Contingency-based research has a long tradition in the study of management control systems (MCS). Researchers have attempted to explain the effectiveness of MCS by examining designs that best suit the nature of the environment, technology, size, structure, strategy and national culture. In recent years, contingency-based research has maintained its popularity with studies including these variables but redefining them in contemporary terms. This paper provides a critical review of findings from contingency-based studies over the past 20 years, deriving a series of propositions relating MCS to organizational context. The paper examines issues related to the purpose of MCS, the elements of MCS, the meaning and measurement of contextual variables, and issues concerning theory development. A final section considers the possibility that contingency-based ideas could encompass insights from a variety of theories to help understand MCS within its organizational context.

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Management control systems design within its organizational context: findings from contingency-based research and directions for the future

Based on literature from the domains of organization science, marketing, accounting, and management information systems, this review article examines the theoretical basis of the information overload discourse and presents an overview of the main definitions, situations, causes, effects, and countermeasures. It analyzes the contributions from the last 30 years to consolidate the existing research in a conceptual framework and to identify future research directions.

The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines

This paper applies a value-based management framework to critically review empirical research in managerial accounting. This framework enables us to place the exceptionally diverse set of managerial accounting studies from the past several decades into an integrated structure. Our synthesis highlights the many consistent results in prior research, identifies remaining gaps and inconsistencies, discusses common methodological and econometric problems, and suggests fruitful avenues for future managerial accounting research.

Assessing Empirical Research in Managerial Accounting: A Value-Based Managaement Perspective

The balanced scorecard is a new tool that complements traditional measures of business unit performance. The scorecard contains a diverse set of performance measures, including financial performance, customer relations, internal business processes, and learning and growth. Advocates of the balanced scorecard suggest that each unit in the organization should develop and use its own scorecard, choosing measures that capture the unit's business strategy. Our study examines judgmental effects of the balanced scorecard—specifically, how balanced scorecards that include some measures common to multiple units and other measures that are unique to a particular unit affect superiors' evaluations of that unit's performance. Our test shows that only the common measures affect the superiors' evaluations. We discuss the implications of this result for research and practice.

The Balanced Scorecard: Judgmental Effects of Common and Unique Performance Measures

Assessing empirical research in managerial accounting: a value-based management perspective

The purpose of this paper is to provide a more precise definition of information overload than previously found in the literature. Such a definition is essential to designing usable information systems. Drawing upon work in organization theory, information overload is defined as occuring when the information processing demands on an individual's time to perform interactions and internal calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such processing. Cited empirical evidence demonstrates the reasonableness of the proposed definition.

Information overload: A temporal approach☆

The small number of full‐scale adoptions of activity‐based costing (ABC) coupled with ABC implementation failures have fueled a debate about the costs and benefits of ABC relative to more traditional volume‐based costing (VBC) systems. ABC differs from VBC by focusing attention on activities and resources that are under the control of multiple workers. Reducing these costs often requires a coordinated effort. Therefore, incentives that motivate workers to cooperate are a prerequisite to successful process improvements based on ABC. Alternatively, when competitive incentives are combined with ABC, the result can be unexpected and negative. We examine how accounting cost system and incentive structure choices interact. We find that profits are highest when ABC is linked with group‐based incentives, which provide high motivation to cooperate. In contrast, the lowest level of profit occurs when the same information‐rich cost system, ABC, is coupled with tournament‐based incentives. VBC, a cost system that pro...

Cost System and Incentive Structure Effects on Innovation, Efficiency and Profitability in Teams

Firms using sophisticated capital budgeting techniques (i. e., those that employ present value analysis and account for risk) should theoretically perform better than firms using naive models such as the payback period or accounting rate of return. However, previous empirical work examining this question has produced mixed results. To correct for limitations in these studies, several tests were conducted on firms that adopted sophisticated selection techniques versus a control group of firms that employed naive techniques. After controlling for differences in systematic risk, industry effects, and size, interrupted time-series tests of relative market returns were performed. Based on the results of this study we conclude that the adoption of sophisticated capital budgeting selection techniques will not, per se, result in superior firm performance. It is possible that the adoption of sophisticated selection techniques is one of many policies the firm pursues in the face of economic stress, and this, in combination with other policies, may help to bring about economic recovery for the firm.

Sophisticated capital budgeting selection techniques and firm performance

This chapter provides a historical appraisal of the development of current capital budgeting practices and reviews capital budgeting academic research In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the industrial revolution was instrumental in creating demand for capital budgeting processes and techniques Academic research, beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, is categorized by its focus on appraisal techniques, individual decision-maker effects, organizational issues, and environmental factors Experimental, analytical, agency-based, survey-based, and case-based research is reviewed The chapter concludes with a compilation of issues identified by academic research and a set of questions that have not yet been addressed

A Review of the Literature on Capital Budgeting and Investment Appraisal: Past, Present, and Future Musings

Negotiations between buyers and suppliers that require sharing cost details to identify profitable relationship specific investments often fail and result in hold‐ups. Based on inequity aversion, strategic uncertainty, and risk dominance criteria, we expect negotiators to be more reluctant to share fine information than coarse, less detailed information, which suggests that fine information systems can exacerbate hold‐ups. When negotiators share fine information they achieve more efficient bargaining agreements. However, we find that strategic concerns about inequitable outcomes (fear of opportunistic behavior) lead fewer negotiating pairs to share fine information (where inequitable outcomes can be larger) than coarse information (where inequitable outcomes are smaller). Our results demonstrate that information fineness leads negotiators to trade‐off potential utility losses due to fairness considerations and potential monetary gains. Fewer (more) negotiators chose to share fine (coarse) information and ...

Susan F. Haka

Papers

Information overload: A temporal approach☆

Cost System and Incentive Structure Effects on Innovation, Efficiency and Profitability in Teams

Sophisticated capital budgeting selection techniques and firm performance

A Review of the Literature on Capital Budgeting and Investment Appraisal: Past, Present, and Future Musings

Does ABC Information Exacerbate Hold‐Up Problems in Buyer‐Supplier Negotiations?