Management Accountants’ Business Orientation and Involvement in Incentive Compensation

Abstract

In recent years, management accountants-in German-speaking countries also referred to as "controllers"-and their functional roles have been a major research issue. In brief, management accountants are not supposed to act as "company watchdogs" or "cost recorders" anymore, but rather as a "business partner" to management. In this context, management accountants gain increasing importance for managerial decision making. Even though this change has been subject to a broad discussion in literature, some research gaps still remain. In his dissertation, Sebastian Wolf successfully addresses several of these research gaps. In a first step, Wolf analyzes possible reasons why management accountants should act as a business partner in general. Based on the seminal model of Ajzen/Fishbein (1980), Wolf finds that the changing role of management accountants rather stems from external managerial pressure than from internal attitudes. He also finds that acting as a business partner has a significant, albeit small, positive impact on firm performance. In a second step, Wolf complements these results with an in-depth study of the involvement of management accountants in incentive compensation. He finds that this is beneficial especially for firms in which management accountants see 27 28 Ref. Ajzen/Fishbein (1980); Fishbein/Ajzen (1975) and the explanations in Section 1.2 of Part C. Ref. Sheppard/Hartwick/Warshjaw (1988). B Research method Part B of the thesis addresses the research method. The methodological foundations are laid in two steps: The first chapter of this part is devoted to data collection procedures and the sample of the study. The second chapter introduces and describes SEM techniques that will be applied for data analysis.

Organizational Control and Work Effort – Another Look at the Interplay of Rewards and Motivation

“…The provision of rewards is a central element of organizational control systems (e.g., Anthony and Govindarajan, 2006;Flamholtz et al, 1985;Malmi and Brown, 2008;Merchant and Van der Stede, 2012;Otley, 1999) and management accountants are more involved than ever in the design of reward systems (e.g., Wolf, 2011). However, although significant scientific progress has been made, the literature remains of limited help to practitioners.…”