留学生会计学硕士dissertation-value based manangement accounting-价值会计基础管理
Introduction:
Since the past century, the practice of management accounting has changed dramatically which has changed from the traditional focus on the decision analysis and the budget control of the financial-oriented to the stressed of the diversity motivation of shareholder value creation for recognition, measurement and the system of strategy management (IFA, 1998). According to the report of IFA (1998), the development of management could be divided into four stages, the nearest stage is the stage of the research of value based management which developed from the middle of 1990s. This stage focused on the recognition, measurement and the management of performance creation of the shareholders’ value, the organization’s creation, customer’s value. Moreover, the using of the new management accounting techniques for enhancing the creation of the value is the significant feature of this stage. These techniques include the balance score card which could supply the indicators of the leading and lagging economic success (Kaplan and Norton，1996); the evaluation of economic value which could report the shareholders’ return approximation (Stewrt, 1991) and strategic management accounting system which could provide the current and the future uncertainty information (Simons,1991). Although researchers believed that these new techniques are different, organizations use a comprehensive framework called “value based management” for the integration of the techniques.
The integration is concentrate in the strategies which could be defined and implicated to create the maximum value for the shareholders; the implementation of an information system which across the business unit of enterprise, product and value creation activities of customers and the potential value derive; corresponding of the business process and the value creation and the design of the performance measurement system of the value creation and the staff motivation scheme (KPMG, 1999).
The framework of value based management
The framework of value based management is based on the practice of management accounting, it has suggested that the purpose of management is trying to create perfect long-term value for shareholders and supply a integral framework for the business measurement and management (Dixon and Hedley, 1993). Even though, the changing of the framework of value based management followed by the different enterprises, the framework usually includes the following six basic steps: select the specific internal target which could enhance the shareholders’ value; select the strategy and the organizational design which consistent the selected target; determine the particular performance variables which could create value in the process of operating under the selected organizational strategy (i.e. the value derive); under the basis of the determination of the different priority which relate to the analysis of the value derive, formulating the action plan, selecting performance measurement indicators and setting specific goals; evaluating whether the implementation of action plan is successful or not and evaluating the organization and management performance; evaluating the internal goals, strategy, plan and the efficiency of the control system of the organization and also modification which is based on the present result (Ittner and Larcker, 2001).#p#分页标题#e#
The above framework of value based management could be seen as an abstract of the interdependence, the simultaneous choices and the feedback loop of the complex practice. However, it has provided a useful mechanism which classifies the empirical research of the management accounting and evaluates the support level of empirical research for the relationship of the normative framework of value based management. More importantly, this framework grasps the relationship between contingency theory, agent model and the organizational design framework of the economic-based. The each step of the framework will be shown in the following part.
The selective of organizational goals
A basic hypothesis of the research of management accounting is that providing enough information and control mechanism for achieve the organizational goals. But, the selection of organizational goals outside the scope of the research of management accounting traditionally, this situation has changed following the foundation of value based management approach. Many proponents of value based management suggested that the main purpose of organizations must be elaborated from the “economic value” indicators, by what the internal goals and the objectives of maximizing shareholders’ value will be better fitted (Copeland etc. 1996). The basis of this point indicated that the changing of the indicators of economic value is better reflects than the changing of shareholders’ value. Therefore, it could be replaced by the goal setting, the capital budget or the compensation plan. According to Anctil (1996), the coherence of the interest of principle and agent only could be ensured when use the EVA and other indicators of residual income as the targets of organizations. The empirical researches of the field concentrate into two respects: Firstly, whether the added economic value equaling to the income indicators is more relevant with the company’s value than the traditional accounting indicators? Secondly, whether the enterprises which use the added economic value as the return indicators create more value than other enterprises?
By test the simple single-variable of the research of the relationship between market indicators and the EVA, researchers found that compare with the accounting return, the free cash flow and other traditional indicators the EVA indicator is more relevant than the market value added (Milunovich and Tseui, 1996). According to O’Byrne’s (1996) research, he has further found that the EVA is more superior in explaining the stock return than the accounting earning. However, any different evidences exist which found have found that the explanation ability of EVA is lower than the proponents’ inference (Biddle, 1997). It is worth nothing that even if the economic value indicators have the stronger statistical relationship than the stock returns, it could not conclude that the management plan and control are more desirable. For instance, the result of Gjesdal’s research showed that a information system which is useful for the evaluation of the enterprise value may not suitable for the evaluation of the managers’ performance.#p#分页标题#e#留学生会计学硕士dissertation-value based manangement accounting-价值会计基础管理
The complexity of the result of the above research suggested such a problem: whether the selection of economic value indicators for purpose of accounting and control will help enterprises achieve better performance? Unfortunately, the empirical evidences could not provide the correct answer for the above problem.
Development of strategy and choice of organizational design
This stage is consistent with many frameworks of organizational design analysis model of the basis of economics, such like the organizational architecture of Brickley and the fit model of Milgrom and Robberts (1995). The research of this field could be divided into two types: (1) how to define the enterprise’s strategy; (2) how to design the rational organizational framework which is based on the enterprise’s strategy.
The management accounting literatures often measure the choice of strategy and the relationship between organizational accounting and the design of control system under the established strategy. These researches always measure the strategy as a continuous system from the strategy of “defense”, “harvest” or “cost leadership” to the strategy of “prospector”, “construction” or “innovation” (Langfield, 1997). The strategy of “defense”, “harvest” or “cost leadership” stress that organizations strive to become a low-cost manufacturer within a narrow range of products, but the strategy of “prospector”, “construction” or “innovation” stress that organizations strive to become the market pioneer by using series of innovative products or services efforts. Even if the simple continuous system could be seen as a useful indicator of organizational strategy, it ignored the multidimensional nature of strategic choice. For instant, the researchers of strategy any other strategies were existing except the strict “cost leadership” and “innovation strategy”, these strategies include provide the higher quality product than the competitors, use the image segmentation products and perfect customer services… (Miles and Snow, 1978). The other wildly used variable which could measure the strategy in the processing of management accounting research is the perceived environmental uncertainty. The uncertainty competition and the uncertainty environment is interrelated and the “prospector” strategy enterprises which abound of innovation spirit faced to bigger uncertainty than the “defense” or “cost leadership” strategy enterprises (Fisher, 1995). Beside such researches which focus on the strategy of company or the business units, there were other researches measure lower-hierarchy business strategies. For example, the just-in-time production, the flexible manufacturing system and the total quality management (Daniel and Reitsperger, 1991; Itner and Larker, 1997; Scott and Tiessen, 1999).
Compare with a large number of analytical studies by Melumad (1992) and Baiman (1995), there is a little empirical research has measured the determination factors of the organizational design. Amount of empirical research assumed that there is a type of relationship existing between the choice of organizational design (such like the decentralization, the allocation of decision-making power and the independence) and the strategy (or perceiving environment uncertainty). They also assumed that there is significant influence on the design of control system and the enterprise’s performance by the organizational design and the level of strategic match. However, by measuring these view, they obtained the different results, the follow-up studies with large samples and well-designed will provide more evidence to these views.#p#分页标题#e#留学生会计学硕士dissertation-value based manangement accounting-价值会计基础管理
The determination of value motivation
The agent model point that, the purpose of control system is to promote the real action of agents consistent with the agreement action of clients. If the final goal of clients is maximizing the shareholders’ value, the control system should pay attention on the action which could enhance the shareholders’ return. The process of value based management has developed this theory by focusing on the “value motivation” of financial and operating which could increase the shareholders’ value. The determination of such motivations and their correlation also help to determine the actions or the motivations which caused by the cost increasing or the income changing. The resources allocation, the performance measurement and the design of information system will be improved by these actions. Researchers concentrate their research in three parts of this area which are the activity based accounting (ABC); the strategy cost management (SCM); the balance score card (BSC).
The research of activity based accounting importance to the ability of the relative indicators of non-production to forecast the manufacturing costs (Cooper and Kaplan, 1991). The main research of this type of literatures is that how the increasing understanding of costs motivations will improve the allocation of the manufacturing cost, then the decision making will also be improved. So far, the most studies has tested whether the non-production cost motivation of activity based accounting could explain the most manufacturing cost or not. In addition, this type of view has been confirmed effectively. For instance, according to the result of analysis by Fisher and Ittner (1999), although the direct labors cost (alternative variable of yields) could been control, the complex variables also significant correlative with the manufacturing costs; Macarthur and Tranahan (1998) have found that the level of complexity of hospitals and the level of manufacturing cost for maintaining this type of complexity has been determined in the same time by using the data from hospitals; Itner and other researchers (1997) has found that the above indicators and the units, batches and the product maintenance category of the “framework of manufacturing cost hierarchy” (suggested by Cooper and Kaplan, 1991) is corresponding by analyzing the numerous manufacturing index PCA.
The literatures of strategy costs management have extended the concept of activity based accounting, except emphasize the structure motivation of manufacturing costs (e.g. the size and scope of organization, the level and type of techniques and the category strategy and so on), and also emphasize the “execute” cost motivation which is based on ability of the organization efficient to execute their business activity (working group participation, the relationship between customers and supplier, the products and the design of manufacturing process…) (Shank and Govindarajan, 1994; Shields and Young, 1995).#p#分页标题#e#
The conception of balance score card has continue developed on the basis of analysis of costs motivation, it emphasized that the measurement of performance should be based on the multidimensional “value motivations” which include the financial performance , customers’ relations, process of internal business, study and innovation (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Researches in this field often measure the non-financial indicator is the leading indicator of financial indicator or the future financial performance motivation. For example, according to the researches by Behn and Riley (1999) and Itner and Larcker (1998), customer satisfaction index and the future financial performance or the present market value is positive correlation, the former indicator could be seen as a indicator with the function of leading indicator (Itner and Larcker, 1998). However, the customer satisfaction and the future performance is non-liner relationship, the performance effect of customer satisfaction is not distinct in the higher level. Moreover, little researches have provided limited support for the “benefit” of the balance score card. For instance, many researches has report that the balance score is provided with the medium or higher than medium level perceived benefits, but the result of the above research also found that there is not significant effect of the compensation plan on the enhancing the understanding of the strategy targets and the action of managers (Chenhall and Langfield-Smith, 19980；Itner, 2001).
The development of action plan, the choice of measurement indicators and the setting of specific objectives
The fourth step of the framework of value based management is the development of action plan which is based on the analysis of value motivation and the selection of measurement indicators and setting of the specific objectives which could ensure the action scheme successful implementation. In this step, researches concentrate in the following three areas: (1) the choice of investment and action plan; (2) the choice of performance indicator; (3) the setting of specific performance objectives.
In the past literatures of management accounting, only the choice of capital investment attaches the enough attention of the choice problem of the specific action plan. The past literatures have divided empirical research of the choice of capital investment into two types: firstly, the majority researches measure whether the enterprises which use the complex system of capital budget performance better than such enterprises which use simple approach, for example, researchers have found that there will be a higher shareholders’ return, if the enterprises use the technique of discounted cash flow (DCF) under the predictable environment (Haka, 1987); the other type measure the effect of non-financial information and external information when these information were used in the decision of capital investment, for instance, Larcker (1981) has found that the internal information and the external information, the financial information and the non-financial information general are provided with the importance of perceived within the strategy capital budget; the “successful” enterprises pay more attention on the competition issues, the value chain analysis and the basic cost motivation than other competitors which seem “unsuccessful”, but the “successful” enterprises just pay a little attention on the financial computing (Carr and Tomkin, 1996).#p#分页标题#e#
Compare with other aspects of management accounting, the value based management pay more attention on the choice of the performance indicators. Overall, these researches could be divided into two types. The one type of researches have measure the features of information and the control system, the result of this type of researches support that the choice of performance indicators is one view of function of the organizational competition environment, strategy and the organizational design. For instance, there is relationship between the complexity level of organizational design and the diversity of performance indicators is positive correlation (Gul and Chia, 1994; Scott and Tiessen, 1999); according to Chenhall and Morris (1986), the decentralization, PEU and the organizational internal correlation is closely with the four features of management accounting system which are the scope (whether include the information of external, non-financial and the future- oriented), the timeliness, the integration and the general level of prices; the using of performance measurement indicators in “prospector” enterprises is pretty different with the using in the “defense” enterprises (Simons, 1987; Guilding, 1999); the manufacturing technology has a significant influence on the using of budgeting control system and the benefit.
The second type of researches on performance indicators focused on the compensation plan, this type of researches mainly measured the determination factors of the choice of performance indicators and the performance effects of compensation plan. The important determination factors of the choice of performance indicators (include financial and non-financial indicators, accounting and marketing indicators) which include the enterprise under which industry, enterprise growth, the level of the innovation activity of the strategy quality, the manager’s tenure, the proportion of managerial ownership, the degree of traditional financial indicators doping and so on will be considered when the CEO executive the compensation contracts (Bushman and etc, 1996; Ittner and etc, 1997). Keating (1997) has measure the organizational hierarchy of performance standard which need be measured; they suggested that the important determination factors of the choice of divisional indicators include the divisional growth, the internal correlation of organizations and the size of the department in an organization. About the performance effects of compensation plan, researchers have shown that the organizations which lead the performance indicators of incentive plan closely integrated to the contingency factors will achieve a better performance (Simons, 1987; Govindarajan, 1988).
Although there is a large number of behavioral accounting researches have measured the specific objective, just little empirical research has analyzed the specific objectives have a significant influence on the choice of action and investment program and the performance measurement. In addition some empirical researches have measured the situation of the specific objectives. For instance, the proportion of the managers of business units achieved the specific objectives is far greater than the standard which suggested by the literatures of management accounting, by talking with the units managers, researchers have found that managers consider that the objectives which need a greater proportion to achieve is better. Because such method could help enterprises improve the company’s report, the resources plan and the effect of control. Other researchers have measured the function of different types of objectives. Such like, Murphy has found that when the previous annual performance mixed many influence on the present performance, the CEO of the enterprise may prefer to use the external standard to replacing the internal standard.#p#分页标题#e#留学生会计学硕士dissertation-value based manangement accounting-价值会计基础管理
The performance measurement and the revaluation of organizational objectives and plan
The last two stages of the framework of value based management include the performance measurement and the revaluation of organizational objectives, planning and strategy when there is diversity between results and expectation. A few studies on such problems has indicated that the efficiency of formal process depend on a range of environment factors. For example, the relationship between the abandonment rate of investment and the performance in a enterprise which use the investment monitoring system is positive correlation, however, the relationship in a enterprise which do not use the investment monitoring system is negative correlation (Smith, 1993); Myers and others (1991) have found that the performance depend on the complexity of post audit and the match level of the enterprises’ relatively variables (the degree of information asymmetry, the degree of capital closely).
The direction of future research
The object of management accounting is correlation with the firm’s internal organizational framework frequently, but such type of information also be seen as the business secret of firms. Therefore, the relative regulations often not require firms must publish this type of information to public. Hereupon, the lack of data often be seen as the important reason why the research of management accounting lag the research of financial accounting, this reason also could be seen as the basic reason (Ittner and Larcker, 2001). The data of literatures was achieved by surveys which include the surveys by researchers or commercial institutions (such like the consulting firms). Although there are many statistical methods have been founded for solving the deviation problems of the survey data, but the lack of authority and the small sample size problems have been the important limitation why such type of research could be widely accepted.
In addition, other literatures have point that another important factor which leads the empirical research of management accounting to lag is the lack of management accounting theory (Zimmerman, 2001). The literatures often prefer the practice to research many interesting phenomenon of management accounting but not the theory, so there is a small number of theories have contribute to the research of management accounting. For instance, Ittner and Larcker (2001) pointed that for promote the development of management accounting, researchers should not build their motivation of research on the commercial newspapers, and they should consider why a practice or research is interesting from the theory. Even though, compare with financial accounting, the development of management accounting theory is weak, but many theories of economics and management could be used in the field of management accounting to a large extent. For example, the contract theory is the most significant theory which has influence on the management accounting Lambert, 2001). The mainly features of contract theory has attracted the accounting researchers is that researchers could clearly reflect the conception of the conflict of interest, the incentives problems and the control of incentives in the specific model. This point is pretty important, because many problems of accounting and auditing are correlating with the control of incentive problems. In the basic hierarchy of accounting research, the agent theory has be mainly used to solve such two types of problems: (1) how the features of information, accounting and compensation system affect the incentive problems; (2) how the existing of incentive problems affect the information, accounting and the design of compensation system. Although the application of agent theory provided many efficient ways for the solving of financial accounting and auditing problems, until now, the largest beneficiary is the management accounting. In the accounting field especially in the research area of management accounting, how to proper measure the performance has became a very significant problem, because the accounting , budgeting system, performance measurement system, transfer pricing system and the decision support system have significant influence on the human being and the interaction within an organization. Recently, a growing number of criticism about the traditional performance indicator has lead managers to the wrong way, for what could be proved that the importance of performance measurement.#p#分页标题#e#
Based on the above discussion, many accounting theories (such like the agent theory) which have not been proved should become an important direction of the future research. In addition, the research should establish and test some general management accounting theory in the future.
Some problems in the future research
The first problem is the essence and modus of the value based accounting theory using in the process of organizational control. Many pessimist of the empirical research of management accounting consider that any enterprises do not use the management accounting technique in their control process. Therefore, many factual basis of empirical research may not exist. Although the new technique and new approach of management accounting do not widely use in enterprises, but there are also many problems could be analyzed by empirical evidence (for example, the compensation problems of managers). Moreover, although many enterprises has claimed that they did not use the “balance score card”, “economic value added”, “activity based accounting” and other advanced management techniques. Actually, the management approach which has been used by many enterprises could reflect the basic principle of the above techniques.
The second problem is about the econometrics problems. A salient feature of empirical research is the application of econometrics. According to Ittner and Larcker (2002) a pivotal factor of the promoting of the management accounting research development is the improving of the model setting. Although the model setting should be promoted by the theories which should be tested (Luft and Shields, 2000), just a little research has considered the above elaborate. The development of the empirical research of management accounting not only require to clear such correlation, but also demand three types of mainly problems of econometrics which are the endogenous; simultaneous; functional form.
For the endogenous, a significant limitation of majority empirical researches is the endogenous of prediction variables (or the independent variables). When the prediction variable is correlated with the choice variable of random error in the structure model, the problem of endogenous will appear. Such error of model must result in the different parameter estimation and also result in any problems of the explanation of the model and the estimation test. The solution of econometrics for the endogenous problem is choosing the two-stage procedure which is based on the instrumental variables to create the prediction variable (no relation with the error). Unfortunately, because the choice of many organizations is correlation in the management accounting research, it is difficult to confirm the appropriate instrumental variable. The other relative problem of econometrics approach is that if regress the endogenous for the exogenous, the explanation ability will be small. Especially, the estimation of instrumental variable and the OLS estimation will have the variance of the same direction. Consequently, even if the “textbook-like solution” of endogenous has known, there are also many problems will exist in the implication of the estimation of instrumental variable and the error estimates of the researchers’ ability in solving endogenous problem will also appear in the management accounting research.#p#分页标题#e#留学生会计学硕士dissertation-value based manangement accounting-价值会计基础管理
For the simultaneous, the simultaneous of choice of the management accounting and other organizational features is also an important problem. Organizations should select the management accounting system, organizational design, compensation system and other relative procedure and features in the same time (Brickley, 1997). However, the previous often chose a dependent variable subjectively, and then let the remaining variables as the independent variables. Unfortunately, majority this type of instrumental variables are difficult to be the exogenous. But, if choose the approach of simultaneous equation of the model which could test the management accounting theory, the equation variance which created by the simultaneous will reduce.
For the functional form, the theory and framework of management accounting suggest that there is complex correlation between accounting and control empirical and also the choice of other organizational design and performance. Moreover, the relationship within the three factors is non-liner. On the contrary, the functional form which chose by previous researches generally is the simple liner structure. Moreover, there is little correlation between each dependent variable. Even though it is direction to explain the liner structure, it could not grasp the complex empirical and relative performance results of the management accounting problems. Since there is a lack of clear guide of appropriate functional form of the structure model which correlate with the management accounting empirical, researchers should have the responsibility for considering setting options and choosing the consistent form with the observational data.
Conclusion
The paper has reviewed many literatures on the value based management of management accounting. The complete framework of the value based management theory has been shown in this literature review. The development of strategy and choice of organizational design, the determination of value motivation, the development of action plan, the choice of measurement indicators and the setting of specific objectives, the performance measurement and the revaluation of organizational objectives and plan, each stage of the value based management framework has been shown detailed in this literature review. However, with the development of the value based management theory, many problems have concluded by researchers, such problems will be solved by the process of the research and the development of empirical research. Certainly, the theory of value based management will help many organizations to improve their control process in the future.
