Motivating Revisions of Management Accounting Systems: An Examination of Organizational Goals and Accounting Feedback

• In Event: Management Accounting

Abstract

Organizations often revise their management accounting systems (MAS) to adjust for changes in markets, products, organizational designs, and technologies. Successful revisions are likely to require input from accountants and other employees throughout an organization. These individuals, however, have competing demands on their time. These demands and the uncertainty of the benefits of MAS revisions can make it challenging to motivate these individuals to revise MAS. It has been suggested that providing individuals with feedback that small-scale and/or short-run MAS changes have been a success can motivate continued change efforts. My study provides theory, based on motivational psychology, and experimental evidence about why and when this strategy predictably either increases or decreases individual motivation to exert further effort in revising MAS. Experimental results indicate, as predicted, that accounting feedback about the success or failure of MAS revisions can increase or decrease motivation to exert additional effort on revising MAS depending on the goal(s) activated in individuals’ minds by language in the accounting report.

Author

• Tyler F Thomas, University of Wisconsin–Madison