Essays on Management Accounting: A Behavioral Perspective on Management Control Systems and Firm Performance

Abstract

This dissertation adopts a behavioral perspective on management control systems and examines how incentives, monitoring, and debiasing interventions shape managerial decision-making and firm performance. It comprises four research papers that address distinct yet interrelated aspects of management controls in practice. <br> The first paper investigates the concept of failure awards, i.e., awards granted for promising but ultimately unsuccessful projects. Based on an experimental study, the findings indicate that failure awards generally increase risk-taking but only reduce escalation of commitment when they emphasize the early discontinuation of failing projects. These results highlight the potential of symbolic incentives to influence innovation and resource allocation decisions. <br> The second paper analyzes the interaction of telework and employee monitoring. The experiment shows that teleworkers exert higher levels of effort and engage in less misreporting than office workers, primarily due to reciprocity. At the same time, monitoring leads office workers to reduce their effort and misreporting more strongly than teleworkers. The findings therefore illustrate that monitoring can have unintended consequences and may not represent an optimal management control mechanism for office workers. <br> The third paper presents a systematic literature review on training interventions aimed at mitigating cognitive biases. The review identifies six types of approaches, with serious games emerging as the most promising method for reducing biases. However, it also demonstrates that moderators such as training design or contextual factors exhibit limited influence, pointing to the need for further research on the conditions under which debiasing interventions are effective. <br> The fourth paper examines biases in the mergers and acquisitions process. It identifies phase-specific vulnerabilities and outlines potential debiasing measures that can be implemented at different stages of the transaction. By doing so, it highlights the role of management accounting in supporting rational decision-making and enhancing the effectiveness of control systems in high-stakes corporate contexts.