Markus Nisch on the AAA Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

Written byMarkus Nisch
Name of the conferenceAAA Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting
VenueSan Juan, Puerto Rico/USA
Date6-7 January 2017
Paper presented
Incentive Provision and Optimal Group Size for Development Projects

 

Key message of my paper

We find that increasing risk in a development project requires a smaller optimal group size of researchers. Furthermore, increasing project risk should be countervailed by downsizing the project instead of managing the risk.

What I noticed

The conference is the most important conference for management accounting and includes analytical, archival, experimental and survey research. Due to the location, admission was particularly competitive and many distinguished researchers and editors attended the conference.

This talk has surprised me

Rajiv D. Banker received the lifetime award and talked about how the discipline developed over time moving from conceptual to analytical on to empirical research. He encouraged researchers to do more theoretical research to provide more explanatory knowledge and a deeper understanding of reality.

I plan to take a closer look at this paper

Christian Hofmann, Steven Huddart, Thomas Pfeiffer: “Gross and Net Compensation Contracts”. They investigate analytically how two seemingly very close theoretical concepts can potentially affect the interpretation of empirical research into compensation arrangements.

The main topics between the sessions

How discussions at conferences differ in quality and style, the different insights various research methods can provide and whether one should focus on one research method or open up to do different kinds of research.

What I take away for my research

LEN models (a specific type of principal agent model) are well-established but far from being universally accepted. Any modeling or research choice needs to be logically reasoned and cannot rely on past usage only.

Top