Niels Sandalgaard and Per Nikolaj Bukh
This study focuses on ratcheting and budget behavior in nonprofit museums. Specifically, the authors examine how performance compared with the budget affects future revenue…
Abstract
Purpose
This study focuses on ratcheting and budget behavior in nonprofit museums. Specifically, the authors examine how performance compared with the budget affects future revenue budgets, and how this differs from the extant literature focused on for-profit organizations. The study focuses specifically on the relationship between museums and their sources of public funding and how this affects how museums prepare budgets.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on four years of data covering 97 state-subsidized Danish museums, the authors analyze budget ratcheting using least absolute deviation (LAD) estimations in the form of median regressions.
Findings
The authors find that when actual revenue from admission charges is below the budget, the decrease in the following year's budget is greater than the increase in the following year's budget when actual revenue from admission charges is above the budget (i.e. the authors find asymmetrical ratcheting).
Research limitations/implications
The findings are based on a specific setting (Danish museums), and the results may not be generalizable to other settings.
Practical implications
This study provides insights into the museum sector and other sectors with similar characteristics and contributes to understanding the differences between museums and for-profit organizations when it comes to budgeting. As private-sector management practices are gaining ground in the museum sector, it is important to learn more about budgeting-related issues in this sector.
Originality/value
The asymmetrical ratcheting the authors find is the opposite of ratcheting typically found in for-profit organizations. The authors attribute the results to the incentive conflict between museums and their public funding sources. The authors point to the museums' dependence on public funding as an explanation for the results and, thereby, extend the knowledge on ratcheting to organizations with different characteristics than traditional, for-profit organizations.
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Sebastian P. L. Fourné, Daniel Guessow and Utz Schäffer
We develop and validate measurement instruments for the business partner, watchdog, and scorekeeper roles of controllers. This study addresses calls to enhance the quality of…
Abstract
We develop and validate measurement instruments for the business partner, watchdog, and scorekeeper roles of controllers. This study addresses calls to enhance the quality of survey research in management accounting by devoting more attention to scale development and especially to construct validity. By focusing on the activity sets of the controllers’ roles, we provide a theoretically and empirically grounded picture of their current roles. The measurement instruments presented in this study enable systematic research progress on controller roles, their relationships, antecedents, and performance outcomes.
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Chiara Oppi and Emidia Vagnoni
This paper aims to investigate the consequences of the coercive regulations for performance measurement and comparability that strengthened regional health authority’s control…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the consequences of the coercive regulations for performance measurement and comparability that strengthened regional health authority’s control over organizations’ activities on management accountants’ relationship with clinician managers, who are the recipients of accounting information for decisional processes in health-care organizations. To achieve this aim, the research focuses on management accountants’ perception of their role and whether they perceive role conflict and role ambiguity.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study was undertaken in a public university hospital in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy; 9 management accountants and 11 clinician managers were interviewed and secondary data analyzed.
Findings
Management accountants show low capabilities to support clinician managers’ decisional processes. Following the enactment of regulations, management accountants perform their role with a primary focus on functional responsibility. The focus on the provision of information to address regulations influenced management accountants’ capability to act as business partners in the organization. Because of the conflicting information needs from regulations and clinician managers, management accountants experience role conflict and ambiguity.
Research limitations/implications
The paper has implications for policymakers, underlining the consequences of strict regulations on management accountants’ role. It also emphasizes the importance of revising accounting techniques to satisfy both regional requirements and clinician managers’ needs for decision-making.
Originality/value
The article contributes to knowledge related to the role of management accountants in health care. It explores, in particular, the consequences of coercive regulations in health-care organizations, adding knowledge to a field that remains quite unexplored.
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Bert Steens, Anouk de Bont and Frans Roozen
The plethora of changes in the corporate governance landscape over the past two decades has the potential to tighten governance regimes and influence the preference of supervisory…
Abstract
Purpose
The plethora of changes in the corporate governance landscape over the past two decades has the potential to tighten governance regimes and influence the preference of supervisory board members vis-à-vis the involved decision-making role of business unit (BU) controllers and their independent fiduciary role. Stricter financial reporting and compliance requirements may lead organizations to prioritize the latter role. However, recent studies support the need to balance these roles, inducing the potential for role conflict. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the influence of a tight and loose governance regime on this balance as preferred by supervisory board members.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a unique data set from an experiment among 73 supervisory board members. The authors take their perspective because compliance with governance codes and corporate policies are relevant topics for their function.
Findings
The authors find evidence for the preference of supervisory board members for “all-round” BU controllers who, irrespective of the governance regime, demonstrate substantial levels of fiduciary and decision-making qualities and deal with the resulting role conflict.
Originality/value
The outcomes of the experiment among supervisory board members provide evidence for their preferences concerning the balance of the two primary controller roles and for the potential of role conflict. The authors have not found studies that provide such empirical evidence.
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Hans ten Rouwelaar, Jan Bots and Ivo De Loo
The purpose of this paper is to investigate which factors stimulate or hinder the influence management accountants operating at the business unit (BU) level have on the decisions…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate which factors stimulate or hinder the influence management accountants operating at the business unit (BU) level have on the decisions taken by their BU manager(s).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from 119 management accountants in 77 Dutch, multi-divisional organizations, using surveys.
Findings
The study shows that influence on managerial decisions can have two forms: influence on strategic decisions, and influence on operating decisions. Influence on strategic decisions is positively related to the degree of decentralization of an organization. It also depends on whether a management accountant is more extravert and emotionally stable. There is a negative relationship between influence on operational decisions and management accountants’ agreeableness. Not being sufficiently critical may well diminish their influence on operational affairs.
Research limitations/implications
The authors put the view that management accountants at the BU level can partially affect their own role. This may also be expected by their managers. There are more opportunities for management accountants to influence strategic decisions than operational decisions. This study, however, is limited to Dutch, multi-divisional organizations. The management accountants who completed the survey also belong to the personal networks of master degree students who assisted in the data collection process, so that the sample used is not random. Data collected in another country, or in smaller companies could yield different results.
Practical implications
Knowing more about the complex relationship between BU management accountants’ personality traits and their degree of influence on managerial decisions allows organizations to make better-informed choices about who to appoint in such a role.
Originality/value
This study distinguishes between management accountants’ influence on strategic decisions and influence on operational decisions. At the BU level, these are two distinct concepts. This reinforces findings from earlier studies conducted at the corporate level. In addition, it turns out that specific personality traits of management accountants, at the BU level, affect the influence they can exert on both strategic and operational decisions taken by their manager(s).
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This article deals with how to test for and evaluate interdependence among control practices in a management control system using structural equation modeling. Empirical research…
Abstract
This article deals with how to test for and evaluate interdependence among control practices in a management control system using structural equation modeling. Empirical research on the levers of control (LOC) framework is used as an example. In LOC research, a path model approach to interdependence has been developed. The appropriateness of this approach is evaluated, developed, and compared with the correlation of residuals approach (seemingly unrelated regression) implemented in the wider complementarity literature. Empirical examples of the different models are shown and compared by using a data set on LOC of 120 SBUs in Sweden. The empirical results show that modeling interdependence among control practices in a management control system as non-recursive (bi-directional) paths or as residual correlations evidently affects the conclusions drawn about interdependence in terms of both presence and magnitude. The two models imply different views on how to conceptualize interdependence and are not statistically and empirically comparable. If using non-recursive path models, several model specification issues appear. To be able to identify such models, this needs to be carefully considered in the theory and research design prior to data collection.
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Ling Tuo and Shipeng Han
This chapter proposes that tax education, proxied by Master of Science in Taxation (MST) degree, has substantial influence on chief financial officers’ (CFOs) knowledge, skill…
Abstract
This chapter proposes that tax education, proxied by Master of Science in Taxation (MST) degree, has substantial influence on chief financial officers’ (CFOs) knowledge, skill sets, values, and cognitive preferences and further influences their decisions in tax reporting. By empirically examining the relation between CFOs with MST degree and their companies' tax compliance based on US data between 2004 and 2016, we find that CFOs with MST degree are associated with improved tax compliance, suggesting that US MST education, beyond general accounting education, cultivates graduates with higher levels of professionalism and ethics in the field of taxation. Moreover, we find that CFOs' tenure, age, and compensation influence the relation between tax education and tax compliance, suggesting company's compensation and employee policies influence executives' tax decisions. Finally, we find that pressures from financial reporting and CEOs with accounting educational background could alleviate the role of CFOs with accounting educational background in tax reporting, while institutional owners could strengthen the role of CFOs. This chapter provides evidence regarding the social implication of MST program and has important managerial implication to tax compliance, executive recruitment, and corporate governance.
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Antonio Davila, Mahendra Gupta and Richard J. Palmer
Internal control mechanisms are fundamental to organizational governance; particularly, to the agency relationship associated with decentralization of decision rights. Management…
Abstract
Internal control mechanisms are fundamental to organizational governance; particularly, to the agency relationship associated with decentralization of decision rights. Management accounting and organizational literatures provide conflicting predictions on the association between decentralization and internal controls, with some research arguing that internal controls be tightened to mitigate the risks associated with greater decentralization of decision rights while other work avers that tighter internal controls defeat the purposes of decentralization. In this chapter, we argue that managers choose these two organizational design variables jointly. Capitalizing on a unique database of control practices in the purchasing and payment process within the procurement function, this chapter examines the relationship between control tightness – a critical characteristic of internal controls – and decentralization. Using a simultaneous equation model, the study finds that decentralization and internal control design are endogenously determined. Tight control is negatively associated with the level of decentralization, while decentralization has a positive effect on the tightness of control. These results reconcile the apparently contradictory results relating these two variables. The chapter also finds that decentralization and tight control mechanisms operate both independently and synergistically to improve performance.
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R. Kužel, J. Schejbal and M. Matějka
Direct copper bonded (DCB) alumina substrates are among sophisticated technical materials suitable for application in electronics, automotive and engineering industries. DCB…
Abstract
Direct copper bonded (DCB) alumina substrates are among sophisticated technical materials suitable for application in electronics, automotive and engineering industries. DCB substrates resist very severe operational conditions and assure high reliability. This technology provides alumina substrates which are very strongly bonded to copper foil, due to the solidified eutectic alloy Cu2O‐Al2O3 or a suitable vitreous solder. Such substrates are ideal for the construction of elements in microelectronics hybrid circuits, power circuits and devices. As the bonding layer of a solidified eutectic or vitreous solder is very thin, the thermal resistivity stays sufficiently low; in addition, the dilatation properties of DCB substrates are close to those of silicon. This enables soldering of large silicon chips without the risk of creating mechanical stress and allows for the production of devices with very high construction effectivity. Examples of such applications are potential‐free modules, bridge circuits, automotive ignition modules and Peltier elements. The vitreous bonding layers are advantageous for certain applications. State‐of‐the‐art DCB bonding technology was developed for DCB aluminium nitride substrates, which have even better thermal qualities.
Ujjal Mukherjee and Saritha S.R.
The literature on unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPOB) has experienced significant growth in the past decade. However, there is limited research on the effects of…
Abstract
Purpose
The literature on unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPOB) has experienced significant growth in the past decade. However, there is limited research on the effects of organizational, team and malleable individual factors on UPOB. It is also necessary to explore its adverse effects for theoretical advancement and to uncover unexplored opportunities. This study aims to systematically examine the existing body of literature on UPOB, providing thorough theoretical, contextual and methodological insights.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis technique, the authors identified 43 articles on UPOB from journals included in the ABDC-2019 list. The authors conducted an analysis of the identified articles and categorized them using a modified version of Paul and Rosado-Serrano’s (2019) TCCM framework.
Findings
Existing literature primarily focuses on attitudinal and contextual antecedents of UPOB, neglecting individual differences and their consequences. The review suggests that certain desired employee attitudes may also lead to UPOB. In addition, the study highlights underutilization of established behavioral theories, emphasizing the need for a more inclusive theoretical framework. The exploration identifies research gaps, including in multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies, aiming to broaden the research scope in this field.
Research limitations/implications
The study highlights the need for a more comprehensive theoretical framework to understand UPOB.
Practical implications
It cautions organizations fostering positive employee attitudes, such as job satisfaction, workplace spirituality and organizational commitment, as these may inadvertently promote UPOB.
Social implications
Socially, the paper highlights how engaging in UPOB affects the lives of involved employees.
Originality/value
This paper’s originality arises from its methodical review and categorization of prior research on UPOB using a distinctive, multidisciplinary research framework.