This study examines whether and how business strategy influences a firm's over- and under-investment decisions. Prospector and defender strategies expose firms to different required levels of investment, monitoring, and managerial discretion, which have implications for managerial investment decisions. Our results provide evidence that firms with an innovation-orientated prospector strategy are more likely to over-invest, whereas firms following an efficiency-orientated defender strategy are more likely to under-invest. These over- and under-investments are associated with poorer future firm performance. Moreover, the level of over- (under-) investment is exacerbated in the presence of more stock- (cash-) based compensation in prospector (defender) firms. Our results are robust to a number of checks such as ordered logit analysis, individual components of business strategy, individual components of investment, year-by-year and industry-by-industry analysis, controlling for lagged investment residuals, controlling for firm fixed-effects, first-differenced specifications, and propensity score matching.

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Increased teaching workloads combined with pressures to publish in limited outlets has intensified the burnout potential among accounting educators in Australia and New Zealand. However, amongst the few studies on tertiary accounting education, the focus has so far been only on burnout arising from student contact intensity. We broaden this literature by examining how other worklife characteristics contribute to burnout. Based on 158 responses from Australian and New Zealand accounting academics, we find evidence for emotional exhaustion due to high workload. However, professional efficacy continues to remain high. Qualitative responses offer deeper insights on how various burnout factors are interrelated.

Purpose: This paper examines why firms governed by the same environmental management standards within an industry exhibit contrasting responses, with some adhering to the letter and others achieving the spirit behind the standards. Design: Using Arena et al. (2010) as an analytical schema to examine the institutional dynamics behind such contrasting responses, the paper analyses archival and interview data relating to firm strategy, control technology and human expertise in two contrasting Australian forestry firms. Findings: The embedding and decoupling of environmental standards with a firm's environmental management practices is influenced, first, by the extent to which founder directors and senior management integrate environmental responsibility with the underlying business motives and, second, by the use of organisational beliefs and values systems to institutionalise the integrated strategic rationality throughout the firm. Finally, informed by the institutionalised strategic rationality, the participation and expertise of actors across the organisational hierarchy determines the level to which the design and execution of the eco-control technologies move beyond merely monitoring compliance, and act to facilitate continuous improvement, knowledge integration and organisational learning at the operational level. Originality: This paper responds to institutional theorists' call for a holistic explanation that considers the interactions among several intra-organisational factors to explain the dynamics behind why some firms decouple while others do not, even though the firms exist in the same social and regulatory context.

PurposeThis research paper seeks to advance the techniques of “within-paradigm” triangulation and theoretical generalization adopted in qualitative field studies for new theory development in management control.Design/methodology/approachUsing the evidence gleaned from three positivist case studies along with some published interpretivist studies, this paper identifies three triangulation approaches and links them with three forms of theoretical generalization in qualitative field studies.FindingsWhile the “literal” approach to triangulation has its place in the extant literature, this study finds that two other approaches, labeled “convergent” and “normative” triangulation, which are relevant in many circumstances to link multiple pieces of evidence in order to build credible explanations. In theory development, while the extant forms of theoretical generalization (constructive and contextual) are useful for identifying new solutions for both practical and theoretical concerns, this paper finds that a third form, namely “transposed” logic, is relevant in identifying new control problems that can benefit by adopting the observed unusual solutions.Originality/valueWithin triangulation, while the extant literature endorses the role of literal triangulation in obtaining consistent evidence, including how verifying inconsistent responses helps improve the validity of the obtained evidence, this paper advances two new triangulation approaches that can enrich the extant literature. Within theoretical generalization, while the extant literature deems constructive and contextual forms as “rhetoric”, this paper (1) expands their status to “logic” by clarifying their theoretical purpose and (2) introduces one new form, namely “transposed” logic that helps identify a generalizable range of management control problems that can adopt the observed unusual solution.