The Accounting Review Vol. 63 No. 4 1988
The Controllability Principle in Responsibility Accounting.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine controllability: the notion a manager should be evaluated based on that which she or he controls. We embed the managerial evaluation problem in a principal-agent setting and ask whether the optimal agency solution bears any logical relation to a casual definition of controllability. It does not. More to the point, the agency framework compels us to look at information content. This information content perspective, upon reflection, agrees with our intuition, with our anecdotal Impressions of practice, and with the dictates of the principal-agent model. Moreover, there is a well-defined relation between information content and a notion of control. Thus, the Information content perspective may be thought of as offering a precise definition of controllability.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-4482667
- Volume
- 63
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 700-718
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref