Summary Articles Research in management control
Hall – Accounting information and managerial work
Despite calls to link MA more closely to management, much is still to be learned about the
role of accounting information in managerial work.
Process of informing: the use of accounting information as well as other more informal
sources such as observations, personal record keeping and meetings. Informal sources of
information are used in spite of, rather than because of, limitations to formal documented
systems as they are intrinsic to how managers go about making sense of their worlds.
Managers draw upon a range of different resources to perform their complex and demanding
work: accounting information, other sources of information and interactions with other
managers.
Accounting information: financial information. Strengths: aggregation properties and its
role as a common language to facilitate communication among mangers with different
backgrounds, experience and knowledge. However, the sheer variety of tasks that managers
engage with, and the rapid, fragmentary and disjointed way in which they are conducted,
necessitates engaging with an extensive amount of information from a wide variety of
sources. Managers rely on multiple information sources to corroborate the different types of
information that they use.
Managers often value information that is speculative and informal (tacit) rather than
information that is authoritative and formal (explicit).
RQ: How and why use managers accounting information in their work?
Propositions:
P1: Accounting information is used by managers to develop knowledge of their work
environment. This involves using accounting information to test assumptions and
expectations about the organization’s operations and to identify problems, opportunities and
potential surprises.
a. Accounting information is more (less) helpful for knowledge development when a
manager is further removed from (closer to) operational activities, the time horizon of
the issue under consideration is longer (shorter) and the number of operational
factors to consider is larger (smaller) important factors: closeness to operations,
time horizon and diversity of factors under consideration.
b. Accounting information is more (less) likely to facilitate managers’ knowledge
development when it highlights (doesn’t highlight) the outcomes of key events, is
structures (not structured) around issues of managerial importance, is free of
(contains) jargon and does not (does) decipher cause-and-effect relationships.
P2: As accounting information is just one part of a manager’s information set (including direct
observations, informal reports, industry/market/economic data, other specialist information),
its strengths and weaknesses are determined not in isolation but relative to other sources of
information at a manager’s disposal.
a. The primary advantage of accounting information vis-à-vis other information is its
ability to translate operational factors into a single, financial dimension. A single,
financial dimension allows managers to compare operations factors and provides a
common language to facilitate managerial decisions.
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Hall – Accounting information and managerial work
Despite calls to link MA more closely to management, much is still to be learned about the
role of accounting information in managerial work.
Process of informing: the use of accounting information as well as other more informal
sources such as observations, personal record keeping and meetings. Informal sources of
information are used in spite of, rather than because of, limitations to formal documented
systems as they are intrinsic to how managers go about making sense of their worlds.
Managers draw upon a range of different resources to perform their complex and demanding
work: accounting information, other sources of information and interactions with other
managers.
Accounting information: financial information. Strengths: aggregation properties and its
role as a common language to facilitate communication among mangers with different
backgrounds, experience and knowledge. However, the sheer variety of tasks that managers
engage with, and the rapid, fragmentary and disjointed way in which they are conducted,
necessitates engaging with an extensive amount of information from a wide variety of
sources. Managers rely on multiple information sources to corroborate the different types of
information that they use.
Managers often value information that is speculative and informal (tacit) rather than
information that is authoritative and formal (explicit).
RQ: How and why use managers accounting information in their work?
Propositions:
P1: Accounting information is used by managers to develop knowledge of their work
environment. This involves using accounting information to test assumptions and
expectations about the organization’s operations and to identify problems, opportunities and
potential surprises.
a. Accounting information is more (less) helpful for knowledge development when a
manager is further removed from (closer to) operational activities, the time horizon of
the issue under consideration is longer (shorter) and the number of operational
factors to consider is larger (smaller) important factors: closeness to operations,
time horizon and diversity of factors under consideration.
b. Accounting information is more (less) likely to facilitate managers’ knowledge
development when it highlights (doesn’t highlight) the outcomes of key events, is
structures (not structured) around issues of managerial importance, is free of
(contains) jargon and does not (does) decipher cause-and-effect relationships.
P2: As accounting information is just one part of a manager’s information set (including direct
observations, informal reports, industry/market/economic data, other specialist information),
its strengths and weaknesses are determined not in isolation but relative to other sources of
information at a manager’s disposal.
a. The primary advantage of accounting information vis-à-vis other information is its
ability to translate operational factors into a single, financial dimension. A single,
financial dimension allows managers to compare operations factors and provides a
common language to facilitate managerial decisions.
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