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1 – 2 of 2Michelle Carr and Stefan Jooss
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be…
Abstract
Purpose
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.
Findings
The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.
Originality/value
The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.
Highlights
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
Details
Keywords
Janine Burghardt and Klaus Möller
This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.
Findings
First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).
Originality/value
This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.
Details