Testing for complementarities between accounting practices

Stijn Masschelein*, Frank Moers

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Following the theoretical innovations of complementarity theory, management control studies have investigated interdependencies between different management control practices. In this paper, we compare the two dominant statistical specifications to test for the presence of an interdependency. We show theoretically how the power of the demand and the performance specification varies with the level of optimality in the sample and how those specifications are vulnerable to correlated omitted variable bias. Our simulation results reveal that the demand specification is more robust to variations in optimality and correlated omitted variables than the performance specification. We use these results to formulate recommendations for future research into management control interdependencies. Crown Copyright (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101127
Number of pages21
JournalAccounting Organizations and Society
Volume86
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2020

Keywords

  • complementarity theory
  • management control
  • statistical methods
  • EMPIRICAL-ANALYSIS
  • DESIGN
  • PERFORMANCE
  • STRATEGY
  • Management control
  • Complementarity theory
  • Statistical methods
  • MANAGEMENT CONTROL-SYSTEMS
  • LEVERS

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