Papers by R. Murray lindsay
EMS Editions eBooks, Dec 1, 2021
Journal of Management Accounting Research, 2018
Control systems based on budget-based incentives have long been criticized as promoting budgetary... more Control systems based on budget-based incentives have long been criticized as promoting budgetary gaming that taints the budgeting process. Yet, Libby and Lindsay (2010) find that, on average, North American managers are obtaining “good” value from their budgeting systems. The current study examines the antecedents of budget value through a partial replication and significant extension of Van der Stede (2000) using survey data collected from a sample of senior business unit managers with budget responsibility. Results indicate that the senior manager's trust in subordinate managers' abilities exhibits a positive direct and indirect (through increased subordinate involvement in decision making) relationship with budget value. While budget emphasis has a negative indirect association with budget value (through budgetary gaming), it has a much larger positive direct relationship, resulting in an overall positive effect. Further, budgetary gaming increases with the use of budget...
Strategic Finance, Aug 1, 2007
Harvard Deusto Finanzas Y Contabilidad, 2008
La mayoria de las organizaciones reconoce que los presupuestos son un elemento clave de sus siste... more La mayoria de las organizaciones reconoce que los presupuestos son un elemento clave de sus sistemas de control de gestion, pero su utilidad ha generado recientemente muchas discusiones y debates. Aunque los presupuestos son utiles para la coordinacion, la comunicacion y la evaluacion del rendimiento, muchas personas consideran que son la causa de la manipulacion de los beneficios por parte de los directivos, consumen tiempo, su desarrollo es caro y constituyen una barrera al cambio.
Cma Management, Apr 1, 2003
This case explains how Svenska Handelsbanken AB, (Handelsbanken), under the leadership of CEO Dr.... more This case explains how Svenska Handelsbanken AB, (Handelsbanken), under the leadership of CEO Dr. Jan Wallander, not only successfully overcame a crisis in 1970, but through a change of policies, including the elimination of formal budgets and adopting a radical system of decentralization, has grown to become one of the most successful banks in Scandinavia. The case provides a rich description of the control system that Handelsbanken uses in place of relying on budgets - a system that underlies many of the principles that the "Beyond Budgeting" movement is espousing. The decision point in the case is whether the model of control could be widely adopted outside of Sweden and Handelsbanken in particular.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011
ABSTRACT The “Reliance on Accounting Performance Measures” (RAPM) construct derives from Hopwood’... more ABSTRACT The “Reliance on Accounting Performance Measures” (RAPM) construct derives from Hopwood’s (1972a) seminal study of the effect of performance evaluation styles using budgeting information on dysfunctional behavioral outcomes. Although the RAPM program is one of the few areas in management accounting that has attained a critical mass of research (Hartmann 2000), a number of review papers are unified in calling for a more careful and precise specification of supervisor evaluative style (e.g., Noeverman et al. 2005; Otley and Fakiolas 2000). Although a well-specified evaluative style construct seems central to the study of management accounting and control systems, little progress appears to have been made in the last decade. The objective of this paper is to encourage some movement towards developing such a construct. To this end, we first examine the conjectures forwarded by Noeverman et al. (2005) using empirical evidence from two surveys of budgeting practice in North American organizations. Consistent with conjectures of Noeverman et al. (2005), we find nonfinancial measures are often utilized in conjunction with financial measures in our sample of firms, even for firms that would be traditionally classified as placing high emphasis on the budget (i.e., financial measure) for performance evaluation and control. In addition, we find considerable use of subjective evaluations which the RAPM literature has all but ignored. Finally, we find that very few firms in our sample use budgets rigidly for performance evaluation and control, suggesting that research in this area may have been emphasizing, at least from a practical perspective, the wrong consideration. Additionally, we raise a cautionary flag against the recent trend of testing relationships using a multitude of individual evaluation dimensions without taking a step back to consider the importance of the whole. Instead, we advocate the development of a serious and concerted research program aimed at identifying a broader evaluative style construct with a more precise meaning. Initial suggestions are provided to this end.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Proponents of "beyond budgeting" suggest the major control problem in organizations today is the ... more Proponents of "beyond budgeting" suggest the major control problem in organizations today is the use of budgets for both planning and performance evaluation (Hope and Fraser 2003). Rigidly evaluating and rewarding managers relative to budget targets set at the beginning of the year motivates managers to play budgetary games which taints the budgeting and forecasting process. Contrary to this view, a recent survey of North American budgeting practices by Libby and Lindsay (2010) indicates a large proportion of the organizations sampled continue to use budgets for performance evaluation and control purposes and also offer budget-based bonuses to their managers as an incentive to perform. In addition, a large proportion of these firms appeared to be finding ways to get good value out of the budgeting process even though results indicated a negative correlation between budget value and managers' perceptions of the degree to which budget gaming occurs in their organizations. The objective of the current study is to provide some insight into what drives higher versus lower budget value from the point of view of the business unit managers. Based on a review of the academic and practitioner literatures, we develop and test a theoretical model of the antecedents of budget gaming and budget value using additional data collected in the Libby and Lindsay (2010) survey. Results indicate good prior period performance is associated with less budget gaming, high budget emphasis is associated with higher budget gaming and increased interpersonal trust between lower and higher levels of management is negatively associated with budget gaming. By splitting the sample into high and low trust groups, we are able to show that lower level manager's trust in higher level managers is key to explaining perceptions of budget value in our sample.
Theory & Psychology, 2008
Reporting p values from statistical significance tests is common in psychology's empirical li... more Reporting p values from statistical significance tests is common in psychology's empirical literature. Sir Ronald Fisher saw the p value as playing a useful role in knowledge development by acting as an `objective' measure of inductive evidence against the null hypothesis. We review several reasons why the p value is an unobjective and inadequate measure of evidence when statistically testing hypotheses. A common theme throughout many of these reasons is that p values exaggerate the evidence against H0. This, in turn, calls into question the validity of much published work based on comparatively small, including .05, p values. Indeed, if researchers were fully informed about the limitations of the p value as a measure of evidence, this inferential index could not possibly enjoy its ongoing ubiquity. Replication with extension research focusing on sample statistics, effect sizes, and their confidence intervals is a better vehicle for reliable knowledge development than using ...
Pacific Accounting Review, 2012
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to expand on some of the points made in Ken Merchant's pa... more PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to expand on some of the points made in Ken Merchant's paper (this issue) in connection with the research‐practice gap.Design/methodology/approachAiming to be provocative for the purpose of evoking further discussion, this commentary adopts the perspective that some deeply rooted misconceptions about the nature and production of scientific knowledge underpin the research‐practice gap.FindingsThere are three key findings. First, contrary to popular belief, practical knowledge does not simply derive from basic (“scientific”) knowledge “trickling down” to practice; instead, basic knowledge needs to betransformedinto a theory or phronesis of management accounting in a manner that reflects the context and purpose of organizations. Practical knowledge therefore becomes a distinct and rigorous mode of knowing in its own right, no less important than basic knowledge. Second, the adoption of field research or the case study method may be the only way t...
Marketing Theory, 2002
Empirical research in marketing should focus on the development of empirical generalizations. Mar... more Empirical research in marketing should focus on the development of empirical generalizations. Marketers do a huge amount of empirical research, but have little in the way of empirical generalizations. This is primarily because most empirical research consists of ‘original’ or ‘novel’ works looking for significant differences, rather than significant sameness, in unrelated data sets, thus exemplifying the ‘cult of the isolated study’. As a result, the marketing literature is made up largely of uncorroborated, fragmented, ‘one-off’ results. Such results are of little use to marketing practitioners or academicians. We discuss a number of impediments to the development of empirical generalizations – preoccupation with the hypotheticodeductive conception of science, preoccupation with ‘statistical’ rather than ‘empirical’ generalization, the ‘publish or perish’ syndrome in academia, and denigration of replication-with-extension research. We conclude that replication-with-extension resear...
Management Research News, 1995
As a consumer of research published in scientific journals, do you ever wonder what degree of bel... more As a consumer of research published in scientific journals, do you ever wonder what degree of belief you should place on the results being presented? Alternatively, and perhaps more importantly, do you ever think whether the findings would apply in your own organisation to guide business practice? Clearly, these are important considerations.
Management Research News, 1996
... Citation: R. Murray Lindsay, (1996) "Promoting Continuous Improvement: Control Features ... more ... Citation: R. Murray Lindsay, (1996) "Promoting Continuous Improvement: Control Features of Innovative Organisations", Management Research News, Vol. 19 Iss: 1/2, pp.53 - 64. ... “Satisfying the customer” has truly become the maxim of the 1990s for many companies. ...
Management Accounting Research, 2010
Budgets have historically played a key role in management control; however, recently they have be... more Budgets have historically played a key role in management control; however, recently they have become the subject of considerable criticism and debate. Some argue that the problems with budgeting stem from the way budgets are used (Horngren et al., 2004) while others argue that budgeting processes are fundamentally flawed (Hope and Fraser, 2003a). Hansen et al. (2003), among others, have called for a systematic examination of these issues against empirical evidence. In this paper, we present the results of two surveys of mid-to large-sized North-American organizations to 1) update the literature on North-American budgeting practices, 2) collect empirical evidence to assess the criticisms, and 3) begin to identify strong tendencies or patterns in budgeting practice to inform future academic research. Overall, we find for the majority of firms that budgets continue to be used for control purposes and are perceived to be value-added. While problems exist with budgets, organizations are adapting their use to account for these problems rather than abandoning budgets altogether.
Journal of Business Research, 2013
The present paper addresses questions raised by Ball and Sawyer (2013-this issue) on Hubbard and ... more The present paper addresses questions raised by Ball and Sawyer (2013-this issue) on Hubbard and Lindsay´s (this issue) article. In particular, it responds explicitly to their concerns about the possible drawbacks of using overlapping confidence intervals as a measure of significant sameness, and whether or not a "straw man" argument is being offered. Importantly, this article elaborates on other critical elements of the significant sameness paradigm, including the notion of predictive precision, and the fact that this paradigm accurately describes how real science progresses.
Journal of Business Research, 2013
Complaints about the value of academic business research in addressing real world issues are comm... more Complaints about the value of academic business research in addressing real world issues are common. A change in research paradigms-from significant difference to significant sameness-is necessary to improve this situation. The present paper challenges research orthodoxy as representing poor scientific practice and advocates an entirely different paradigm based on a sophisticated replication tradition following a metamethodology of critical realism. A comprehensive analysis across philosophical, methodological, and statistical literatures develops this argument.
Issues in Accounting Education, 2007
Svenska Handelsbanken was the large national Swedish bank that provided the exemplar case for the... more Svenska Handelsbanken was the large national Swedish bank that provided the exemplar case for the idea that organizations could abandon budgets and operate successfully, or perhaps operate even more successfully, without them. In this case, Nancy Cartwright, a senior executive in a large Canadian financial services corporation, had just been introduced to the Handelsbanken case and the Beyond Budgeting idea. She was intrigued by the idea that companies could abandon budgets while implementing a new more decentralized model of management control. She wondered whether these ideas could work beyond Handelsbanken and, in particular, outside of Scandinavia.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1999
Prior research indicates that technology plays an important role in the determination of manageme... more Prior research indicates that technology plays an important role in the determination of management control sy tems. A fully developed JIT system represents a radical departure from the traditional approach to organising an managing mass production. In probing the management control implications of JIT, this study extends some we established concepts from organisation theory to the modern manufacturing practices literature to develop a fram work which suggests that mass production ®rms adopting JIT (a new technology) must abandon a mechanistic ma agement control system and adopt an organic model of control. Findings from three case studies describing the contr structures used in JIT ®rms are also presented as part of the theoretical and hypothesis development. In additio survey results are reported which are highly consistent with the framework, indicating that Woodward's ®ndin (Woodward J. (1980) Industrial organization: theory and practice (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.) genera ise (are robust) to a new technology. Finally, a preliminary examination into whether improvements in certain k areas are higher for those JIT ®rms utilising an organic model of management was performed and found to be co sistent with expectations.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1995
Tests of significance are regarded as essential for the establishment of facts. This paper questi... more Tests of significance are regarded as essential for the establishment of facts. This paper questions this, and an alternative approach is presented which centres on replication. Replication provides the crucial test of the reliability and validity of facts, hypotheses and theories. It leads, when successful, to generaiizable and predictable results. The new criterion is based on obtaining "significant sameness" in related studies, in contrast to obtaining a signilicant difference in a single isolated study. This means determining whether the same model holds over many sets of data, and not what model fits best for one particular data set. A major conclusion of a study of all empirical With the growing emphasis on the behavioral and social sciences and given the great dependence of these sciences upon statistical methods, one must take seriously the claim, from respectable quarters, that the statistical methods currently employed are fundamentally misconceived (Giere, 1969, p. 372).
Uploads
Papers by R. Murray lindsay