Management control systems elements and intertemporal choices

• Grant number: 11/08138-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2011
• End date: June 30, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Accounting
• Principal Investigator: Andson Braga de Aguiar
• Grantee: Andson Braga de Aguiar
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Fábio Frezatti ; José Carlos Tiomatsu Oyadomari ; Ricardo Lopes Cardoso

Abstract

Accounting studies focus on the understanding of incentive factors, such as different types of performance measures and different types of rewards, to explain managerial intertemporal choices, that is how managers trade-off the costs and benefits of alternatives occurring at different time. Nevertheless, empirical evidences are scarce and contradictory. It is argued that broadening the research scope by investigating the effect of cognitive factors could help to understand the role played by management control systems on managerial intertemporal choices. This research proposal intends to integrate the accounting literature to the economic and psychology literature with the purpose of analyzing the effect incentive and cognitive factors associated with management control systems on intertemporal choices. Precisely, the direct, indirect, and interactive effects of three elements of the management control systems - level of ambiguity of performance measures, frequency of performance measurement, and reward timing - will be investigated. The effect of contextual variables, such as strategy and environmental uncertainty, will also be analyzed. The research strategy is multi-methods by considering the integration of three research methods: industry survey, single-case survey, and experiment. The main expected result is the widening of the understanding of the effects of management control system elements on managerial intertemporal choices. (AU)