How do young audit employees perceive management control systems and how does this influence their performance in the early years of their profession?
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2025-08-26
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en
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This study explores how newly hired audit employees perceive management control systems (MCS) and how these perceptions influence their performance during their early career years. Drawing on the enabling and coercive control framework (Adler & Borys, 1996), the research investigates how specific design features of MCS, such as flexibility, internal transparency, global transparency, and repair are perceived, and how these perceptions affect performance dimensions such as audit quality, efficiency, motivation, and innovation. Using a qualitative methodology rooted in the interpretive paradigm, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees at different levels within a Big Four firm. The findings reveal that MCS in the audit profession are conditionally enabling; employee perceptions of control systems shift based on workload compression. During periods of high pressure, such as audit cycles, mechanisms initially perceived as enabling may be experienced as coercive, effectively transforming the nature of control. Critical performance aspects are negatively affected during the busy season. The study contributes to a richer understanding of how MCS are socially constructed and experienced in practice. These insights offer practical implications for redesigning control systems to better support junior staff, and theoretical implications by highlighting the temporal contingency of enabling and coercive controls.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen