized throughout their PhD journey. This allows them to take a critical stance towards increased productivity demands in academia and to embrace doctoral students as a powerful collective, whose aspirations may inspire a change of academic reality for the better.
Originality/value
While guidance on how to succeed as doctoral students is common, we seldom hear about doctoral students as particularly “fragile selves” (Knights and Clarke, 2014) who, as opposed to more established scholars, are more actively experiencing difficulties with finding their ways in academia. The authors are thus motivated to create a rare common voice of a group of doctoral students here by providing a more intimate account of the PhD journey.
Details
Keywords
Jae‐bok Lee, Jun Zou, Mo Li and Sughun Chang
A fast algorithm is proposed to calculate the lightning electromagnetic field over a perfectly conducting earth surface.
Abstract
Purpose
A fast algorithm is proposed to calculate the lightning electromagnetic field over a perfectly conducting earth surface.
Design/methodology/approach
The channel base current is approximated by a number of sub‐domain quadratic functions using the proposed adaptive sampling technique, and the derivative and integral of the channel base current with respect to time can be analytically expressed. With the help of these approximations, the ideal electromagnetic field of the lightning channel can be evaluated along the lightning channel with respect to the height.
Findings
The computational time can be greatly reduced using the proposed approach to evaluate the electromagnetic field of a lightning channel in the time domain.
Originality/value
The adaptive sampling technique is a general‐purposed approach, which can be potentially used in other applications to fit a function with the minimal number of intervals.
Details
Keywords
Michelle Carr and Stefan Jooss
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be…
Abstract
Purpose
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.
Findings
The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.
Originality/value
The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.
Highlights
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
Details
Keywords
Federico Delfino, Renato Procopio, Mansueto Rossi and Mario Nervi
A general method to study the response of a system of multiconductors, lying above a perfectly conducting ground and excited by a HF electromagnetic field wave, is presented in…
Abstract
A general method to study the response of a system of multiconductors, lying above a perfectly conducting ground and excited by a HF electromagnetic field wave, is presented in this paper. The governing system of integro‐differential equations is solved by means of a numerical procedure based on a Fourier series transformation. It can be proved that the series in which the unknowns of the problem, namely the currents along the conductors, are developed converge to the exact solution and only few terms are needed. The obtained results have been compared with those of a widely employed scattering code, showing faster performances for a given accuracy. Therefore, the algorithm can be seen as a more accurate alternative to the classical transmission line theory (TL) for all the situations (short transmission line, interconnects, etc.) in which the line geometrical parameters and the frequencies of interest make TL a rough approximation.
Details
Keywords
Jun Zou, Chenglong Zhou, Wenwen Li, Jae-bok Lee and Sughun Chang
The electromagnetic field radiated from a lightning channel is the excitation for analyzing the field-to-transmission line coupling problem. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
The electromagnetic field radiated from a lightning channel is the excitation for analyzing the field-to-transmission line coupling problem. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel efficient approach to evaluate the horizontal electric field of the lightning channel expressed by the generalized Sommerfeld integral.
Design/methodology/approach
The asymptotic integral is extracted from the original one, which actually makes the Sommerfeld integral tail reach its convergence very quickly. To handle the sharp variance around k0, a closed-form integral, which is obtained by replacing the original kernel with an approximated function, is presented in detail. The numerical examples validated the proposed approach in the both frequency and time domain.
Findings
The approach proposed in this paper has been validated by the comparison with results in other papers. The agreement among these results reaches very well, and the approach proposed in this paper is more efficient and easy to implement, especially for the calculation of the tail integral part.
Originality/value
In accordance with the numerical experiments, the proposed approach can be served as a qualified candidate in terms of computational efficiency to evaluate the electromagnetic field generated by the lightning channel.
Details
Keywords
F. Delfino, P. Girdinio, L. Minervini and M. Nervi
To provide a detailed investigation about methods commonly used for the computation of high‐frequency electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of obstacles that can reflect or…
Abstract
Purpose
To provide a detailed investigation about methods commonly used for the computation of high‐frequency electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of obstacles that can reflect or diffract them. This is useful to create an elementary block that can be used to evaluate with a high accuracy the propagation of high‐frequency electromagnetic waves in real urban environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is based on a realistic application of the asymptotic theory of the uniform theory of diffraction. Therefore, the effect of material roughness and its electromagnetic properties on the reflection are taken into account.
Findings
Provides information about the mechanisms involved in electromagnetic field propagation in urban environment, and the relative importance of each one.
Research limitations/implications
In urban environment the buildings obviously have finite dimensions. The diffraction equations examined in the paper are strictly valid only in the case of infinite wedges; therefore, the behaviour of real building edges has not been taken rigorously into account.
Practical implications
A source of information for researchers interested in the development of a simulator for the electromagnetic propagation in urban environment.
Originality/value
This paper is aimed at providing to researchers, in a more comprehensive way, all information needed for the study of electromagnetic propagation in an environment containing many close scatterers.
Details
Keywords
Guido Noto, Carmelo Marisca and Gustavo Barresi
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the starting point of a process that is changing how management control (MC) systems are designed and implemented to guide employees towards organisational objectives. The previous literature on virtual teams (VTs) has devoted scant attention to MC issues. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how MC – and particularly cultural control – has changed to cope with the shift from face-to-face to VTs and by analysing the interrelationship between the different control mechanisms and the resulting tensions.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts the methodological framework based on abduction to provide a theoretical explanation and conceptualisation of MC in virtual settings. To tackle the research objective, this work undertakes a cross-sectional field study based on semi-structured interviews with managers of different service companies.
Findings
The results of the research highlight the key challenges that managers are called to deal with to design and change MC systems when implementing remote working. In particular, managers must cope with the reduced possibility to leverage cultural controls. To do this, this study’s analysis found that managers act by introducing and/or removing formal and informal controls and by orchestrating the interplays and tensions between these mechanisms.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date limited attention has been paid to MC in VTs. Moreover, few researchers have investigated the process of MC change from face-to-face to VTs. This work aims to contribute to this nascent stream of literature by providing interesting implications for both research and practice.
Details
Keywords
P. Alotto, F. Delfino, G. Molinari, M. Rossi, V. Siciliano and P.O. Ventura
STREAM is the acronym of a new concept of mass transit system designed and developed by Ansaldo Trasporti S.p.A. to provide an efficient solution to rubber‐tyred transportation…
Abstract
STREAM is the acronym of a new concept of mass transit system designed and developed by Ansaldo Trasporti S.p.A. to provide an efficient solution to rubber‐tyred transportation problems in urban areas. One of STREAM's most distinctive feature is the power supply system, which uses a magnetic lift contact line embedded in the road surface to deliver traction power and to provide operating and control information. In this paper the field and the current flow analyses of this buried feeding track are presented and discussed. Analyses are aimed at determining the highest values of accessible voltages on the ground under different environmental and operating conditions. Results provided by a numerical simulation of the 3D model representing the feeding track allow us to identify the most critical conditions and to verify the safety and reliability of the system.
Details
Keywords
Lena Grzesiak and Wojciech Ulrych
We aimed to determine how remote management support (MS) practices and staff diversity influenced employee performance (EP) within the digital workplace (DW) during the COVID-19…
Abstract
Purpose
We aimed to determine how remote management support (MS) practices and staff diversity influenced employee performance (EP) within the digital workplace (DW) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article highlights the challenges managers face in achieving EP in the DW compared to traditional work environments.
Design/methodology/approach
We developed a theoretical model (MS→DW→EP) and tested it based on the computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) conducted in mid-2022. Factors of primary, secondary and organizational diversity moderated the relationship between the variables. We purposely selected a sample of 1,000 respondents with remote working experience.
Findings
The results show that the DW partially mediates the relationship between MS and EP. The greater the uncertainty in managing people, the more flexibility, trust and job satisfaction required in the DW to achieve EP. Organizational diversity influenced the model more (i.e. teamwork vs individual work) than the primary and secondary diversity (i.e. gender and education).
Research limitations/implications
Although the sample size was large, we cannot consider it statistically representative.
Practical implications
Zoomers and Millennials reflect full mediation in the model that supports EP.
Social implications
Broader work autonomy, smaller organizations and teams as well as hybrid work arrangements, reduce the necessity for in-person meetings with superiors.
Originality/value
Supervisors had to reduce control over the DW while expanding organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to enhance job satisfaction and thus ensure the expected EP during the pandemic. We may consider allowing an employee to postpone work as a new managerial activity within MS.