Kim Soin

Making the Case for Narrative Methods in Cross-Cultural Organizational Research

The prevailing literature on cross-cultural research in management studies has tended to conceptualize the meaning and the impact of culture on organizations by using distinct categories. This article argues that given the embedded nature of organizations, a narrative methodology offers an alternative and complementary approach to developing our understanding in cross-cultural research. Using examples of story-driven investigations into cultural differences, it explains the potential of this approach. It therefore seeks to offer a contribution to the variety of methods for organizational research on cross-cultural issues.

Introduction: Organizations, Risk and Regulation

Risk, regulation and practices of organizing are interrelated in a myriad of ways. Natural disasters, technical failures, and also processes of organizing are sources of risk to which organizations must respond and for which new managerial and regulatory practices are demanded. In this introduction we highlight three salient features of risk management: the (un)intended production of risk by organizations; the complex interrelationship between risk management and regulation; and the evolving and often contested nature of risk management knowledge. Each of these three themes is evident in the different contributions to this themed section.

Exploring Notions of Control across Cultures: A Narrative Approach

It can be argued that the concept of control is one of the most important and yet complex notions of management accounting theory and practice. Despite its importance, it is not fully understood in terms of its significance in an international context. Using an interpretive approach and against the background of structuration theory, this paper explores and identifies differences in notions of control across European cultures. The empirical research is based on samples of narratives of personal experiences taken from respondents in four European countries: Austria, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The results indicate that control is influenced by, and deeply embedded in, the cultural context of the respective countries. This has implications for the transfer of management accounting and control knowledge across different European countries and suggests that one has to be aware of the existence, meaning and significance of the differences and characteristics of the regional culture. In an era of internationalization and standardization, this paper responds to calls (Hopwood, 1999) for research, which emphasizes the importance of attempts to understand how the practices of management accounting and control are differentiated in relation to regional cultures.

Management Accounting in Financial Services

Abstract This chapter focuses on the changing role of management accounting and control in the financial services sector over the last 25 years. It identifies two key phases that impacted the use and nature of management accounting systems. The first phase relates to the (global) deregulation of the industry and shows how, as a result of increased competition, a new emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness emerged. Management accounting techniques (such as activity-based costing (ABC) and the balanced scorecard) became the primary devices to manage costs and performance. The chapter then highlights how, during the second phase of reregulation and the resulting changes in the industry, management accounting was replaced by risk as the central issue in internal control. The chapter concludes that management accounting and control systems have had a short career in financial services, yet might again attain more relevance for practice and research once the limitations of risk management, like the neglect of strategic risks and the difficulties of grasping operational risks, are fully realized.

Management Control and Uncertainty

Management control is about the process of steering organizations through the environments in which they operate, to achieve both short-term and longer-term goals. These goals will differ from organization to organization because their stakeholders are different and the compromises between different stakeholder demands will be resolved in different ways, in part dependent on the relative power of different stakeholder groups in each context, and also on the past history and trajectory of the organization. However, the longer-term goals will almost inevitably include the survival of the enterprise itself, as this generally is in the interests of most stakeholder groups, most of the time.Management control systems themselves have tended to be regarded as static and unchanging, rather than dynamic. Management Control and Uncertainty addresses this issue more cogently, but it needs to be recognized that all control takes place under conditions of uncertainty: it does now, and it always has done. In this edited collection, the contributing authors redress some of this balance by examining different aspects of management control systems in the modern world whilst paying more explicit attention to the ubiquitous nature of uncertainty.

The Sedimentation of an Institution: Changing Governance in U.K. Financial Services

The Financial Services Act 1986 was the first comprehensive attempt to create a unified statutorily based system of regulation within the U.K. financial sector. It generated a framework of regulation that is in a continuous state of development and modification. In this article, we study the development of U.K. financial regulation between 1986 and 2011. We trace how competing theorizations and logics of regulation have led to the institutionalization of a meta-form of financial regulation. In doing so, we address the conundrum of conscious, strategic theorizations leading to cognitive taken-for-granted institutions by identifying four catalysts that contribute to institutionalization when concurring with theorization. These are the evocation of political ideologies, the appropriation of scandals, the growing number of actors, and the increasing organization of actors. Finally, we argue that sedimentation is the appropriate metaphor for the version of institutionalization occurring in this setting.

Management Control and Uncertainty: Risk Management in Universities

Uncertainty is a prevalent feature of any organizational setting and managers have always faced uncertainty. This uncertainty pre-dates Knight’s (1921) early work on the nature of uncertainty and March & Shapira’s (1987) seminal work on the role of uncertainty in decisionmaking is organizations. Power (2007) argues that when uncertainty is organized, it becomes a risk to be managed. However, the discourse of risk and the way it is managed is not always a feature of the wider management control framework in organizations. And, although the relationship between risk management and management control has been acknowledged both explicitly (Bhimani, 2009; Mikes, 2009, 2011; Soin & Collier, 2013; Woods, 2009) and implicitly (Huber & Scheytt, 2013) in recent literature, the connections (or perhaps the connector(s)) are far from clear. In this chapter, we explore the connection between risk management and management control and argue that both concepts have experienced changes in recent years that have united them under the umbrella of a discourse around accountability.

Management control in the financial services sector

The UK financial services industry is one of the largest sectors in the UK, employing around 400 000 people (more than any other industry except for the civil service and the health service). The productivity revolution that swept through the manufacturing industry a decade ago has now reached financial services. Because the industry is coming to restructuring late, the changes are being pushed through fairly fast. At Lloyds, the chief executive has predicted that up to 100 000 jobs will be cut from the industry this decade. The general consensus among the major UK banks is that there is enormous scope for rationalisation and a need to keep costs at an acceptable level in relation to income.