“Global” management accounting research: some reflections

I start with some examples of global studies that compare and contrast "remedies" to management control and corporate governance issues across borders to expose the common tenet of such studies that "uniformity" of practices or regulations is "counter-productive" given national/cultural variations across countries. However, I critically evaluate this so-called "non-uniformity" prescription by considering the costs of local or situational adaptions. This naturally links with the "homogenizing" effects of globalization, where I ponder whether globalization might actually reduce the power of comparative studies across countries or regions, or whether, regardless, there remains great benefit to be had from studying "local" practices that can be theoretically generalized. I also offer some suggestions to help strengthen the design of comparative studies to try and maximize their (conceptual, if not econometric) power

The relationship between two consequences of budgetary controls: Budgetary slack creation and managerial short-term orientation

Previous studies have provided contradictory evidence with respect to the effect of rigid budgetary controls on slack and other dysfunctional behaviors. One motivation for the current study was to test whether spillover effects exist between two alleged dysfunctional consequences of a rigid budgetary control style: budget slack creation and managerial short-term orientation. The data support this contention: reducing one form of dysfunctional behavior (slack creation) through rigid controls seems to spill over into another form (stronger management focus on business matters that affect short-term results). However, the budgetary control styles that organizations implement, as well as the behaviors that they encourage, may be affected by two important antecedents: business unit past performance and competitive strategy. The results indicate that business units that either pursue a differentiation strategy or have been more profitable are subject to less rigid budgetary controls, which augment the propensity to build slack as well as the tendency for managers to think long-term. These relationships are tested in a structural equation model on survey data obtained from 153 business unit general managers

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