Performance Management: In the News

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Award Winners
Anik Seth headshot

Anik Seth has been named a CPA Ontario 2023 Emerging Leader. This award celebrates and recognizes distinguished young members of CPA Ontario who are leaders in their industries, making notable contributions in Ontario. The CPA Ontario 2023 Emerging Leader Award is given to innovators who demonstrate significant impact while giving back to their communities.

Read more about the award here.

Alan Webb award recipient

Alan Webb received the Lifetime Contribution to Management Accounting Award. This is the most prestigious award at MAS, and recognizes individuals that have made significant contributions to management accounting education, research, and/or practice over a sustained period of time.

Tim Bauer award recipient

Tim Bauer received the Impact on Management Accounting Practice Award for his co-authored paper "Romana L. Autrey, Tim D. Bauer, Kevin E. Jackson, and Elena Klevsky. 2019. "Deploying “connectors”: A control to manage employee turnover intentions?" Accounting, Organizations and Society 79: 101059.”

Tyler Thomas award recipient

Tyler Thomas received the 2023 Journal of Management Accounting Research outstanding reviewer award.

Adverse Effects of Confidence in Complex Cost Systems Amid Competition
Tyler Thomas headshot

Tyler Thomas' paper coauthored with Ella Mae Matsumura and Dimitri Yatsenko entitled, ‘Adverse Effects of Confidence in Complex Cost Systems Amid Competition’, was published in Advances in Management Accounting in October 2023. Many organizations seek to increase the accuracy of their costing systems through increased complexity. However, even complex costing systems can be prone to impactful inaccuracies. They find in their study that if inaccuracies exist in a costing system which adversely affect the firm, managers are less likely to attribute the adverse effect to issues with the costing system with greater system complexity, as managers confidence in the system increases with complexity. If signals of cost system inaccuracies are more likely to be ignored with greater cost system complexity, these issues can persist, which can negatively impact the firm.

Read this paper.

CSPM member Kelsey Matthews' paper has been accepted for publication
Kelsey Matthews headshot

Kelsey Matthews' co-authored (Leslie Berger, Lan Guo, and Christopher Wong) paper titled "Strategic Bias in Team Members’ Communication about Relative Contributions: The Effects of Voluntary Communication and Explanation” has been accepted for publication at Behavioral Research in Accounting.

Society of Human Resource Management Webinar Series
Adam Presslee headshot

Adam Presslee presented in the Society of Human Resource Management Webinar Series.

Here is the advertisement for the event:

"When developing recognition and incentive programs, the reward matters but maybe not for the reasons you expect. Effective rewards bring joy and create memories, and those positive feelings lead to better outcomes. This session will detail Mental Accounting Theory, explaining how our brains process different types of rewards and why certain rewards are more impactful than others. This webcast will help participants use that knowledge to develop better, higher-performing programs."

More News

The effects of strategic alignment and strategic clarity on multidimensional task performance

Tyler Thomas headshot

Tyler Thomas' paper coauthored with Steve Smith entitled, ‘The effects of strategic alignment and strategic clarity on multidimensional task performance’, was accepted for publication in Accounting, Organizations and Society in November 2023. Aligning performance measures with strategic objectives is important for management control, as performance measures and strategy are separate sources of information that can guide and direct workers’ effort. The coauthors evaluate whether the clarity in how strategy is communicated affects how workers respond to alignment between the strategy or the organization and the workers’ performance measures when workers need to balance multiple performance dimensions. They find that when the strategy is communicated generally or more vaguely to workers, performance measures aligned with the organizational strategic objectives lead to greater worker performance. However, this is not the case when strategy is communicated clearly, and greater performance is driven by less aligned performance measures, as a clear strategy and a fully aligned performance measure highlight the trade offs between performance measures reducing motivation and performance.

Read this paper.

Subjectivity in Performance Evaluation and Group Identity as Antecedents of Employee Overwork

headshot of Ala Mokhtar

Ala Mokhtar's paper, ‘Subjectivity in Performance Evaluation and Group Identity as Antecedents of Employee Overwork’ was accepted for presentation at the 2023 Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting, which took place from January 5-7, 2023. This is her job market paper, and it is based on her PhD dissertation which is supervised by Tim Bauer and Adam Presslee.

The CSPM has two new hires!

We hired two new managerial faculty in 2023 (Kelsey Matthews and Tyler Thomas).

To the right is a picture with them and Wenqian Hu (left), our 2022 hire:

Wenqian, Kelsey, Tyler new hires picture

Star Light, but Why Not So Bright? A Process Model of How Incumbents Influence Star Newcomer Performance: Summary

headshot of janet boekhorst

Janet Boekhorst and her Waterloo colleagues Nada Basir and Shavin Malhotra are coauthors of 'Star Light, but Why Not So Bright? A Process Model of How Incumbents Influence Star Newcomer Performance'. A summary on their paper was featured on the 'Academy of Management: Insights'. How new teammates (or co-workers) perceive their star performers can have profound effects on whether the stars flounder or flourish and what managers can do to best position their star newcomers for success is discussed.

Read the summary: How to Help Star Newcomers Shine

Janet Boekhorst's paper was featured

The effect of functional diversity on team creativity: Behavioral and fNIRS Evidence

headshot of adam presslee

Adam Presslee co-authored a paper titled "The effect of functional diversity on team creativity: Behavioral and fNIRS Evidence" which was accepted and presented at the 2023 Management Accounting Section Mid-Year Meeting from January 5-7, 2023.

Peer-to-peer recognition leaderboards and employee helping behavior

headshot of adam presslee

Adam Presslee co-authored a paper titled "Peer-to-peer recognition leaderboards and employee helping behavior” which was accepted and presented at the 2023 Management Accounting Section Mid-Year Meeting from January 5-7, 2023.

Meet Our Newest Member: Wenqian Hu

wenqian hu headshot linking to her profile

The CSPM welcomes the newest member of our team, Wenqian Hu, who will be serving as an Associate Director.

Wenqian specializes in behavioural management accounting and recently joined the School of Accounting and Finance as an Assistant Professor.

Read more about Wenqian’s expertise.

Adam Vitalis (CSPM) Earns Recognition from Toronto Chapter of Institute of Internal Auditor

adam vitalis headshot linking to his profile

Congratulations to Adam Vitalis (CSPM) who received the inaugural Advocacy of the Profession Award” from the Toronto chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors. Dr. Vitalis received the award for his efforts in the promotion and advocacy of the internal audit profession.

Adam Presslee (CSPM) Gives Talk at Harvard Business School

In May 2022 Adam Presslee (CSPM) presented his research at the prestigious Harvard Business School. Presslee presented a study co-authored with Yasheng Chen and Sue Yang, examining how expertise in a team-setting affects creative performance. The paper is entitled “The effect of functional diversity on virtual team creativity: Behavioral and fNIRS Evidence”.  For a copy of the full paper contact capressl@uwaterloo.ca.

headshot of adam presslee