Knowledge that Transforms

Research in the field of organizational behaviour suggests that trust between organizational members is likely to yield significant benefits to both the individual and the organization as a whole. This research note is a report of an empirical study that examines trust as a moderator of the effect of using accounting information for performance evaluation on job-related tension. The results indicate that, given high levels of trust, the use of either a budget-consistrained or profit-conscious performance evaluation style is likely to result in lower levels of job-related tension than use of a non-accounting performance evaluation style. This finding is important given the dysfunctional behaviours that are often suggested to beassociated with job-related tension.

This study uses Hofstede's taxonomy of work-related national cultural dimensions to analyze preferences for specific management controls at the interface between the organization and the external labor market. Four experiments were conducted with samples of last-semester Japanese and U.S. MBA students. Most of the results did not provide support for the four hypotheses. These findings are used as the basis for suggesting potential directions for future empirical refinements and theory construction.

From in-depth interviews with public accounting personnel, Dirsmith & Covaleski [Accounting, Organizations and Society (1985) pp. 149–169] concluded that mentoring exists in large public accounting firms and benefits the mentor, protégé and the firm. Based on a national survey of public accounting employees, the current study uses quantitative data analysis to identify public accounting mentoring functions, their effect on employee turnover intentions, and their association with specific organizational variables (protégé organizational level, protégé gender, mentor's position, and audit firm structure). The study found that public accounting mentoring consists of three separate functions: social support, career development, and role modeling. Path analysis indicated that employees with lower turnover intentions received more career development support from their mentor and had a partner as a mentor. The level of social support provided by partner mentors tended to be less than that provided by manager mentors. Female protégés, who tended to have managers as mentors, received more social support when their mentor was also female. The role modeling function did not differ across organizational variables. The results of the study indicate that while social support is a key factor in defining the mentoring process for public accounting employees, the career development function is associated with lower protégé turnover intentions.

This study investigated the interaction effects of perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU), decentralization and management accounting systems (MAS) design on managerial performance. MAS design was defined in terms of perceived availability of two characteristics of information, which were scope and level of aggregation. The responses of 48 managers, drawn from a cross-section of Singapore companies, to a questionnaire survey were analysed by examining the regression equations for the three-way interaction model and the partial derivatives of the equations. The results indicated that decentralization and the availability of MAS information characteristics of broad scope and aggregation were associated with higher managerial performance under conditions of high PEU. Under conditions of low PEU, decentralization and the availability of MAS broad scope and aggregated information were associated with lower managerial performance.