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The emerging roles of management accountants as either hybrid accountants or business partners are a cause for much debate in the literature. Of the two characteristics related to these roles, namely information provider and interpreter, and decision-maker, the latter remains under-researched. The present study adds to the decision-maker debate by examining business decision-making involvement. Survey responses from a diverse sample of mostly Institute of Management Accountants (USA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK) members were obtained and analysed to examine their current business decision-making involvement, including an investigation guided by role theory into possible contextual factors associated with different levels of decision-making involvement. The business decision-making involvement of management accountants varies significantly, and is less pervasive than widely believed. A significant proportion (53%) of management accountants in traditional management accounting positions report no, or limited, business decision-making involvement. Management accountants employed in smaller firms, and middle-aged professionals, are more likely to be involved in making business decisions. The inverted u-shaped association between age and decision-making involvement identified in this study, requires further investigation. The large cross-sectional analysis of the present study extends prior research which was mostly narrowly focussed due to its case study nature. The varying levels of decision-making involvement, and contextual variables associated with higher level involvement, shed some light on the intricacies of the role of management accountants. Professional associations and educators should note that the roles of today’s management accountants vary greatly between information provider and decision-maker.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of call centre employees who have been involved in high-involvement innovation (HII) activities to understand what frontline and managerial employees think of these involvement activities.

A qualitative case study approach is utilised, drawing on evidence from seven UK call centres. Various sources of data are examined, i.e. interviews, observation, call listening and documentary.

From the analysis of the testimonies, it is found that job design, the mechanisms and practices as well as other people’s perceptions of involvement influence the experience of frontline and managerial employees. The findings highlight that HII has the potential to intensify jobs (both frontline and managerial employees) when the quantity of ideas submitted becomes a component of the employee performance appraisal system.

This research has shown that the heightened targets used in many of the cases have reduced the ability of employees to be involved in any innovation activities. What is not clear from the findings is that if performance measures can be used in a more participative way with employees so that they can have less time pressure allowing them to become more involved in innovation activities. Thus, an interesting direction for future research would be to consider the effects of performance measurement systems in the role they play in facilitating HII activities.

The findings show that HII has the potential to enrich frontline employees’ jobs, making them feel more valued and giving them some variety and challenge in their job. Therefore, practitioners should approach employee involvement in the innovation process as something potentially fruitful and not just wasted time away from the phones.

This research is important as it explores what effects these involvement initiatives have on the employees and managers involved in them. This is valuable since there is no real consensus across human resource management, labour process and critical management fields resulting in a limited conceptualisation of the relationship between management practices, employee experiences and the outcomes. This research makes a contribution through the elaboration of current theory to understand the complexities and subtleties that exist between the high involvement management practices and the experience of workers and their managers.

The purpose of the study is to examine the role of top management in effective key account management (KAM) relationships, making a distinction between top management commitment and top management involvement.

The study uses data from 304 suppliers from different sectors to test the research model and hypotheses developed. Data were collected by means of personal interviews. The survey instrument was a structured questionnaire.

Results show that top management commitment positively affects top management involvement. In addition, top management involvement totally mediates the relationship between top management commitment and relationship quality. Finally, relationship quality positively relates to financial performance.

The study focuses on the role of top management in KAM. Future research that considers the top management’s role simultaneously with other internal or external factors would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of effective KAM. Future studies can also examine the potential detrimental impact of top management involvement in KAM.

Top managers should get actively involved in KAM. The study provides managers with guidance concerning how top management can have the greatest effect on KAM effectiveness.

The study adds to our understanding of the role of top management in KAM. The study provides an integrative empirical examination of the influence of top management in KAM and offer insights on which ways top management determines KAM success.

The purpose of this paper is to unveil how family involvement in management teams of private Chinese companies affects professional managers’ psychological ownership and sense of “us”, in the hopes of understanding why their devotion cannot coexist with the higher level of commitment of family managers.

This paper includes two main studies. The first uses regression to analyze survey data provided by 165 professional managers working in Chinese private companies. The second is a scenario experiment in which 106 MBA candidates participate.

The study finds that there is a negative relationship between family management involvement and professional managers’ perceived relationship closeness to owners and psychological ownership of firms. It also finds that relationship closeness fully mediates the negative influence of family management involvement on managers’ psychological ownership.

This paper contributes to both the theoretical literature and management practice. From a theoretical perspective, it connects studies in indigenous sociological psychology with new literature on psychological ownership. The paper finds that personal relationships nurture the shared psychological ownership of managers by generating a sense of “us”, providing a new theoretical explanation for its formation process. Furthermore, this study offers an explanation for the negative signal effect of family involvement in management. From a practical perspective, this study finds that family involvement in management acts as a critical boundary condition for using personal relationships to stimulate professional managers.

Examines the involvement of all levels of employees in Hong Kong and China companies for ISO 9000 registration and maintenance. For convenience, the employee levels are divided into management, supervision, staff and operator level categories. The extent and the nature of involvement among these four levels of employees are studied and an appropriate employee strategy for ISO 9000 registration and maintenance is formulated. Based on the literature review, and the analysis of case studies and personal interviews that are conducted for selected Hong Kong and China ISO 9001/2 certified companies, we have formulated an employee involvement strategy to establish, implement and maintain the ISO 9000 based quality system. Then a questionnaire survey is conducted and the survey data are analyzed to validate and revise the strategy formulated earlier.

This study aims to consider how the degree of participation at various hierarchical levels impacts action plan implementation success and firm financial performance. Specifically, the study seeks to assess the relationship among organizational structure, involvement by top management, middle management, lower management and frontline employees and its effect on firm performance; and, when controlling for firm size and industry segment membership, the effect of the relationship among direct involvement effects and interacting involvement effects on performance.

The study used survey methodology and a random sample of members in a US state restaurant association. The analysis included comparisons between groups using independent sample t tests and hierarchical regression to assess direct and interacting effects.

The findings indicate that, regardless of firm size or industry segment, the direct effects of greater top management involvement and the interaction effects of one three‐way interaction (middle management, lower management, and frontline staff) and the four‐way interaction led to higher levels of action plan success. For the longer‐term impact on financial performance, higher participative approaches used by top management and frontline staff were significantly associated with higher overall profits and financial success.

The sample was drawn from a specific region in the USA and may not be generalizable. The study attempts to minimize the potential for non‐response bias and to ensure inter‐rater reliability but these potential threats to validity cannot be totally ruled out.

In general, higher top management participatory approaches are important to enhance financial and strategy implementation success, regardless of firm size. The interaction of participation by all levels of the firm is a useful approach to increase the likelihood of strategy implementation success. Top management and frontline employee participation are critical organizational levels for enhancing participative management approaches and ultimately increasing financial performance for all foodservice firms.

The value of this study is the consideration of the impact of participation by degree across four hierarchical levels on firm performance and plan execution success.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the role of management involvement in innovation and its relationships with organizational, technical and marketing innovations. Organizational innovation, which features both administrative and human capital innovation, is introduced as the intermediate construct to test its indirect effects on the influences of management involvement on technical and marketing innovations.

Data were collected from 196 respondents to an online questionnaire that was sent to 2,500 potential participants randomly selected from electronics manufacturing firms across China. Structural equation model using AMOS 18 was used to analyse the data.

The findings reveal that management involvement has a positive and significant impact on all dimensions of innovation featured. It is also found that organizational innovation has a mediating effect on the association between management involvement and technical innovation, though no such effect can be found in the relationship between management involvement and marketing innovation.

Since the study is quantitative using data emanating from the electronics manufacturing industry in China, further empirical study would be useful to verify and complement the results in other industries and other countries.

The findings show that management involvement appears to exert permeating impacts on all strata of innovation, presenting a reminder to practitioners and researchers that clear senior management direction, endorsement and support are essential to innovation pursuits.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge relating to innovation and innovation decisions. By investigating the interrelationships between management involvement and the various dimensions of innovation featured, the study identifies and charts the casual chains that can be used to guide innovation decisions.

This paper aims to explore the mediating role of effective employee involvement in the links between management commitment to service quality, employees' job satisfaction, and customer perceptions of service performance.

Based on a review of the literature on service management, the authors identified the role of effective employee involvement in the relationships between management commitment to service quality and employees' job satisfaction and between management commitment to service quality and customer perceptions of service performance. Using a random sampling method, the authors obtained 143 matched frontline employee‐customer dyads in the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

The results of the structural equations analysis show that effective employee involvement fully mediates the positive effects of management commitment to service quality on employees' job satisfaction and customer perceptions of service performance.

This study confirms that management commitment to service quality alone does not produce positive organizational outcomes, unless linked with effective employee involvement.

The paper contributes to the literature on service management by identifying the mediating role of effective employee involvement in the relationships between management commitment to service quality and organizational outcomes.

The management of secondary schools in Kenya has faced a number of challenges over the past few years. These challenges have been manifested in the many ways including lack of financial transparency, which culminate in unaffordable secondary schools fees. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of an investigation into the contribution of parents to the financial management of secondary schools in Kericho district of Kenya.

The study was exploratory in approach with a descriptive survey being used as a method of inquiry. A sample size of 30 (47 percent) was selected from 64 secondary schools in the district. From this sample, proportional sampling was then used to get seven provincial and 23 district schools into the sample. Purposive sampling was used to get the schools from each category and the respondents from each school into the sample. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to solicit information and perceptions from principals and students.

The findings of this study indicated that Principals and students perceived parental involvement in financial management as present to some degree in most schools. The results also indicated that parental involvement had positive influence on financial management outcomes. Since schools' finance is critical in school management outcomes, it is therefore important for education stakeholders to increase parental involvement.

Parental participation can have positive impacts on the processes of teaching and learning with active and frequent contacts between parents and school administration improving school's financial accountability and transparency. Participation will strengthen the partnership between parent teacher associations, community and school administration in addition to democratizing school governance.

Based on the findings of the study, parental involvement in the area of financial management is still low in the district. It was also noted that parental involvement greatly influenced the way finances in schools were managed. From these observations, parental levels of involvement in the area of school finances affect financial transparency in schools.

Proper maintenance management ensures a long-term investment and provides a support function in business continuity to achieve organisational goal. However, inadequate involvement and participation of key stakeholders in maintenance management limit the continuous improvement of maintenance performance. Currently, there is a lack of studies about the influence of key stakeholders’ involvement in maintenance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to deal with enhancement of maintenance management through the involvement of key stakeholders.

This research adopted a mixed method approach to determine the relationship between involvement of key stakeholders in maintenance management and maintenance effectiveness. The approach comprised of literature review, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews.

This research suggests a positive correlation between involvement of maintenance manager (MM), maintenance staff, organisation, user and maintenance service provider (SP) in improving the effectiveness of maintenance management. The logistic regression analysis indicated that the involvement of MM and SP are significant predictors of maintenance effectiveness. The research further identified that there was a lack of involvement of the user and SP in maintenance management.

The research demonstrated that all key stakeholders should value the important roles of their participation in maintenance management to ensure an optimum return on a long-term investment. To create the awareness for the involvement of key stakeholders in building maintenance, studies on the advantages of participating in building maintenance and the impacts of ignorant towards building maintenance can be beneficial to the industry.