http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/13838/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38033/ 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z The fairness of managerial pay can be judged in terms of its distributive justice properties ('is my pay fair when compared to others') and its procedural justice properties ('is my pay fairly determined'). While both types of justice have been studied extensively in the organizational literature, their relative importance in predicting work-related outcomes is still open to debate. In this paper, we provide field evidence that the relationship between pay justice and managers' intrinsic motivation is moderated by pay transparency, which is the extent to which managers know each other's pay levels. In a homogeneous sample of 139 Slovenian bank managers, we find that procedural justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is low, and that distributive justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is high. These findings that are congruent with fairness heuristic theory (Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt and Wilke 1997a) suggest the importance of considering pay transparency for understanding and designing fair managerial pay systems. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/39990/ 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z When it comes to procedural justice, Management Accounting and Human Resources functions have to get closer to create systems of performance evaluation that are perceived as fair – and that also take uncertainty into consideration. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30981/ 2012-03-01T00:00:00Z This paper investigates the relationship between performance evaluation procedures and managerial perceptions of procedural justice. We examine two metric and two process characteristics. Metric characteristics are the diversity of metrics used by superiors and their reliance on outcome vs. effort metrics. Regarding process characteristics, we analyse the amount of subordinate's voice in the performance evaluation process, and the extent of formalization of the process. Using uncertainty management theory, we argue that justice effects of performance evaluation procedures may not be direct but are instead conditional on the amount of task uncertainty managers face in the their job context as well as on managers' tolerance for ambiguity. Using a sample of 178 managers from the banking industry, we find that all four performance evaluation characteristics are related to justice perceptions, yet their effect depends on the level of task uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity. These findings explain some inconsistencies in extant studies on fairness of performance evaluation procedures. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30882/ 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z This paper explores how contextual uncertainty and the use of the budgetary system explain cross-sectional variation in the organisational role of business unit controllers. We argue that there are complementarities between the role of the budgetary control system (i.e. coercive vs. enabling) and the role of the controller (i.e. corporate policeman vs. business partner). Thus, we explore both the direct effect of uncertainty on the role of the controller and the indirect effect through the role of the budgetary control system. Using survey data from 134 business unit controllers, we find that uncertainty provides a partial explanation of the variation in the role of budgetary control systems and in the role of controllers. In particular, our data suggest alignment between the coercive (enabling) use of the budgetary control system and the role of controllers acting as corporate policemen (business partners). These findings add to our understanding of the functioning of business unit controllers within their organisational context. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19605/ 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z In this paper we investigate the effects of superiors' performance evaluation behaviors on subordinates' work-related attitudes. In response to critique on the multidimensional nature of the 'supervisory style' construct in the RAPM literature, we argue that the two dominant dimensions underlying this construct are leadership style and performance measure use. We develop and test a path model that allows us to disentangle the effects of leadership style (initiating structure and consideration) and performance measure use (objective and subjective measures) on managerial work-related attitudes (goal clarity and evaluation fairness). We test our hypotheses using survey data from 196 middle-level managers in 11 organizations. Results show that an initiating structure leadership style affects subordinates' work-related attitudes through the use of objective performance measures. Consideration leadership behavior instead only has a direct impact on work-related attitudes. These findings have important implications for management accounting research on superiors' use of performance measures, and provide an explanation of some of the problematic findings in the literature. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21355/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z This paper investigates business unit (BU) controllers' inclination to engage in the creation of budgetary slack. In particular, we explore whether controllers who are involved in BU decision making are more susceptible to social pressure to engage in slack creation than controllers who are not. We expect, and find, a crucial role of the controller's personality. Results from an experiment among 136 management accountants suggest that the personality construct Machiavellianism interacts with involvement to explain controllers' responses to social pressure to create budgetary slack. Controllers scoring high on Machiavellianism are more likely to give in to pressure by BU management to create budgetary slack when they have been involved in decision making. In contrast, controllers scoring low on Machiavellianism are less likely to give in to pressure to create slack when they have been involved in decision making http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19536/ 2009-12-01T00:00:00Z Alignment of an organization's performance measurement system with its strategy is widely advocated as a guiding principle in management control system design. Despite its importance, it is far from clear what strategic alignment of performance measures entails, whether and how organizations achieve it. In this article we explore the alignment of performance measures focusing on firms' use of environmental performance indicators as the consequence of pursuing an environmental strategy. Based on the economic and contingency literatures on management control system design and performance measurement, we propose that the use of such performance measures is a consequence of changing the design of the performance measurement system to accommodate the strategy, and by increasing the informativeness of performance metrics. We test these propositions in a sample of financial managers in manufacturing firms in The Netherlands. We find that alignment to environmental strategy is mostly achieved through the increased quantification of environmental performance measures and via their increased sensitivity to managerial actions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21356/ 2009-12-01T00:00:00Z Although management accounting innovations such as Activity-Based Costing, the Balanced Scorecard and benchmarking have received much academic interest in recent years, our understanding of why some organizations adopt and implement such new management accounting systems (MAS) and others do not, is still underdeveloped. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the role of the CFO in MAS innovation. We hypothesize that individual differences between CFOs are predictive of organizations' use of innovative MAS. In addition, we propose that CFO characteristics moderate the extent to which organizations rationally adapt to (environmental) contingencies. To examine this second prediction we compare the effects of strategy and historical performance on the adoption of innovative MAS for organizations with different types of CFOs. We test our hypotheses using a combination of archival and survey data from the public health care sector in Spain. Our results are generally supportive of our hypotheses. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17075/ 2009-10-01T00:00:00Z An important question in the control literature concerns the role of interpersonal trust in the design and functioning of formal control systems for collaborative settings. In this paper, we argue that subordinate's trust in the superior depends on the formality of the performance evaluation procedure and that this relationship is mediated by managerial perceptions of justice and feedback. The findings confirm our predictions. Furthermore, we find that formality matters more for trust formation for those managers that are in functions with less contractible outputs.