Search results

This paper asks the question of whether more environmental uncertainty affects the design of performance measurement systems in terms of a greater variety of performance measures and whether this leads to more management satisfaction with the performance measurement system and improved firm performance.

Information processing theory is used to frame the hypotheses and findings. A questionnaire was sent to the 300 largest companies in Iceland, where environmental uncertainty has been prevalent.

The results indicate that increased uncertainty leads to a larger variety of non-financial performance measures, such as customer measures. A positive relationship is found between management satisfaction with the performance measurement system and firm performance. However, the variety of performance measures was not linked to management satisfaction or firm performance.

The results suggest that managers increase the variety of performance measures when uncertainty increases. However, it is not the variety itself that increases management satisfaction or improves firm performance.

Performance measurement design is affected by environmental uncertainty. Managers focus on important stakeholder groups such as customers under such conditions and can consult research and practice for the purpose of customer relationship management and customer profitability measurement to improve measurement selection.

This work focusses on performance measurement system design, examining the use of more than 50 different performance measures, and differentiates between small and medium-sized firms and between service and non-service firms.

This chapter examines the formal governance mechanisms put in place by various authorities within Iceland after the crash. In contrast to one of our earlier papers (Bryant, Sigurjónsson, & Mixa, 2014), we find that, no matter how well the mechanisms work, formal mechanisms are insufficient to restore trust. To that end, we examine the trust literature from political science that suggests that trust is a lubricant of the social system that consequently causes individuals to open themselves up to vulnerability. When trust is broken in a society with a high-existing degree of trust, such as Iceland, the loss of trust is significant and leads even apparently minor incidents to be perceived as betrayals. We examine the various processes put in place by both the government and other institutions and show how they mostly worked in concert. Nonetheless, we find that the processes by themselves have been insufficient to restore society’s trust in the affected institutions.

According to some key actors in Iceland’s financial sector, in the wake of the financial crisis, Icelandic financial institutions consciously tried to build trust and a positive new image through, among other things, the visible presence of women on their corporate boards and management teams. By strict adherence to gender quota legislation and through improved corporate governance practices and much stricter control and monitoring, the financial sector sent signals of change to various stakeholders. Now 10 years on, the re-establishment of trust is still a work in progress.