DR410E Performance Mangement
10 ECTS Credits
October 4th – 6th and
November 8th – 10th 2006.
The purpose and themes of the course
The purpose
The purpose of this PhD course in Performance Management is to allow students to understand and develop a series of interesting research questions in relation to performance management, which concerns relationships between accounting, organisation and strategy. The course offers in particular:
- An introduction to the field of performance management. Focusing on the relationships between accounting, organisation and strategy, the course looks at accounting phenomena in their organisational and corporate contexts.
- A reflection on the field’s theoretical and methodological assumption.
- A discussion of ’good research questions’ in relation to performance, accounting and management issues.
The theme of the course
The course presents and discusses how performance can be made manageable; how performance can be an effect of certain other things that ‘lead’ to it. The course generally discusses how performance can be made manageable and therefore also how it can be made a practice, where it is possible to intervene somehow to create results and to exercise accountability.
Performance is generally considered a ‘good thing’ but it is also both a highly compact and ambiguous concept just as it may be that different parties disagree about relevant types of performance. Performance may be relevant to many types of performance, because it need not be about a firm. It can also be an inter-organisational relation, a value chain, a professional unit, or more generally knowledge and innovation. Performance can be defined in relation to all sorts of entities, and when the notion of ‘management ‘ is attached to it, the relations building the entity somehow are problematised in relation to concerns about their sustainability, development, evaluation, coordination or transformation.
Faculty
Professor Jan Mouritsen will teach the course, and it is coordinated in cooperation with Professor Inger Johanne Pettersen.
Programme
The course is organised around two workshops each of three days.
The first workshop (October 4th – 6th) introduces the idea of performance management and discusses a variety of elements that constitute it.
The second workshop (November 8th – 10th) focuses on the terms ‘management’ and ‘measurement’ in relation to performance management and it asks how ‘good questions’ about performance management can be developed in research projects, and it debates how empirical research can be conducted fruitfully in this area.
First Workshop
This workshop reviews models of performance management drawing on and comparing economics based, contingency based and action/behavioural approaches. In particular it attempts to map diverse strands of approaches and forms of theorising building on review papers and active class discussion. An important part of this is to look at ‘good questions’ and ‘critical assessment’ of the propositions made. In this way, the course will provide direct links into how PhD students form researchable questions and relate them to concerns about theory.
Readings:
Day 1 (October 1st): Management Control Systems – Control, Strategy and Accounting
Otley, D., (1999) Performance Management: A Framework for Management Control Systems, Management Accounting Research Vol. 10, pp. 363-382
Hansen, A. & Mouritsen, J., Strategies and Organisational Problems: Constructing Corporate Value and Coherence in Balanced Scorecard Processes, in Chapman, C. S. (ed.) Controlling Strategy: Management, Accounting, and Performance Measurement (Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 125-150)
Corvellec, H. (2003) Narratives of organizational performance, i Czarniawska, B. & Gagliardi, P. (ed) Narratives We Organize By John Benjamins Publishing Company pp. 115-133
Day 2 (October 5th): The management control process
Kirk,K. & Mouritsen,J. (1996) Spaces of Accountability: Accounting Systems and Systems of Accountability in a Multinational, in Munro,R. & Mouritsen,J. (eds.) Accountability. Power, Ethos and Technologies of Managing Thomson Publishers
Ahrens, T. & Chapman, C. (2004) Accounting for flexibility and efficiency: A field study of management control systems in a restaurant chain, Contemporary Accounting Research
Mouritsen, J. (2005) Beyond Accounting Change: Design and Mobilisation of Management Control Systems, Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Organizational Change vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 97-113
Day 3 (October 6th): Developing research agendas
This day is oriented towards (1) concluding on days 1 and 2, and (2) to apply the thoughts to the PhD-students’ research.
Thus, each PhD student prepares a 30 minutes presentation of her/his PhD project, and it is discussed against the discussions of the previous days.
Second Workshop
This workshop is concerned with the notion ‘management’ in performance management. What is the relationship between measurement and management? Measurement and management are related but not the same. Measurement somehow suggests an output where an object has been described and concluded upon- as something that has been made stable and ‘hard’. Management, on the contrary, sees measurement as input – as something to be used to transform the world. The course will discuss how measurement, representation and management are related.
Readings:
Day 1 (November 8th): Measurement and accounting
Napier, C. (1991) The Allegory of the Fields: Accounting, Cartography and Representation, IPA Conference
Latour, B. (1999) Circulating reference, in Pandorra’s Hope (Harvard University Press, chp. 2)
Mouritsen, J. (2004) Measuring and Intervening: Indicating and Crafting Intellectual Capital Effects, Journal of Intellectual Capital vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 257-267
Day 2 (November 9th): Management in Management Control
Cooper, R. (1992) Formal Organisation as representation: Remote control, displacement and abbreviation, in Reed & Huges: Rethinking Organisation (Sage)
Hansen, A. & Mouritsen, J. (1999), Managerial Technology and netted Networks, Organization (Vol. 6, no.3, pp. 451-471)
Joerges, B. & Czarniawska, B., (1998) The Question of technology, or how organisations inscribe the world, Organization Studies (pp.363-385)
Day 3 (November 10th): Developing Research Agendas – Asking Good Questions
Alvesson, M. (2003) Beyond neo-positivists, romantics and localists. A reflexive approach to interviews in organizational research, Academy of Management Review (pp. 13-33)
Czarniawska,B. (2001) Is it possible to be a constructionist consultant?, Management Learning (pp. 253-267)
Kreiner, K. & Mouritsen, J. (2005) The Analytical Interview – Relevance beyond Reflexivity, in Tengblad, S., Solli, R.& Czarniawska (eds.) The Art of Science Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press, Malmø, pp.153-176
Practical information
The course will be held on the premises of Bodø Graduate School of Business.
There is a registration fee at NOK 1500, which includes conference material and dinners.
Deadline for registration: 10/9-2006
The course can accommodate 10-15 students. In case of over demand the criterion of selection will be the amount of course work done in the doctoral program. Researchers in the field may also participate in the course.
Application_Form_DR410E.doc
Exit requirements:
To finish the course the PhD student:
1) Writes a course paper about his/her learning points in the course and relates the course content and discussions to his or her PhD work. This paper has to be handed in no later than November 24th, and it is probably around 6 pages long.
2) Reviews two other PhD students’ paper and provides constructive criticism in two separate review papers. These reviews have to be handed in no later than December 1st. Each of these papers is probably around 5 pages long.
All course papers and review papers will be available for all participating in the course. There will be a pass/rewrite assessment for all papers. The course credit is 10 ECTS.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Professor Inger.Johanne Pettersen
Inger.Johanne.Pettersen@hibo.no
Phone: +47 90 84 69 30
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