توانمندسازهای حمایت از تیم مدیریت ارشد برای نوآوری های سیستم های کنترل مدیریت یکپارچه

Top management team (TMT) support has been identified as one of the most important critical factors to the success of management control systems (MCS) innovations. However, prior studies have taken TMT support for MCS innovations as a given rather than considering the factors that determine whether that support will actually exist and the extent thereof. Prior studies also follow a monolithic approach and treat TMT support for MCS innovations as a black box rather than a combination of processes and stages that develop sequentially over time. We conceptualise TMT support for MCS innovations as consisting of two stages (TMT belief and participation in MCS innovations). We draw on Upper Echelon and knowledge creation theories to motivate and test four enablers of TMT support for an integrated MCS innovation. We theorize the four enablers as TMT's strategic IT knowledge, TMT knowledge creation processes, CIO's strategic business and IT knowledge, and the interaction between TMT and the CIO. We test the research model using survey data that was collected from 347 Australian organisations. The results from the data analyses confirm the hypothesised relationships, supporting the theorized synergies among the four antecedents to TMT support. There are several implications for theory and practice that should be considered in future studies examining the role of TMT in supporting new MCS innovations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the enablers of top management team (TMT) members' support for integrated management control systems (MSC) innovations. Since Johnson and Kaplan's (1987) publication of “Relevance Lost: the Rise and Fall of Management Accounting”, there has been significant attempts at innovating management accounting techniques and controls with the view to regaining practical relevance. More recently, management control innovations have focused on leveraging existing controls by taking advantage of the generative, analytical, and integrative capacity of information technology (IT) to develop integrated management control systems (Rom and Rohde, 2006; William and Williams, 2007 and Grabski et al., 2011). The focus on “integrated” MCS rather than isolated MCS stems from the well-established view in management accounting literature that the management control systems of organisations do not operate in isolation; rather they are interrelated and work as a package (Otley, 1980, Dent, 1990, Chenhall, 2003 and Malmi and Brown, 2008). The central issue in packaging controls through IT-based innovations is their ability to provide useful information through combining complementary management controls as a package. While in principle these innovations offer significant transformative capacities in the management control of organisations, research indicates that there is lower than expected adoption and implementation of these innovations (Granlund, 2011). The existing literature suggests that the lower uptake of these innovations is due to lack of top management team (TMT) support. Consequently, this paper focuses on examining the factors that drive TMT support for integrated MCS innovations. Prior studies indicate that the role of TMT support is crucial for the successful adoption, implementation and use of MCS innovations. For instance, in contingency-based research, TMT leadership and support is one of the important organisational contingencies that determine the design and use of various MCS innovations (see for example, Cotton et al., 2003, Cavalluzzo and Ittner, 2004 and Chenhall, 2004). Similarly, the strategic management literature highlights the important role that TMT plays in the design and use of MCS (Carpenter et al., 2004 and Wilkin and Chenhall, 2010).2 This line of research attributes the positive relationship between TMT support and the deployment of MCS to the authority and power inherent in TMT (Hambrick and Mason, 1984 and Abernethy et al., 2010). Support by TMT is crucial as that determines the sufficiency of resources (such as finances, time, information and human resources) committed to MCS innovations (Anderson and Young, 1999, Chenhall, 2004 and Naranjo-Gil and Hartmann, 2007) and also signals to organisational members what top managers consider strategically important to delivering outcomes. Given the importance of TMT support for MCS innovation, most prior studies assume that such support will flow naturally and almost certainly for MCS innovation in all cases. Contrary to this, some existing research suggests that the nature and form of TMT support for MCS innovations are built over time and depend on several cognitive, psychological, and contextual factors (Hambrick et al., 1993 and Lewis et al., 2003). Recent studies also show that the level of TMT support for MCS innovations varies across organisations (Anderson and Young, 1999 and Liang et al., 2007). This evidence implies that rather than taking TMT support for MCS innovations as a given, it is essential to investigate and understand the enablers of the support. In doing so, this will enhance the theoretical and empirical links between their assumed reasons of existence and their impact on MCS innovations (Shields and Shields, 1998, Chenhall, 2003 and Luft and Shields, 2003). Identifying the enablers of TMT support for MCS innovation will also help future research to build and test richer research models that link the antecedents of TMT support for MCS to organisational choices and outcomes. This study makes several contributions to the current MCS literature. The study opens the black box of TMT support for MCS innovations by building and testing a richer model of the drivers of TMT support for MCS innovations. From a pragmatic standpoint, this study informs practitioners and consultants on how to generate TMT support for MCS innovations. By knowing these factors, organisations will be able to enhance them and achieve higher TMT support for integrated MCS innovation. The structure of the remainder of the paper is as follows. The following section presents the theoretical development of the research model and hypotheses. An overview of the methodology, operationalization of constructs, data analysis, and discussion of results follow. We conclude with a discussion of limitations and implications of the findings for practice and future research.

This study examines the enablers of TMT support for integrated MCS innovations. The results provide evidence that TMT support can be conceptualised in a two-stage model that combines TMT belief and participation in an integrated MCS innovation. The results confirm that TMT participation in MCS innovations is driven by their belief in the innovations. This result is consistent with calls made in recent literature which suggest opening the “black box” of TMT support and treating it as a dualistic construct rather than a monolithic construct (Chatterjee et al., 2002 and Liang et al., 2007). The results also show that TMT's knowledge creation process, CIO's strategic business and IT knowledge, and TMT/CIO interactions influence the level of TMT belief in integrated MCS innovations. However, TMT's strategic IT knowledge is found to be insignificantly related to TMT belief in an integrated MCS innovation. The findings reported in this study have important implications for theory and practice. It is clear that the lack of TMT's knowledge limits their level of involvement in MCS innovation projects. This suggests that TMT members need to make the effort to engage in activities that enable them to gain the strategic knowledge necessary for performing their managerial roles including making decisions that relate to strategic planning that involves MCS innovations. The results confirm the importance of CIO's business and IT knowledge in generating TMT support for MCS innovations. The strong linkage between the CIO knowledge and TMT belief in an integrated MCS innovation suggests that CIOs play major roles in making TMT aware of the value of MCS innovations in supporting business strategies and the competitiveness of the organisation. The findings also imply that the level of interaction between TMT members and CIO, whether by working closely in teams or through accountability of the CIO including whether the CIO directly or indirectly is reporting to TMT, will have a significant impact on enhancing TMT belief in MCS innovations. Examining the antecedents of TMT support for MCS innovations answers the call made by prior researchers. For instance, Shields and Shields (1998) argue that it is not sufficient to merely investigate the relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. Understanding the antecedents of the independent variables will enrich theoretical and empirical models (Shields and Shields, 1998). This study addresses this call by examining the key enablers of TMT support for integrated MCS innovations which are likely to have an indirect effect on the phenomenon tested in prior management accounting literature as one of the outcomes of TMT support. The findings of this study will enable future researchers to build and test more comprehensive models that involve TMT support. The statistical analysis did not support the conjecture that TMT's strategic IT knowledge as an antecedent of TMT support for MCS innovations. A plausible explanation for this could be the arguments of the dynamic view of knowledge management which suggests that dynamic knowledge creation processes are more effective for organisations than the static knowledge stock that people possess (Nonaka, 1994 and Cook and Brown, 1999). This is simply because static knowledge stocks become obsolete over time and die quickly. Therefore, the ability of TMT to recognise new knowledge and renew their existing knowledge is more important for enhancing the level of support for integrated MCS innovations than the level of strategic IT knowledge that those senior managers possess. Moreover, this study contributes to the current literature on MCS innovations by answering a call made in prior studies to investigate the factors that might influence the decisions of TMT to adopt, implement and use MCS innovations. An investigation into the antecedents of TMT support for integrated MCS innovations has great practical significance. TMT support is strongly linked to the positive organisational effects of the adoption, implementation and use of MCS innovations. If organisational performance is to be enhanced then it is vital to understand the factors that drive TMT to support integrated MCS innovations. Deliberate engagement of TMT in the process of knowledge creation should be encouraged within organisations as ongoing processes rather than purposeful and directed short-term knowledge acquisition and renewal. Moreover, organisations that are willing to promote the adoption, implementation and use of such innovations should seek to employ CIOs with both strategic business and IT knowledge and activate the processes and channels that allow an effective interactions between TMT members and the CIO. This could be through allowing CIOs to attend key executive meetings and reducing the intermediaries between TMT and the CIO. The results of this research should be interpreted in light of certain limitations. There are inherent limitations associated with survey studies that apply. For instance, surveys which attempt to capture perceptions are always susceptible to misinterpretation or a lack of knowledge and truthfulness by the respondents. However, techniques used in this study help alleviate some of these concerns. These include providing respondents with a ‘No Basis for Answering’ option in the survey, capturing the same data from multiple respondents, and testing for discriminant validity. All of these strategies provide evidence suggesting that such concerns do not threaten the validity of the results. The test of the two-stage modelling of TMT support requires longitudinal data. However, the data used to test the model is cross-sectional. Additionally, several researchers suggest that TMT support is driven by different factors depending on the life cycle of the innovations (Agarwal and Prasad, 1997, Carlson and Zmud, 1999 and Karahanna et al., 1999). Future researchers should adopt a longitudinal study approach to examine the stage factors of TMT support as well as the other factors which may impact TMT support for MCS innovations at different stages of their life cycle. Furthermore, this study concentrated its analysis on four antecedents of TMT support for MCS innovations. Future studies should consider other variables that may drive TMT support for MCS innovations, such as industry-related pressure, competitors' behaviour with MCS innovations, and the type of business strategy adopted by organisations. Consideration should also be given to concurrently investigating the antecedents and consequences of TMT support for MCS innovations within a nomological network. The conceptual model of this study provides a framework for future researchers wishing to build and test a nomological network examining the antecedents and consequences of TMT support for integrated MCS innovations. The results indicate that TMT support for an integrated MCS innovation arises from a complex set of factors that simultaneously influence TMT behaviour towards integrated MCS innovations. Understanding this complexity is important to both researchers and practitioners in understanding how organisations successfully adopt, implement, and use IT-driven MCS innovations.