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We develop and validate measurement instruments for the business partner, watchdog, and scorekeeper roles of controllers. This study addresses calls to enhance the quality of survey research in management accounting by devoting more attention to scale development and especially to construct validity. By focusing on the activity sets of the controllers’ roles, we provide a theoretically and empirically grounded picture of their current roles. The measurement instruments presented in this study enable systematic research progress on controller roles, their relationships, antecedents, and performance outcomes.

Job advertisements are important means of communicating role expectations for management accountants to the labor market. They provide information about which roles are sought and expected. However, which roles are communicated in job advertisements is unknown so far.

With a text-mining approach on a large sample of 889 job ads, the authors extract information on roles, type of firm and hierarchical position of the management accountant sought.

The results indicate an apparent mix of different role types with a strong focus on a classic watchdog role. However, the business partner role is more often sought for leadership positions or in family businesses and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

The main limitation is the lack of an agreed-upon measurement instrument for roles in job offers. The study results imply that corporate practice is not as theory-driven as is postulated and communicated in the management accounting community. This indicates the existence of a research-practice gap and tensions between different actors in the management accounting field.

The results challenge the current role discussion of professional organizations for management accountants as business partners.

The authors contribute the first study, which explicitly analyzes the communication of roles in job offers for management accountants. It indicates a discrepancy between scholarly discussion on roles and management accountants' work from an employer's perspective.

Three decades ago, the National Audit Office (NAO) in the UK acquired the powers to evaluate the extent that the British Administration was managed with economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The NAO has since adopted a dual mission: to help Parliament hold government to account and to improve public service. This study aims to investigate value-for-money (VFM) auditors’ internalisation of a dual organisational identity: “obstructive” actions as representatives of a Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) and “enabling good practice”, induced by a will stated in the mission that the NAO authorities have adopted.

The organisational identity held and promoted by VFM auditors working at the NAO was explored in this research project. The authors specifically examined the understanding of those who claim to be serving both Parliament and organisations audited in their quest for performance improvement. The authors prompted the auditors to explain how they manage to reconcile these seemingly incompatible roles, namely, that of guardians and watchdogs who must publicly report gaps noted and that of assistants in government’s learning process. To this end, the authors conducted a field study at the NAO in September 2012 during which 21 auditors were interviewed individually and as part of two discussion groups.

The findings indicate that the auditors interviewed do not perceive a dichotomy in NAO’s double mission, which they believe to be congruent with their audience’s expectations. They draw meaning and usefulness from their role of monitoring the Administration if they believe they have contributed to improve public affairs management. In their view, the singular role of guardian no longer suffices. The authors conclude that VFM auditors’ recently acquired identity of “moderniser” reflects a self-efficacy expectation that prevents them from recognising the apparent paradox within their dual identity and that lets them fantasise about their real influence on the Administration.

Admittedly, the limited number of auditors interviewed and who took part in discussion groups is not conducive to generalisation of the conclusions to all auditors in the NAO or to other SAIs. However, although modest in number, the auditor respondents have accumulated many years of VFM audit practice and have contributed to the production of many reports. The respondents could therefore rightfully speak of their work as VFM auditors and as representatives of an institution such as the NAO.

This study contributes to the debates about the place and role of SAIs in the control environment of Administrations. By soliciting testimonials from the actors working within the NAO, the authors could thus question certain a priori assumptions held by stakeholders in the political and administrative world for whom auditors are mere “watchdogs” of Administrations, and nothing more.

The dual mission that the NAO has adopted (similar to many other SAIs) has been formally and publicly stated. It was therefore worth investigating how experienced auditors such as those interviewed had internalised this mission. The authors argue that this dual mission, perhaps inspired by the managerialist culture that has shaped changes to the British Administration (and many other occidental Administrations) since the early 1980s and that is seemingly encouraged by Government, twists the legislator’s intentions, which are to consider SAIs’ auditors as guardians and watchdogs of Administrations, not as agents of change and improvement.

A large number of microprocessors (μPs) have been widely used in many practical fields and the demand for improvement of their reliabilities have recently increased. Watchdog processors (WDPs) are small and simple coprocessors that can detect errors by monitoring the behavior of μPs. This paper formulates three reliability models of μP systems with WDPs: model 1 considers the system where a main processor (MPu) has n WDPs with self checking. Next, model 2 considers the system with upper limit number of resets. Further, model 3 discusses the system with limit processing time. The expected costs of each model are derived and the optimal policies which minimize them are discussed analytically. Finally, the numerical examples are given.

It is to me a very great honour and a very great privilege that I should be allowed to address you from this particular place this evening. My first connection with Aslib, so far as I remember, was as what used to be called, in the good old days of DSIR, a Visitor. There were two people appointed by DSIR to be watchdogs. One was supposed to know something about the particular organization that DSIR was supporting and the other was not. The first of those was Dr Allibone, and I was the other. Over the years I came to know something of what Aslib was up to—I came to know rather less about what Leslie Wilson was up to—and I developed during those years a very considerable affection and even partisanship for Aslib as distinct from certain other people who were trying to spend DSIR money. That particular connection came to an end because that watchdog job has to pass round from one person to another lest the watchdog should be seduced by those on the spot and become less of a watchdog than a barker the other way. So, after a bit I had to stop doing that and now I am here in this extremely anomalous position. I do not suppose for one moment that it is any personal merit on my part that has landed me in this particular chair. What was obviously in the minds of the inner caucus who run Aslib was that you should get at the Chairman of the UGC; but the Chairman of the UGC neatly side‐stepped from Park Crescent into Bloomsbury and now you have got landed with somebody who is entirely unexpected in his official capacity as your President.

This paper sets out to classify business process outsourcing (BPO), linking it to service level agreement (SLA) design needs.

The paper develops a framework based on prior literature to classify BPOs and illustrates it with field research of Indian vendors.

The paper identifies criticality and complexity as the dimensions of classification and explicates the role of SLAs along these dimensions.

This is an exploratory research involving four vendors. A larger study is needed to strengthen/enrich the proposed framework, and make the findings more conclusive.

The taxonomy aids BPO industry practitioners in understanding the characteristics of different processes and the control issues arising therein. It also helps analysts to make more qualified generalizations within the BPO industry.

The paper addresses a dearth of literature on BPOs, especially from a vendor perspective. The taxonomy serves to position future work in this fast‐growing field of research.