Elaine Harris

Towards a better understanding of capital investment decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the capital investment process, guided by concepts from cognitive and social psychology. The intention is to gauge the extent to which managerial judgement can be detected by applying a psychological lens to the process. Initial fieldwork is subsequently reported on the extent to which managerial judgement is managed. Discovery of variations suggest an alternative perspective on understanding capital investment decisions (CIDs) that may be potentially worthwhile in understanding the long‐term success and survival of modern commercial enterprises.Design/methodology/approach – Following a systematic review, employing the psychological concepts of heuristics, framing and concensus to prior case and fieldwork studies, the CID process in three companies engaged in new market/site development projects is reported. The participants initially responded to a survey and subsequently agreed to be interviewed about their processes and involvement.Findings – The psycho...

Theorising Strategic Investment Decision-Making using Strong Structuration Theory

Purpose In the field of strategic investment decision making (SIDM) a body of research has grown up via international case studies and organisation-based fieldwork. However, there has been little systematic theorisation around SIDM processes and practices. The purpose of this paper is to show how strong structuration theory (SST) can be employed to guide how future SIDM studies are conducted and theorised. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw upon the concepts from SST to reanalyse prior empirically based work. The authors apply SST-informed analysis to four SIDM case studies selected from the total of 18 published over the period 1970-2016 to explore the utility of SST compared with other approaches. Findings The analysis highlights the role of agents’ knowledgeability and position-practice relations in SIDM, which has largely been neglected by prior studies. The authors demonstrate the potential of SST to inform meso-level theorising by applying it to four published case studies. Whilst the authors argue for the adoption of SST, the authors also identify key methodological and conceptual issues in using SST in SIDM research. Research limitations/implications The examples and recommendations could assist management accounting researchers, particularly those engaged in case studies and organisational fieldwork, to build knowledge via the improved comparison, integration and theorisation of cases undertaken by different researchers in different contexts. Originality/value The authors offer a bridge between SST concepts and case study evidence for theorising, carrying out and analysing case study and field research on SIDM.

Rethinking budgetary slack as budget risk management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on a small‐scale study that investigated the relationships between the budget‐setting process and slack, and how budgetary, behavioural and contextual factors can affect this relationship, to reconceptualise the phenomenon of budgetary slack as a budget risk management strategy.Design/methodology/approach – A case study method was employed, which enabled the researchers to investigate factors suggested by prior literature that affect slack creation. In total, nine structured interviews were conducted in a state‐owned Egyptian petroleum company, which gave the researchers a different way of thinking about the budget slack phenomenon.Findings – The authors found that slack is created, but not perceived negatively by managers, wherever they are in the organisational hierarchy. Few factors from the literature appeared to have any effect on the creation of budgetary slack, but the covert view of budget slack as a negative behaviour, adopted by early literature was...

Strategic investment decision‐making: Managerial judgement on project risk and return

Until recently little attention has been given in Accounting and Finance literature to the problem of linking the results of financial evaluation techniques such as Net Present Value (NPV) and Shareholder Value Analysis (SVA) to managers’ cognitive evaluation of strategic factors and the risk profile of projects. Various authors have called for research in this area, but very little has so far been published. This paper reports on a field‐based study carried out in the logistics industry. It builds on earlier research, which elicited constructs that managers use to assess project risk using a repertory grid technique. It provides an insight into how a project risk analysis process can be linked with project returns in strategic investment appraisal (SIA) in a divisionalised organisation. An action research approach was taken to develop a decision matrix to link the risk assessment results to expected project returns as an aid to management in strategic investment decision‐making. It is now embedded in the...

Capital Investment Appraisal

Capital budgeting or investment appraisal is concerned with organizational management decisions about which projects or assets to invest in and how to finance them to achieve corporate goals. The background to this area of management accounting started by defining this as a routine part of the budgetary control system, hence the label ‘capital budgeting’ still used in many texts and organizations today. Investment appraisal techniques traditionally applied the principles of economics to asset replacement and expansion decisions, largely ignoring the wider context of strategy formulation and implementation; thus, non— financial factors and risk levels were not always fully appraised. Whilst this may have suited the relatively stable manufacturing environments of the post—war Anglo—American countries, it has become far less suitable in recent times and other international contexts.