Flexible work arrangements present managers with challenges regarding how to manage employees using these arrangements. To date, little research has investigated how managers address these challenges. We investigate the relationship between the use of a specific implementation of flexible work (teleworking) and control system design, specifically the emphasis on output controls. Teleworking reduces the feasibility of monitoring employee behaviour as a control mechanism. Control theory suggests that this might be compensated by placing more emphasis on output controls. We conduct a survey (N ¼ 897) among employees of a financial services institution, of whom 69% is allowed to telework. We find that among teleworking employees, the share of teleworking hours is positively related to the emphasis on output controls. However, employees who are allowed to telework report less emphasis on output controls by their manager relative to those not allowed to telework. We pose various directions for future research, which may help in explaining these findings.

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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This paper aims to investigate the use of costing information in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach -A survey was carried out of 40 Egyptian privately held firms in four sectors (pharmaceutical, foodstuff, chemical, and packing and wrapping industries). Findings -The paper finds that the use and sophistication of costing information in Egypt is limited. No advanced accounting techniques seem to be applied, activity-based costing concepts are largely unknown, and the main purpose of costing information is pricing decisions, rather than performance measurement, process improvement or cost reductions. Research limitations/implications -Considerable problems were encountered in obtaining responses to the questionnaire. The results suggest that not all questions were understood by the respondents, which could be caused by the use of Western management (accounting) terms and concepts in the questionnaire with which the respondents were unfamiliar. Originality/value -The paper is one of few surveys of management accounting practices in Africa, and (to the best of one's knowledge) the first in Egypt.

The authors investigate organizational conditions influencing the allocation of decision rights made by headquarters of multinational corporations (MNCs) to their foreign R&D subsidiaries. The authors draw on the logic of management control theory to build their conceptual model and then develop this model using arguments from the R&D and time use literatures in order to test the direct and indirect effects of advanced R&D processes within the subsidiary. They find that control theory makes correct predictions in terms of three organizational conditions, namely, research nature, information asymmetry, and interdependencies, but not in terms of social controls. In addition, the authors uncover a significant interaction between research nature and advanced R&D processes that indicates a breakdown in control logic in situations of high time pressure and intense R&D effort. Their study extends the body of literature on organizational conditions that influence how R&D decision rights are allocated in the MNC by drawing attention to the task environment in the locations where R&D is performed.