Classifying controllers by activities : An exploratory study

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to discern variables (triggers) that affect a controller’s role in an organisation. Using survey data, groups of controllers are distinguished based on coherent combinations of activities. We find that controllers either operate as so-called ‘information adapters’ or ‘watchmen’. Whether someone is bound to be an information adapter or watchman is mainly affected by personality traits and someone’s experience in finance and accounting. This research can help to shape the controller function in organisations in such a way that the ensuing activities are manageable and do not contradict one another. Another contribution of this research is that an empirically informed framework that overcomes various conceptual disagreements in the literature is generated that can be used for the future testing of hypotheses.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.