Search results

Thyssen Umformtechnik Turbinenkomponenten (TUT) in Remscheid is a supplier of turbine components for landbase turbines and for aero‐engines. Customers in the aerospace and landbase turbine business strive for reductions in costs and weight as well as for the improvement of operating temperatures in order to increase the efficiency of their engines. Next to short‐term activities like continuous improvement for cost reduction, TUT carries out research work as a long‐term investment. The research activities at TUT are numerous and range from the simulation of forging operations to the qualification of advanced materials. Various examples are presented.

This study explores the configurations of management control systems (MCSs) while taking into account entrepreneurial cognition styles (ECSs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to understand the impact of ECS on deployment and identify the various modes of MCS configurations employed by SMEs. The authors draw on and synthesise two theoretical perspectives relating to cognition and management control packages to understand the associations between ECS and MCS employed by SMEs in managing their business. This study was conducted using a quantitative approach that utilises a questionnaire survey to collect cross-sectional data from 150 SMEs. The authors uncovered three cognitive styles: knowing (e.g. preciseness), planning (e.g. organising), and creativity (e.g. innovativeness). Furthermore, five configurations of MCS utilised by SMEs were identified: customer focus, performance monitoring, administrative focus, strategic focus, and development focus. By combining both analyses, the authors discovered three constellations of significant association between ECS and MCS characterised by Cluster 1’s cohesive integration approach, Cluster 2’s revealing strategic approach, and Cluster 3’s multifaceted exploration. The study is significant because it uncovers the complex relationship between ECS and MCS configurations, highlighting their interdependence within the institutional context. Using a cognitive view, the authors explore how the cognitive styles of entrepreneurs facilitated imprinting institutional context into MCS configurations. These insights enable us to envisage that ECS is not mutually exclusive but forms a continuum that provides more plausible explanations that relax the direct universal relationship between MCS configurations and contextual factors.

This study investigates state institutions' influence on corporate accountability and control practices in a rural African context. Exploring the different rationales behind state existence in the context of sugar production in Egypt, this work clarifies how accountability is practised differently in the case of the high centrality of state logics in the business sector.

Theoretically, the study draws insights from the institutional logics perspective. Following the case study approach, data are collected through interviews, observations and documents.

The study found that state institutions can play a supportive rather than a mere constraining role in the management, accountability and control processes. Notably, it clarified how state-related institutions were highly central and influential in a way that enabled them to curb the (negative) influences of the community and business institutions. In this context, it is social – rather than functional – accountability which emerges as the central control practice to achieve answerability and enforcement.

Thus, this study's reported findings confirm the role of institutional (political) logics as supportive in society.

Electron beam melting (EBM) is one of the potential additive manufacturing technologies to fabricate aero-engine components from gamma titanium aluminide (γ-TiAl) alloys. When a new material system has to be taken in to the fold of EBM, which is a highly complex process, it is essential to understand the effect of process parameters on the final quality of parts. This paper aims to understand the effect of melting parameters on top surface quality and density of EBM manufactured parts. This investigation would accelerate EBM process development for newer alloys.

Central composite design approach was used to design the experiments. In total, 50 specimens were built in EBM with different melt theme settings. The parameters varied were surface temperature, beam current, beam focus offset, line offset and beam speed. Density and surface roughness were selected as responses in the qualifying step of the parts. After identifying the parameters which were statistically significant, possible reasons were analyzed from the perspective of the EBM process.

The internal porosity and surface roughness were correlated to the process settings. Important ones among the parameters are beam focus offset, line offset and beam speed. By jointly deciding the total amount of energy input for each layer, these three parameters played a critical role in internal flaw generation and surface evolution.

The range selected for each parameter is applicable, in particular, to γ-TiAl alloy. For any other alloy, the settings range has to be suitably adapted depending on physical properties such as melting point, thermal conductivity and thermal expansion co-efficient.

This paper demonstrates how melt theme parameters have to be understood in the EBM process. By adopting a similar strategy, an optimum window of settings that give best consolidation of powder and better surface characteristics can be identified whenever a new material is being investigated for EBM. This work gives researchers insights into EBM process and speeds up EBM adoption by aerospace industry to produce critical engine parts from γ-TiAl alloy.

This work is one of the first attempts to systematically carry out a number of experiments and to evaluate the effect of melt parameters for producing γ-TiAl parts by the EBM process. Its conclusions would be of value to additive manufacturing researchers working on γ-TiAl by EBM process.

Industry 4.0 has been identified as a key cornerstone to modernise economies where man and machines complement each other seamlessly to achieve synergies in decision-making and productivity for contributing to SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. The integration of Industry 4.0 remains a challenge for the developing world, depending on their current status in the industrial revolution journey from its predecessors 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. This chapter reviews reported findings in literature to highlight how robotics and automated systems can pave the way to implementing and applying the principles of Industry 4.0 for developing countries like Mauritius, where data collection, processing and analysis for decision-making and prediction are key components to be integrated or designed into industrial processes centred heavily on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques. Robotics has not yet found its way into the various industrial sectors in Mauritius, although it has been an important driver for Industry 4.0 across the world. The inherent barriers and transformations needed as well as the potential application scenarios are discussed.

Inspired by leadership research, this paper aims to further the literature on management controls (MCs) by highlighting two managerial capabilities that cultivate dynamic tension. More specifically, we explore how countervailing MCs can be designed and used to create a coordinated and adaptable organisation. These capabilities reveal key insights into dynamic tension because they help us to understand the role of managers and why, how and when some companies succeed in creating dynamic tension while others struggle.

These research objectives are met through a case study on a global manufacturing company called GLOCOMP to preserve anonymity. The authors chose GLOCOMP because it comprises many internal units that must work in a coordinated fashion. However, it is equally important that the units are flexible enough to adapt to their unique local conditions. These two aspirations must be balanced, which necessitates dynamic tension between MCs. Hence, the case provides fertile ground for us to investigate the capabilities that help managers design and use countervailing MCs.

The empirical setting shows that cognitive and behavioural complexity are the keys to successfully designing and using countervailing loose and tight MCs concurrently. Using MCs that work in opposite directions produces a dynamic tension that helps individual units to coordinate their internal supply chains while adapting to fulfil unique roles within the company.

This paper extends previous research by exploring two specific managerial capabilities that enable dynamic tension – cognitive and behavioural complexity. The authors provide specific insights into how managers can create dynamic tension and, further, by highlighting the specific capabilities that give rise to dynamic tension, the authors outline a procedural perspective where a manager’s capabilities and dynamic tension inform one another. The resulting virtuous circle extends the understanding of the relationship between dynamic tension and managerial expertise beyond what the authors currently know as a linear cause-effect correlation.

There is a dearth of research that investigates the impact of national culture on budgeting and management indexes in the public sector across developing countries. Limited studies in accounting and management have explained the role of national culture in shaping organisational and individual values. It is posited that national cultural variables impact budget transparency and performance management. This study contributes to the literature by examining these relations in 16 developing countries.

Adopting an unbalanced timing framework, the current paper seeks to fulfill this gap and applies four cultural dimensions from the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) as explanatory variables to investigate whether national culture is associated with budget transparency and performance management or not, particularly in the context of developing countries. The paper uses budget transparency as the first dependent variable, based on the OECD database from Qi and Mensah (2011), along with performance management as the second dependent variable, from the BTI Project (2016), according to the leadership's political performance management.

Generally, the empirical findings reveal a minimal relation among GLOBE cultural variables with budget transparency and performance management. Particularly, the empirical findings indicate that only performance orientation has a significant relation with budget transparency and performance management.

The findings of this paper suggest that any plan to improve a nation's budget transparency should consider the links between budgeting, performance management and the culture of those that run them.

The formal adoption of new methods by performance management may not be enough without accompanying efforts to transform performance orientation as an index of national culture.

This paper investigates the use of management controls when environmental uncertainty and hostility increase abruptly. Specifically, it explores this in the context of the 2008 financial crisis in six banks located in two countries.

The paper is based on 26 qualitative interviews with selected managers employed by the six banks. Eight interview guides were developed based on the typology of controls in Malmi and Brown (2008). Respondents explained which changes in management controls occurred after the crisis.

Both organic and mechanistic management controls were mobilized at the same time to deal with the change. The use of controls played three main roles: (1) guide and control behavior, (2) change internal and external perceptions and (3) discharge accountability. Finally, control use during a crisis evolves as individual managers design and implement controls. There is no “grand design” rationally guiding the design of the overall system of controls.

The use of management controls in dealing with an increase in uncertainty and hostility cannot be labeled either organic or mechanistic, but will depend on the specific type of change in environmental characteristics. Management controls evolve by interaction with outside actors, as well as internal techniques.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

This study aims to explore the controllability of risk culture, identify and categorize risk culture controls used in firms and explore how industry and ownership structure affect the use of different risk culture controls.

This explorative study is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with 37 participants who are heads of risk management or top managers in German firms from different industries with different ownership structures.

Interviewees perceive risk culture to be largely controllable. The authors identify a wide spectrum of risk culture controls, ranging from leadership and motivational controls to risk competence controls; in each category, the authors find value-, symbol- and clan-based controls. Leadership controls were most extensively discussed by the interviewees. The use of risk culture controls varied based on industry and ownership structure.

Due to the explorative character of the approach, the authors cannot claim representativeness for the results. The study is limited to one point in time and to a German sample. The findings imply that companies should select risk culture controls according to their own context and that implementation requires support by the top and middle management.

The authors respond to the call for more organizational studies on risk management that consider cultural paradigms (Arena et al., 2010; Mikes, 2011; Power, 2009). The study systematically identifies risk culture controls used in corporate practice and categorizes them. It provides tentative evidence of the relevance of context-specific factors for the use of risk culture controls.