Markus Nisch on the AAA Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.