توجه به ارزشهای مربوط به کار، تاکید بودجه و تعهد سازمانی مدیران

Managers’ work-related values (WRVs) have important implications for designing appropriate management accounting systems (MAS) in organisations. This paper examines the effect of the interaction between managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis (an integral part of MAS) on their organisational commitment. The sample consisted of 109 managers from production, marketing and support departments within Australian manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using both quantitative and qualitative data collected by a questionnaire survey and post-survey interviews. The results indicate that the adoption of low budget emphasis led to high organisational commitment when managers’ WRV for innovation was high, but not when managers’ WRV for innovation was low. The results also indicate that marketing managers held higher WRV for innovation than production managers. The post-survey interviews provide further insight into how a more customer- and competitor-focused subculture of marketing managers and a more technical- and efficiency-focused subculture of production managers may promote the difference in their WRV for innovation, and affect their attitudes towards budget emphasis. The findings of the study have implications for design of performance evaluation systems for managers in functionally differentiated organisations.

The concept of values has been central to organisational research for decades (Blood, 1969, Connor and Becker, 1975 and Schein, 1985), and in recent years, the growing interest in the area continues to reflect its importance for understanding managerial behaviour in organisations (Hofstede, 1991, Connor and Lake, 1994 and Dose, 1997). Values are essentially attributes of individuals which reflect their preferences for particular states of affairs over others (Rokeach, 1973). From an organisational context, individuals’ values relating to aspects of their work are considered to have a significant influence on their attitudes, decisions and behaviour at work (Connor and Becker, 1994 and Dose, 1997). An individual’s work-related values (WRVs) have been found to be shaped by the various shared value systems within an organisation including both organisational and departmental-level subcultures (Meyerson and Martin, 1987). The burgeoning literature on organisational culture and strategic management clearly suggests that the congruence between individuals’ WRV, and an entity’s strategic goals and organisational design are vital for enhancing performance (Connor and Lake, 1994). In this study, we focus on managers’ WRV for innovation.1 Innovation is a key strategic attribute of organisations and has the potential to create competitive advantage. The more rapid the competition in markets and change in technology, the greater is the need for innovation within organisations. While organisations tend to cultivate differing levels of innovation based upon their business strategy, prior studies indicate that organisational structure and processes need to be aligned with the level of innovative organisational culture (Kimberley, 1981 and Subramaniam and Ashkanasy, 2001). Russell and Russell (1992) contend that as organisations promote more innovative values, employees prefer more organic structures and participative management processes. Likewise, Goddard (1997), O’Connor (1995), Dent (1991) and Flamholtz (1983) have shown significant associations between managers’ WRV and their attitudes towards management accounting systems (MAS). However, research efforts in this area have not addressed the use of accounting-focused or budget-based performance evaluation style in firms that promote an innovative culture and its implications for managerial job-related outcomes. Over the last two decades, the reliance on accounting-focused performance measures in managers’ performance evaluation style (otherwise referred as budget emphasis) has attracted significant research. The findings indicate that high emphasis on budgetary performance may not always be beneficial (Hartmann, 2000) and that such a performance evaluation style has implications for managerial job-related outcomes such as job stress, dysfunctional behaviour and performance.2Otley (1980), Govindarajan and Gupta (1985), Brownell (1985) and Lau et al. (1995) found that contextual factors such as characteristics of environment, culture, task and budget emphasis have a significant impact on managerial job-related attitudes and outcome. However, no study to date has examined the joint effect of managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis on their job-related outcomes. Further inquiry in this area is warranted because such evidence is useful for developing more relevant and efficient accounting-based control systems in organisations. In addition, the importance of WRV has been recognised in the relevant literature. Otley (1978, p. 145), for instance, argues that further work in the area of performance evaluation systems must pay attention to “the cultural norms and values that underpin the operation of control systems”. Merchant (1984) and Moores and Booth (1994) similarly contend that, when it is recognised that MAS are part of an organisation’s control system, it becomes important to consider the consistency between the MAS and the broader system of values and beliefs within the organisation. This is because such a system of values and beliefs is seen to provide meaning to the way individuals relate to their organisation. The objective of this paper is two-fold. First, we examine the impact that managers’ WRV for innovation has on the relationship between budget emphasis in managers’ performance evaluation and their organisational commitment. Organisational commitment is commonly accepted as ‘the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation’ (Mowday et al., 1982, p. 27). It is an important outcome variable as prior studies indicate that the commitment is positively related with employee motivation, job involvement and job satisfaction, and negatively related with absenteeism and turnover (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990). We argue that the greater a manager’s values for innovation, the greater will be the propensity to generate new ideas, take risks and experiment with more creative and novel ways of ‘doing things’. The manager, in turn, will expect a performance evaluation system that is sufficiently broad and flexible in clearly reflecting his or her performance, taking into consideration the increased uncertainty inherent in more innovative work roles. Given that non-accounting measures are considered as more flexible and broader in scope than accounting or budget-based measures when communicating evaluation outcomes on managers’ performance (Hartmann, 2000), we hypothesise that when managers’ innovation is high, low budget emphasis will lead to high organisational commitment. Data from a questionnaire survey of 108 managers from manufacturing firms supports this hypothesis. Second, we also undertake additional analysis of managers’ WRV for innovation at the departmental or functional unit level, and examine its implications for the use of budget-based performance evaluation style in such units. The literature on subcultures at the functional unit-level (Martin and Meyerson, 1988 and Schein, 1985) suggests that managers’ WRV may systematically vary according to their functional role (Brown, 1995). Brown (1995) contends that the subcultures existing in different functional units are related to the varying work demands and conditions as well as managerial training and professional development. In turn, such differences in WRV are seen to influence the managers’ attitudes towards organisational planning and control systems. Our focus in this paper is on managers’ WRV for innovation between production and marketing managers. We hypothesise that the WRV for innovation is higher for marketing managers than for production managers, and argue that such a difference in their WRV for innovation will impact managers’ preference for budget emphasis. The data from the questionnaire survey supports the hypothesis. Further, additional evidence based on post-survey interviews of matched production and marketing managers provide a richer understanding of the reasons for marketing managers’ greater appreciation for innovative behaviour, and their preferences for low budget-based performance evaluation style. These findings have both practical and theoretical implications. The structure of the remaining sections of this paper is as follows. Section 2 discusses the theoretical background for the study, followed by the development of hypotheses in Section 3. The remaining four sections address the research method, results, discussion and conclusions.

The findings of this study contribute to the management accounting literature examining the design of MAS in functionally differentiated organisations. The study highlights the role that individual managers’ WRV for innovation may have in designing appropriate MAS in functionally differentiated organisations. Our results suggest that in case of marketing managers, more flexible, rather than a rigid budget-based performance evaluation style of performance evaluation would be more congruent for their commitment to their organisations. This is because these managers hold relatively high WRV for innovation and prefer rather less budget emphasis as is revealed by our test of H2 and H3. The use of both quantitative and qualitative data is a strength for this study as the post-survey interviews provide a rich insight into the factors affecting managers’ WRV for innovation and their attitudes to budget emphasis. The results of the study, however, should be considered in light of its limitations. First, the usual limitations of cross-sectional survey research, namely data collected at a single point in time. A longitudinal study may aid in understanding how organisational subcultures and managerial WRV develop across different functional units within organisations and how such values may affect the relation between budget-based and other accounting-based control systems and managers’ job-related outcomes. Second, the study focuses on managers’ WRV for innovation only. Future research could focus on other dimensions of managerial WRV, particularly those identified by O’Reilly et al. (1991), e.g. the WRV for detail-orientation, team-orientation, and aggressiveness. Third, a combination of MAS features particularly in terms of their interactive role may better explain the relationship between MAS and managerial job-related outcomes. It is evident that organisations rely on combinations of accounting and non-accounting-based controls in any given setting, yet little empirical work has been undertaken in examining this rather complex issue. Notwithstanding these limitations, the results of the study provide clear evidence in support of prior research relating to MAS design in functionally differentiated organisations. The present study illustrates that MAS design needs to consider managers’ WRV if its benefits are to be realised. The study contributes a further nomographic validation of the influence of individual WRV for innovation on the effectiveness of budget emphasis and managerial job-related outcomes.