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How Accounting Ends: Self‐Undermining Repetition in Accounting Life Cycles*
No full textABSTRACT This study develops a process model of how accounting may come to an end. Grounded in a longitudinal study of a risk culture survey, this model focuses on the dynamics that underpin the repetition of accounting practices, and sheds light on two boundary conditions of successful repetition and continuation, which are in tension with each other. On the one hand, there are pressures for repetition that preserves continuity and comparability. On the other hand, there is the ongoing organizational need to adjust accounting practices. Iterating between the case study findings, social studies of accounting, and the sociology of replication in scientific practice, the model shows how moving too close to either boundary increases the risk that repetition undermines the accounting practice being repeated: “perfect repetition” may be perceived as uninteresting and decision‐irrelevant; very “imperfect repetition” may be perceived as something too different and idiosyncratic, and hence also decision‐irrelevant. As a result, the analysis extends a rich literature that has examined empirical instances of failure of the conditions that sustain the repeatability of accounting practices. Via the theory of “self‐undermining repetition,” this study shows how the possibilities for accounting's ending are paradoxically inherent in the very act of repetition. This notion of “self‐undermining repetition” is deepened by a discussion of how it may be affected by four contingencies: task ambiguity, organizational politics, organizational actors' reflexivity, and external networks of support. Overall, the analysis of the self‐undermining dynamics of repetition and related contingencies contrasts with research that foregrounds the constitutive nature of repeated uses of accountings. It shows how repetition may also undermine, rather than cumulatively consolidate, accounting practices.
RÉSUMÉ Comment la comptabilité prend fin : la répétition autodestructrice dans les cycles de vie de la comptabilité Cette étude développe un modèle de processus pour expliquer comment la comptabilité peut prendre fin. Fondé sur une étude longitudinale d'une enquête sur la culture du risque, ce modèle se concentre sur la dynamique qui sous‐tend la répétition des pratiques comptables et met en lumière deux conditions aux limites de répétition et de continuation réussies qui sont en tension l'une avec l'autre. D'une part, il existe des pressions en faveur de la répétition qui préserve la continuité et la comparabilité. D'autre part, il existe un besoin organisationnel permanent d'adapter les pratiques comptables. En faisant le lien entre les résultats des études de cas, les études sociales de la comptabilité et la sociologie de la réplication dans la pratique scientifique, le modèle montre comment le fait de s'approcher trop près de l'une ou l'autre limite augmente le risque que la répétition défavorise la pratique comptable répétée: une « répétition parfaite » peut être perçue comme inintéressante et non pertinente pour la décision; une « répétition très imparfaite » peut être perçue comme quelque chose de trop différent et d'idiosyncrasique, et donc également non pertinent pour la décision. En conséquence, l'analyse s'inscrit dans le prolongement d'une riche littérature qui examine les cas empiriques d'échec des conditions qui soutiennent la répétabilité des pratiques comptables. Par le biais de la théorie de la « répétition autodestructrice », cette étude montre comment les possibilités de fin de la comptabilité sont paradoxalement inhérentes à l'acte même de répétition. Cette notion de « répétition autodestructrice » est approfondie par une discussion sur la façon dont elle peut être affectée par quatre contingences: l'ambigüité de la tâche, la politique organisationnelle, la réflexivité des acteurs organisationnels et les réseaux de soutien externes. Dans l'ensemble, l'analyse de la dynamique autodestructrice de la répétition et des contingences connexes contraste avec les recherches qui mettent en avant la nature constitutive des utilisations répétées des comptabilités. Cette analyse montre comment la répétition peut également défavoriser, plutôt que de consolider cumulativement, les pratiques comptables.Accepted by Thomas Ahrens. The authors thank Thomas Ahrens and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and guidance. Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at research seminars held at the LSE and Royal Holloway, 2015 IPA Conference, 2016 EIASM Conference on New Directions in Management Accounting, and 2017 MASOP workshop. The authors are grateful for the helpful comments of Albrecht Becker, Wai Fong Chua, and Dane Pflueger. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), and Lighthill Risk Network
FD Mediagroup: Surviving digital disruption
No full textThe FD Mediagroep (FDMG) case describes how a leading local, niche newspaper company dealt with the challenges of digital disruption in the period 2011-2020. It describes both the actions taken at the corporate and business unit level and shows how FDMG has strengthened its core media business. Furthermore, the case describes how FDMG grew beyond its media core and unveils how the company decided to manage this new business division, and how it chose its operating model: Should the new business operate as an autonomous division or should the corporation actively pursue synergies with the other business divisions
Managing the trade-off between autonomy and task interdependence in creative teams: The role of organizational-level cultural control
No full textIn the creative industries, creative output is often produced in temporary project teams, staffed with employees from within the organization. In this study we make two main contributions regarding the management of creative performance in such teams. First, we provide evidence for a fundamental trade-off inherent in creative teamwork. Team creativity benefits both from high team member autonomy and high task interdependence, but when team leaders give higher autonomy to team members then this undermines the positive effect of a more interdependent design of teamwork on team creativity, and vice versa. Second, we argue that cultural control at the organizational level is an effective means to resolve this team-level trade-off and to enable teams to leverage both high autonomy and high task interdependence for higher team creativity. We test our hypotheses using survey data collected at three different organizational levels (team members, team leaders, and agency heads) from 372 individuals of 101 temporary project teams within 53 advertising agencies, and find evidence consistent with our predictions
Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings
No full textAligning CEO compensation with environmental sustainability is one of the primary channels through which firms which firms can improve their environmentally sustainability. In this study, we investigate the effect of board-level environmental expertise on the use of environmental criteria in CEO compensation. Using hand-collected data on environmental criteria from a European sample, we show that environmental expertise is positively associated with the use of environmental criteria. Moreover, we explore several mechanisms for the use of expertise, and find that in countries with lower environmental awareness, environmental expertise is more strongly associated with the likelihood of using environmental criteria
Reviving the stalled revolution of the working mother: Multi‐level intervention paths towards more gender balance
No full textAbstract This commentary advances evidence‐based propositions for interventions targeting the stalled side of the gender revolution: gender balanced roles in the home domain. Such interventions should be approached in a multi‐level frame, from (1) socialization; to (2) family‐level interventions; (3) organisational policies; and (4) societal policy/governance levels. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement
Ageism towards younger workers: prescriptive stereotypes among American and Portuguese workers
No full textShadow boards in talent management
No full textDespite the influx of younger generations in our workforce, many companies are still run solely by a traditional board of directors. Though they are packed with experience and wisdom, it is sometimes hard for board members to escape the ivory tower. When this happens, the existing board of directors might not stay closely attuned to the latest developments, such as demographics, product or service development, technology, or marketing. It seems many organisations struggle with the same challenges: How to successfully integrate the younger generations’ insights? How to create career perspectives in delayering organisations? And how to stay ahead of disruption in the digital marketplace, with a slow or sometimes weak response to changing market conditions? Shadow boards were created to provide answers to these questions. In essence, a shadow board is a group of non-executive employees, regardless of level, that works together (or in parallel) with senior executives on strategic initiatives. They typically receive the same agenda as the executive committee to be sure to avoid group thinking in the existing executive committee. As such, they will challenge organisations to think about their business or operations from a new paradigm. The purpose is to leverage the younger group’s insights and to diversify the perspectives that executives are exposed to. Synonyms for shadow boards are shadow executive board, shadow comex/codir/excom, millennial excom, millennial board, excom-Y, or mirror board. Vlerick’s Centre for Excellence in Strategic Talent Management studied the appearance of shadow boards in Belgian organisations. Our respondents indicated that shadow boards exist in different formats and can deviate from the definition we find in the literature. This white paper discusses the origin of the shadow board, the added value that it can bring to the organisation, and how to effectively integrate it into the talent development process. Some national and international cases are highlighted to show the different forms a shadow board can take and inspire organisations eager to build one themselves
Transfer learning for hierarchical forecasting: Reducing computational efforts of M5 winning methods
No full textThe winning machine learning methods of the M5 Accuracy competition demonstrated high levels of forecast accuracy compared to the top-performing benchmarks in the history of the M-competitions. Yet, large-scale adoption is hampered due to the significant computational requirements to model, tune, and train these state-of-the-art algorithms. To overcome this major issue, we discuss the potential of transfer learning (TL) to reduce the computational effort in hierarchical forecasting and provide a proof of concept that TL can be applied on M5 top-performing methods. We demonstrate our easy-to-use TL framework on the recursive store-level LightGBM models of the M5 winning method and attain similar levels of forecast accuracy with roughly 25% less training time. Our findings provide evidence for a novel application of TL to facilitate the practical applicability of the M5 winning methods in large-scale settings with hierarchically structured data
‘There’s Many a Slip “Twixt the Cup and the Lip”’: HR Management Practices and Firm Performance
No full textAbstract Divergent but complementary perspectives have been articulated regarding how management practices and their implementation influence firm performance. Integrating such perspectives in the human resource (HR) management literature, we examine how HR management practices formulated at firm level interact with HR decisions at lower levels, and how this affects firm performance. HR implementation models have proposed that consistency in HR practices across organizational levels and units is key; conversely, idiosyncratic deals (i‐deals) theory advances individualization as a central principle, suggesting that lower‐level initiative in making decisions that reflect local circumstances should have beneficial effects. Addressing the interplay between the consistency and individualization perspectives in a sample of 870 employees nested in 36 firms, we present evidence suggesting that individualized HR decisions positively affect firm performance only in the presence of strong firm‐level HR practices. This interplay occurs through two mediating social exchange processes: perceived organizational support and perceived distributive justice
Academy of Management Proceedings
No full textHow do founder social identities and the entrepreneurial orientation of a new venture combine to explain the latter’s financial performance? To address this crucial yet unanswered question, we take a set-theoretic approach based on fsQCA and analyze a sample of 492 entrepreneurs from 7 countries. We reveal nine configurations predicting either high or low financial performance, which offers unique insights into the multitude of pathways founders can take to succeed and advances several streams of literature