Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construction of social and environmental strategies and the related implementation of management control by a key organisation located in a pivotal Asian location in the global hospitality industry. In doing so, it sets out to elucidate the forms and processes of strategic social and environmental control as well their relationship to the traditional financial control system.

The study employs field-based case study of a single case operating in both regional and global context. Drawing upon documentary, survey and interview sources, the study employs structuration theory to inform its design and analysis.

The findings reveal the interaction of top-down global corporate framing and bottom-up local-level staff initiatives that combine to develop a locally focussed and differentiated social and environmental programme and expedite an associated management control and accountability system. The study also reveals the dominance of the traditional financial control system over the social and environmental management control system and the simultaneously enabling and constraining nature of that relationship.

Signification and legitimation structures can be employed in building social and environmental values and programmes which then lay the foundations for related discourse and action at multiple levels of the organisation. This also has the potential to facilitate modes of staff commitment expressed through bottom-up initiatives and control, subject to but also facilitated by the dominating influence of the organisation’s financial control system.

This study reveals the importance of national and regional governmental, cultural and social context as both potential enablers and beneficiaries of organisational, social and environmental strategy and control innovation and implementation.

The paper offers an intra-organisational perspective on social and environmental strategising and control processes and motivations that elucidates forms of action, control and accountability and the relationship between social/environmental control and financial control agendas. It further reveals the interaction between globally developed strategic and control frameworks and locally initiated bottom-up strategic initiatives and control.

This paper considers the financial control systems (FCS) used by four multiple outlet retailers. The FCS of the four organisations are compared and considered in the light of task complexity, environmental pressure and management aspirations for profit growth. The data were collected by means of case studies and although the sample is small the case studies illustrate differences from which a relatively simple framework for FCS analysis is developed.

This research complements the corporate reporting literature by exploring the different types of assurance, which companies are using to bolster the credibility of their integrated and sustainability reports. A composite quality measure is proposed and this study aims to provide evidence on how combined assurance quality (CAQ) varies among firms.

Content analysis is used to identify “elements” of combined assurance disclosed in integrated and sustainability reports and company webpages. Results are presented in tabular format and supported by non-parametric tests to evaluate differences in CAQ among firms in more detail.

Combined assurance is framed as a function of the responsibility of the board of directors to ensure accurate, complete and reliable reporting and the characteristics of different internal and external sources of assurance. Overall, combined assurance models are being designed conservatively. They focus mainly on specific disclosures and are guided by a limited number of assurance methodologies or frameworks instead of taking a more pluralistic approach to verification of integrated and sustainability reports as a whole.

The study is based on combined assurance practices by a sample of large listed companies in a single jurisdiction. An international comparison of combined assurance and the calibration of the proposed quality measure is deferred for future research.

Limitations in existing assurance practices are identified for the consideration of preparers and assurance providers. The quality schematic also offers practitioners, standard-setters and academics an easy-to-apply technique for examining the different elements of a company’s combined assurance model.

A better understanding of the quality of combined assurance is essential for users’ to place reliance on integrated and sustainability reports and for informing change to existing assurance practices.

The study is the first to examine the operation and quality of combined assurance. The method used to gauge assurance quality provides a useful basis for a more detailed empirical study on the relevance of combined assurance.

This paper seeks to provide a review and analysis of the contributions and influence of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr, to contemporary business practices and management thought.

The paper begins with an introduction and brief biographical sketch followed by an overview of Sloan's administrative principles as applied at GM. The paper continues with a review of empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of Sloan's principles along with some theoretical explanations for their success. The paper then examines some criticisms surrounding Sloan's contributions before concluding with a discussion of the impact that Sloan's ideas have had on organizational and managerial thought in the context of today's rapidly evolving organizational realities.

Although he was not a management scholar, Sloan's applied work at General Motors resulted in significant and enduring contributions to business practices and management theory. Yet Sloan's contributions are somewhat overlooked today and have not been extensively or critically examined in the current business and managerial contexts.

This paper makes an important contribution to the management history literature by being among the first to offer a comprehensive critical review of the ways in which Sloan has influenced contemporary management thought, theory, and practice.

The ability to make good decisions is the defining attribute of a high performance organization. The challenge is to ensure that good decision‐making practices permeate the entire organization. As organizations grow, employees make decisions in an increasingly complex, ambiguous, and uncertain environment. Formal practices enable employees to make decisions that are meaningful to the firm's stakeholders and guide their behaviours to align with the strategic intent of the firm as well as its values and norms.

Through case studies and consultancy work the author has developed an approach to focus on management decision making and improved effectiveness.

This paper describes a diagnostic tool which helps companies understand how well their management systems support decision making and where CEOs should invest to focus leadership time and attention. The decision‐making scorecard and tools help CEOs design effectiveness management systems and focus its use to drive their specific business agenda.

With formal decision‐making practice in place, CEOs rely on delegation and control practices to ensure that employees make decisions in line with the organization's vision and values. Using the described approach, CEOs and employees focus their attention on the relevant control levers and use their time for interaction and learning rather than control. Furthermore they successfully apply more relevant decision‐making practices than before, and have abandoned extensive and expensive performance management projects in favour of more differentiated and focused initiatives that support their immediate goals with a direct impact. The tools have been used to ensure that the next strategic move delivers the expected value. In summary, good decision‐making practices translate the CEOs' power and responsibility into higher performance, growth and lower risk.

The paper aims to propose a model and a comprehensive diagnostic method of organizational health status based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

The methodology is qualitative/interpretive and uses of the concept of functional homomorphism of WR Ashby is used, establishing similarities between the way in which this ancient medicine considers the human being and their condition as healthy to transfer it to an organization that produces goods and/or services.

A healthy organization is conceived as one constituted by an association of people regulated by a set of norms based on certain purposes in a state of harmonious balance of their physical and energetic dimensions. In that the physical refers to storage functions, regulation and allocation of resources; transformation of raw materials and inputs into goods and services; waste disposal, distribution and coordination and with information systems for management control, while energy is associated with the ability to act with its management and policies.

The current paper is a first theoretical proposal, which should be enriched with practical applications that feedback its conceptual formulation, thus contributing to its validation.

A comprehensive organizational diagnostic method is made available.

The proposed method allows a comprehensive organizational diagnosis, considering the participation of all the actors that make up this type of social systems.

Although the methodological resource is old, the way it is used here is considered original, and it is also part of an original investigative process by the authors, oriented toward the search for comprehensive organizational diagnostic methods.

Hysteria isn't the sort of word you usually associate with the unfrenzied, unflappable sort of people who earn their living introducing and implementing financial controls into organizations or the auditors who check their effectiveness.

Considers the many demands facing managers in modern organizations, particularly following the effects of downsizing and flattened organizational structures. Managers have to be concerned with, variously, product and/or service quality, financial planning and accountability, organizational change, risk and project management, efficient use of resources (especially human resources), teamwork and leadership, stress and counselling. This article identifies the important areas within each concern. It recognises that it would be impossible to cover all areas at once, so discusses strategies to ensure that the relevant parts of each role a manager has can be deployed at the appropriate time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role played by value systems as mechanisms for organizational change. Three issues are examined: purpose; implementation; and effects, intended and unintended, that may arise from using values systems as a management control mechanism to effect organizational change.

The research is based on evidenced garnered from an in‐depth, longitudinal study of a major UK based organization which operates in the “global communications industry”. Data are collected from a range of sources, but particularly interviews and a questionnaire survey involving a broad cross‐section of the company's managers.

Findings suggest that, in terms of purpose, top management may use value systems as a management control mechanism to effect organizational change by espousing a new set of normative values which should inform managers' decisions and actions, particularly in trade‐off situations. Communication and implementation of value systems may involve a multitude of formal and informal information‐based mechanisms and procedures, including mission statements, newsletters, email, “strategy days”, “roadshows” and similar social events. Implementation may rely on change agents creating a drive for change. However, the results of a questionnaire survey suggest that value systems may be only partly successful in securing their intended purpose of mobilising attitudes around a particular set of normative values. Various unintended effects may arise which, in the present case, include increasing project redundancy, decreasing project scrutiny, a re‐distribution of social esteem within the firm, polarisation of attitudes towards budgetary control, and a general reduction in the exercise of hierarchical management control. Overall, it argued that the use of value systems as a mechanism of organizational change may be as problematic to the firm as it is beneficial.

The results of the present study may help firms devise more appropriate value systems for “maintaining or altering patterns of organizational behaviour”.

The present study contributes further insight is through evidence which suggests value systems may be used to communicate a set of quite specific values; and adds to a knowledge of the range of procedures which may be involved in using value systems to effect organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how first-line managers (FLMs) in home care (HC) reason about the opportunities and obstacles to lead the work according to the individual’s needs and goals.

In this participatory appreciative action reflection project, eight managers within one Swedish municipality were interviewed. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis.

The results showed a polarization between two different systems that FLMs struggle to balance when attempting to lead HC that adapts to the needs and goals of individuals. One system was represented by the possibilities of a humane system, with human capital in the form of the individual, older persons and the co-workers in HC. The second system was represented by obstacles in the form of the economic needs of the organization in which the individual receiving HC often felt forgotten. In this system, the organization’s needs and goals governed, with FLMs needing to adapt to the cost-effectiveness principle and keep a balanced budget. The managers had to balance an ethical conflict of values between the human value and needs-solidarity principles, with that of the cost-effectiveness principle.

The FLMs lack the opportunity to lead HC according to the needs and goals of the individuals receiving HC. There is a need for consensus and a value-based leadership model based on ethical principles such as the principles of human value and needs-solidarity to lead the HC according to the individual’s needs and goals.