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Balancing the dual responsibilities of business unit controllers: Field and survey evidence
Victor Maas,
University of Amsterdam
Michal Matejka, University of Michigan
ABSTRACT. We examine how business unit (BU) controllers balance their dual roles of providing information for both local decision-making (local role) and for corporate control (functional role). First, we present insights from 48 field interviews with controllers at different organizational levels. We describe organizational practices that can increase the emphasis on the functional responsibility of BU controllers and discuss why such an increase may lead to role ambiguity and conflict. Second, we use survey responses of 134 BU controllers to tests several predictions motivated by our insights from the field. We present new evidence that the emphasis on the functional responsibility of BU controllers is positively associated with role conflict and role ambiguity, both of which can lead to an increased acceptance of data management practices. Thus, measures intended to strengthen corporate control can sometimes achieve quite the opposite.
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