Bruce R. Neumann

Determining the cost of IT services

Providing managerial information to explain costs in the context of personnel and equipment activities and processes.

Industry‐university “consulternships”: an implementation guide

Describes an innovative approach to building and utilizing industry‐university partnerships which we titled “consulternships”. Consulternships reflect a blend of professional consulting engagements, student internships and faculty externships. These consulternships typically last longer than a single academic term, they are financially supported by a firm or organization, and they reflect intensive project management involvement by the firm’s staff, a student team and university faculty members. This article describes the need for consulternships, their advantages and disadvantages and how to establish them. It also describes a specific case study at the University of Colorado at Denver as a model for such consulternships.

Individual Performance Measures: Effects of Experience on Preference for Financial or Non-Financial Measures

Abstract Purpose Prior research identified conflicts in implementing performance measurement systems that include both financial and non-financial measures. Attempts to incorporate non-financial measures, for example, balanced scorecards (BSCs), have shown short-term success, only to be replaced with systems that rely on financial measures. We develop a theoretical model to explore evaluators’ choice and use of the most important performance measurement criterion among financial and non-financial measures. Methodology/approach Our model links participants’ prior evaluation experiences with their attitudes about relative accounting qualities and with their choice of the most important performance measure. This choice subsequently affects their evaluation judgments of managers who perform differentially on financial versus non-financial measures. Findings Experimental testing of our structural equation model indicates that it meets the accepted goodness of fit criteria. We conclude that experience has an influence on choice of performance measures and on decision heuristics in making such evaluations. We suggest that an “experience gap” must be considered when deciding which performance metrics to emphasize in scorecards or similar performance reports. We analyzed four accounting qualities, importance, relevance, reliability, and comparability and found that importance, relevance, and reliability have strong effects on how managers prioritize and use accounting measures. Originality/value We conducted our study in a controlled, experimental setting, including participants with diverse experiences. We provide direct evidence of participants’ experience and attitudes about the relative accounting qualities of financial and non-financial measures which we link to their choice of the most important performance measure. We link this choice to their performance evaluations.

Évaluation de la performance des managers : L'effet de l'ordre de présentation et de l'importance relative des indicateurs financiers et non financiers

Debate on the weight of financial vs. non financial indicators in performance measurement process is still going on. The purpose of this research is to examine, experimentally, factors that influence whether corporate managers exhibit bias toward financial versus nonfinancial corporate performance measures. First, we manipulated presentation order of financial and nonfinancial measures to test whether cognitive processing limits result in decision makers placing more weight on the first few items presented. Second, we manipulated the importance of the financial performance measures to examine whether prior mixed results of financial measures bias among corporate managers can be explained by differences in the relative importance of the particular set of financial and nonfinancial measures.