Search results

This study examines the association between the use of a package of contemporary and a package of traditional management accounting practices with organizational change and organizational performance.

Data were collected based on a mail survey distributed to a sample of 740 public sector organizations.

The findings indicate that while the prevalence of traditional practices is still dominant, such practices were not associated with organizational change or performance. Rather, those organizations that use contemporary management accounting practices to a greater extent experienced greater change and stronger performance.

The findings suggest that contemporary management accounting practices can assist public sector practitioners in improving performance and promoting organizational change.

The study provides an empirical insight into the use and effectiveness of management accounting practices in the public sector. The study provides the first empirical analysis of the effect of using a package of management accounting practices in the public sector.

This study aims to examine the traditional disaster management cycle; discussing the significance of incorporating contemporary management concepts into the disaster management cycle; and proposing a conceptual model that reflects contemporary management insight for the disaster management cycle.

A literature review was made to discuss the significance of moving towards a more contemporary view to the disaster management cycle that brings more value to the final outcomes of the disaster management process. A conceptual model was then proposed to reflect a more contemporary view to the disaster management cycle. The current COVID-19 pandemic has also been addressed explicitly throughout the paper as a case that reflects the necessity of embracing contemporary insight and practise in the traditional disaster management cycle.

The literature indicates that people worldwide, as well as academics still rely heavily on the traditional disaster management lifecycle to manage disasters and major incidents which consists of four main stages; preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery unrecognizing that each and every disaster is a unique incident itself and that it should be treated differently. Contemporary management thought and insight is still lacking in the study of disaster and emergency management.

This research offers a contemporary view to the traditional disaster management cycle in which recent concepts of management are used to better cope with the uniqueness of the different major incidents. This view fosters wider involvement of individuals and the general public in the disaster management process and highlights elements of creativity and modernity. The current COVID-19 pandemic, despite the many adverse consequences associated with it, has contributed constructively to the ways the traditional disaster management cycle is being implemented and practised worldwide.

This research is expected to be of a substantial value for those interested in improving performance during the various stages of the disaster management process, as well as those interested in improving organizational, social and national resilience. The traditional disaster management cycle tends to be procedural and therefore needs to embrace contemporary management thought and more value-based approaches.

The management profession has a long and well‐documented history adopting and abandoning “fads” promulgated by a series of thinkers, practitioners, and opinion leaders who enjoy a “guru” like status. The purpose of this paper shows that stereotyping contributes to the existence of this guru‐fad phenomenon.

The paper examines the characteristics of both management fads and the phenomenon of stereotyping with reference to two leading historical management practitioners and thinkers, Henri Fayol and Mary Parker Follett.

Drawing on the examples of Mary Parker Follett and Henri Fayol, it argues that the influence exerted by other management gurus and fads, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific Management and Elton Mayo's Human Relations Movement, gave rise to a stereotyped view of both Follett and Fayol's work that prevented an accurate appraisal of their ideas.

In addition, this paper notes that, while Follett and Fayol exhibited an extraordinary capacity to identify the very issues that have spawned many subsequent management fads, the contemporary management discipline's approach to both thinkers is quite different. While Follett has escaped her earlier stereotypes, allowing management thinkers a new opportunity to re‐assess her work and value its contemporary relevance, Fayol remains misclassified as a European Taylorist who has little to offer the contemporary management practitioner.

This paper provides an interesting insight into the characteristics of both management fads and the phenomenon of stereotyping.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and critique Lyndall Urwick's long‐term advocacy of scientific management and its influence upon management thought.

An analysis and critique of Urwick's published writings across 60 years, on the subject of scientific management and organizations, particularly linking his work and arguments to the influence of Frederick Taylor, also positioning him relative to the thinking of leading thinkers such as Henri Fayol.

This paper argues that the key to understanding his legacy lies in his unique and changing definition of “scientific management”. This was broader than the definition applied by most of his contemporaries and inspired his integrationist project of assimilating Taylorist scientific management into a raft of developing schools of management thought.

Urwick's legacy included a lifetime campaign to reconcile scientific management with succeeding schools of thought, today's management literature stereotyping of some of his contemporary thinkers, and a contribution to management literature's predilection for the labelling of theories and principles.

The paper argues for returning to original sources to accurately understand the intentions and arguments of early founders of many aspects of today's management practice. It also alerts us to the proclivity of management theory and practice to opt for convenient labels that may represent a variety of historical and contemporary meanings.

The paper offers a critical reflection and assessment of the longest standing advocate of scientific management in the management literature.

Since the implementation of the Motor Industry Development Programme in 1995, South African motor manufacturers have had to face pressures and challenges to which they had not been accustomed in a very protected environment. These pressures include ever‐intensifying competition, which necessitates increased competitiveness with regard to quality and price. As locally built cars can compete with the best in terms of quality, the primary area of concern for survival has shifted to international competitiveness with regard to price. This research project comprised a literature study and an empirical survey of the developments in the management accounting used by the seven major local motor manufacturers, which together have a 90,8% share of the local market. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made regarding the implementation and improvement of the contemporary management accounting techniques that are used in the South African motor manufacturing industry. The aim of the project was to contribute towards target pricing, which could result in the increased profitability and competitiveness of the local industry in a highly competitive global market and at a market‐based price.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It investigates its manifest and underlying agendas with a view to determining its degree of cost management focus and scientific management foundations.

The paper uses historical and website analysis methodologies for investigating historical office management philosophies and practices, as well as contemporary office design and management philosophies and related ABW practices and discourse. These are examined through the theoretical lenses of governmentality and impression management theories.

Despite a rhetoric of staff empowerment, ABW’s dominant agenda is overhead cost reduction and operating cost management. This reflects scientific management principles of early twentieth-century office design and management. Cost efficiencies and productivity emerge as key ABW output foci. While ABW adopters and advocates present ABW as a desirable staff satisfaction and operations facilitator, the cost agenda nonetheless commands centre stage.

Accounting research into the office and its processes is much needed. This has been largely neglected in favour of line management and factory floor costing and accountability systems. In a world dominated by service industries, the office as a centre of organisational and economic activity merits researchers’ greater attention.

Contemporary office design and functioning developments merit greater recourse to and acknowledgement of their historic roots. Then, practitioners can better design and implement systems that build on past knowledge and learnings. While such innovations as ABW may carry potential for improved organisational performance, care is needed with respect to their balancing of agendas and suitability for their institutional and cultural environments.

Organisational work has become a dominant part of social life in most economies today. Such innovations as ABW must be considered in terms of the societal culture into which they are introduced: how they reflect and adapt to that culture and what impacts they may also have on the culture itself. This includes dimensions such as organisational and self-control, as well as personal and organisational accountability.

This study presents itself as one of the very few refereed research studies of ABW currently available in the accounting, management or property research literatures. It also represents one of the very few studies of the office in the accounting research literature internationally.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the research related to “the interplay between accounting and the state, politics, and local authorities in the broad government and administration of food for sustainability of populations” (Sargiacomo et al., 2016). Considering contemporary examples and investigating the genealogy of an 18th-century reform of fishery management (the New Plan), the authors explore the role played by accounting and calculative practices when local authorities intervene using forms of discipline based on control systems that acted on commons (fish), people and space.

This paper is historically grounded on archival research on a fish provisioning case during the 18th century in Ancona, an Italian town on the Adriatic coast. The investigation adopts an approach focussed on the use of disciplinary methods in the terms highlighted by Foucault. This perspective offers a lens capable of revealing the key role of accounting in a period when discipline became “general formulas of domination” (Foucault, 1977) and the Papal States were looking for food provisioning solutions (Foucault, 2007). The study highlights similarities with contemporary fishery management.

The paper shows that governability of fishery in a commons' logic is not limited by the properties of the good, but rather “it is achieved through the objects and instruments that are deployed to make it possible” (Johnsen, 2014, p. 429). It reveals forms assumed by economic calculation in different eras and their contribution in the art of governing realised by the state (Hoskin and Macve, 2016). The study unveils how accounting effectively operates using “naming and counting” activities (Ezzamel and Hoskin, 2002) based on a system of documents and accounting registers; these have a pivotal role in redefining fishery management and in keeping goods (fish) and people (fishermen) under control. The investigation also highlights the importance of properly quantifying data in fishery management, confirming the literature on the topic (Beddington et al., 2007, p. 1713). In contemporary situations, data refer to quantifying the fish stock in the sea and the consequent estimation of fish catch. In the historical investigation, although environmental protection was not an issue, quantification refers to the fish that entered the town of Ancona, whose estimation was the result of a new calculative approach adopted by local authorities facing fish needs. In addition, it offers early evidence of organised and rational-based control mechanisms that were the result of Enlightened ideas emerging in the Papal States context.

Despite the fact that fish represent a fundamental good for governments to act on in response to a population's needs, there has been no attention paid to how governmental authorities have used disciplinary mechanisms to intervene in fishery management or the role played by accounting. This study's novelty is its investigation of fishery, using Foucauldian disciplinary methods to understand accounting's contribution in fishery governance. In addition, this investigation permits to unveil the role of accounting to support one of the main principles of the governance of commons that is represented by the congruence between rules and local conditions (Fennell, 2011, p. 11; Ostrom, 1990, p. 92).

Systems theory is frequently discussed. The aim of the contribution is to elaborate what is to be advised with the idea of closed systems regarding change management.

This paper follows Niklas Luhmann and his so-called “autopoietic turn.” It provides a profound theoretic basis, from which the needs and requirements of the post-heroic management emerge. The implications of this specific approach to change management are demonstrated by means of the contemporary example of scrum. The applied method is literature review.

This contribution seeks to understand the relevance of closed systems within change management. Especially, the meaning of indirect strategies of control as a requirement for change management will be shown. That means Luhmann emphasizes the pessimism of traditional change management. The findings emphasize the meaning of self-organizing systems predicating by means of observation, which configurates corporate agility.

Systems theory often suffers from lack of empirical evidence, as systems are multi-complex. As an alternative, in this study, a literature-based discussion of the contemporary agile project management technique “scrum” is used.

The meaning of power in management shifts from formal to informal or soft power, e.g. the ability to promote self-binding processes. Thus, closed systems emphasize the need to look for alternatives for change management.

Characterizing Luhmann as a hidden champion of contemporary management as modern management tools like hackathons or crowdsourcing also benefit from closed systems.

Though there is emerging research that induces a postulation for a Vedic–Buddhist (V–B) cultural cluster, good theory development requires not only generalizability but also strong explanation. This paper aims to address the explanation gap to strengthen emerging theory development.

Religion-derived spiritual philosophy travel is traced from historical origins in India to contemporary Japanese management practice and its underpinning values.

The enhanced explanation developed in this paper finds a clear trace of spiritual values with roots in India surfacing in contemporary Japanese management as identified in extant cross-cultural management (CCM) literature.

This paper offers important explanation to strengthen emerging theory on the novel idea of a V–B CCM cluster.

The strengthening of explanation for emerging theory adds to the case for modification of the traditional CCM meta-narrative that has positioned India and Japan in separate cultural clusters.

Strengthening the postulation of a V–B cultural cluster potentially lubricates foreign investment from Japan to India contributing to achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal no. 17 that pertains to international partnerships. Additionally, the findings raise questions for public policymakers who in modern times occlude religion from the public sphere.

This paper offers novel explanatory perspectives for emerging CCM theory, potentially expanding the spiritual philosophy avenue of management research.

Planning, organising, co‐ordinating, commanding and controlling – these are the elements of management according to Henri Fayol. Less known, but no less important, are Fayol’s principles of management. Fayol was born in 1841 and died in 1925. His Administration Industrielle et Générale was published in French in 1916 but was not translated into English until 1929. Fayol’s work is often quickly rejected either because of its age or because it is believed to have been superseded by observational findings. However, Fayol’s work was based on observation. This paper considers some contemporary models of management (Hales, Kotter, Mintzberg) and argues that Fayol’s elements of management are not refuted but are rather reinforced by more recent findings. The paper concludes that Fayol’s work stands the test of time. The five elements of management and 14 principles of management are briefly presented.