Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

Faith at Work: Religious Norms as Cultural Control in a Management Control Package

• In Event: Control systems (Mixed Methods) II

Abstract

There is a growing trend for businesspeople to bring their religious beliefs into the workplace. This has been called the “faith at work” movement. While it has been shown that firms in areas with strong religious norms generally experience lower levels of financial reporting irregularities, we do not have a good understanding of how religious norms interact with other management control practices to influence the behavior of organization members. To examine this area we carry out a case study of an entrepreneurial family firm which had formal religious values and the moto “What would Jesus do?” We view these religious norms as cultural controls and examine how they interact with other control mechanisms within a management control package and their influence on the behavior of organization members. We found that the religious norms in our case company were used to create a culture of loyalty and commitment to the family owners with the aim of maximizing profitably while taking care of customers and each other and continually innovating, learning and growing. This resulted in some employees viewing the culture through a stewardship lens and behaving in ways congruent with the religious norms, while for others the culture did not influence them to behave as stewards as they saw how the religious norms were used to support self-interested behaviors.

Authors

• Chris Akroyd, Oregon State University

• Heather Lynn Pesch, Oregon State University