News and Events

Annelies Fievez will be spending the fall semester at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in Stockholm, Sweden! The accounting department at SSE is renowned for its qualitative research in accounting and includes several scholars focusing on not-for-profits. This presents a fantastic opportunity for her to further her research on sustainability reporting and management accounting systems in not-for-profit hybrids/social enterprises. Even though the days may be shorter and less sunny in this northern part of Europe, the stimulating research environment and Swedish Fika will certainly brighten up the days and make her time there very enjoyable and insightful.

She extends a special thanks to Lukas Goretzki for hosting her and including her in a range of PhD activities.

Furthermore, she would like to express her gratitude to her supervisors for their support towards and throughout this journey.

Read the full open access paper here: ‘Exposing the pitfalls of plastics mechanical recycling through cost calculation’.

Full reference: Van Camp, N., Lase, I.S., De Meester, S., Hoozée, S. & Ragaert, K. 2024. Exposing the pitfalls of plastics mechanical recycling through cost calculation. Waste Management.

Nicola Van Camp  and Sophie Hoozée are happy to announce their publication in Waste Management. This paper is part of Nicola's interdisciplinary Ph.D. project on cost calculation of circular plastics. 

The paper discusses different pitfalls both in the initial sorting (in a Material Recovery Facility) and the actual recycling of the plastics we use every day. Some of these pitfalls are: mass retention, capacity and throughput of the facility and how they influence the cost per tonne of recycled product. Furthermore, scaling and integrating scenarios were investigated. Regarding this pitfall, an interesting insight is the fact that for scaling linear extrapolation is not possible. Last but not least, we made the first step towards fair pricing of these plastic products. 

The paper builds on generally accepted management accounting methodologies and takes a business economic point-of-view in the plastics recycling sector. 

This paper was co-authored by Kim Ragaert (Maastricht University), Irdanto Saputra Lase, and Steven De Meester. It was a truly interdisciplinary team, creating synergies and fostering valuable academic insights.

Dwight Waeye is excited to share that he will be spending the upcoming semester at Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he will be advancing his PhD research on employee whistleblowing. Dwight looks forward to this opportunity to deepen his research and interact with the academic community at Gies College. He wants to thank Michael Williamson in particular for hosting him. 

Last week, Annelies Fievez had the wonderful opportunity to attend the 14th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference and present her research on social and environmental reporting at the Emerging Scholars Colloquium. The conference was held at the beautiful Royal Holloway, University of London. It was a lovely week, reconnecting with familiar faces and meeting new colleagues, and receiving valuable feedback on our ongoing work.

Fien Rubben, Melissa Verniest and Dwight Waeye participated in the 2024 ENEAR Conference. It was a very pleasant experience where they got to meet many international scholars with shared research interests. They can't wait for the next ENEAR conference in the summer of 2026. 

Read the full article here: How sustainability assurance work gets done: assurors’ sensemaking, socialization and interactions with clients.

Full reference: Bouten, L., & Hoozée, S. 2024. How sustainability assurance work gets done: assurors’ sensemaking, socialization and interactions with clients. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.

Sophie Hoozée is happy to announce that she and Lies Bouten published their sustainability assurance (SA) study in AAAJ!

They unravel the SA work concealed behind SA statements by gaining access to three SA engagements, in which they interviewed the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers. They express their gratitude to all interviewees for sharing their valuable insights!

Assurors may articulate three types of roles as part of their sensemaking of SA work, shaping their actual SA work: the priest role, the added-value business advisor role or the protest role. Their findings also illustrate how SA work on the ground is shaped by (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client. They conclude that to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work, two options are available for regulators: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

Sophie Maussen and Sophie Hoozée are very excited to share their newest publication in Accounting, Organizations and Society! Together with their coauthor Eddy Cardinaels, they experimentally study how costing system design choices impact managerial misreporting in a multi-agent budgeting setting.

In particular, when superiors receive an aggregate signal of unused capacity and subordinates have no discretion over cost allocation input parameters, misreporting of cost budgets decreases compared to when capacity reporting is absent. However, the benefits of capacity reporting on misreporting largely vanish when subordinates have discretion over the inputs allowing them to hide their unused capacity. Results are driven by the anticipation of both peer reporting behavior and superior rejection behavior. Our results have important implications for practice and imply that costing system designers should be aware that giving employees discretion over time inputs can offset the decision-making benefits of TDABC.

This publication is based on the third chapter of Sophie Maussen’s doctoral dissertation.

Read the full article here: Costing system design and honesty in managerial reporting: An experimental examination of multi-agent budget and capacity reporting

Full reference: Maussen, S., Cardinaels, E., & Hoozée, S. 2024. Costing system design and honesty in managerial reporting: An experimental examination of multi-agent budget and capacity reporting. Accounting, Organizations and Society 112: 101541.

Melissa and Dwight had the opportunity to participate in the IMA Doctoral Colloquium. This one day colloquium was filled with interesting discussions by experienced professors in management accounting research. 

Melissa had the great opportunity to moderate a session on prosocial effort, which closely aligns with her PhD topic. 

Dwight had the opportunity to present his first working paper on frivolous whistleblowing at the main conference. This paper received a very interesting discussion by Leslie Berger (Wilfrid Laurier University). Furthermore, he also had the opportunity to discuss his second working paper at the PhD Mentorship Program. The constructive feedback by Xinyu Zhang (Cornell University), his mentor at this program, will certainly increase the quality of the paper. As a cherry on top, Dwight was recognized as an outstanding reviewer by the program organizers. 

Both Melissa and Dwight are very grateful for the opportunity they received to participate in this Doctoral Colloquium and conference. The University of Central Florida was a great  venue! With Universal Studio's around the corner, they both extended their stay at Orlando with a small holiday. 

At the end of August, CSEAR community traditionally organizes its yearly UK conference. Annelies had the honor to present this year ongoing work at the colloquium of this conference. She is very grateful for the supportive feedback she received and the interesting conversations with colleagues. She hopes to be back next year!

In the lively city of Copenhagen, Nicola's June took a greener turn. Eager to explore sustainable solutions, he joined a doctoral course at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) focused on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in solid waste management.

The course also tackled the challenge of dealing with uncertainty in data, how to address this uncertainty and how to classify and communicate it. Last but not least, the course confronted the challenging part of how to accurately and visually communicate the results of a LCA.

During his week in Copenhagen, he also had the opportunity to meet and interact with other PhD candidates from around the world, and share insights and discuss current research. 

Nicola also had the chance to present his own research, focusing on how methodology from management accounting can create knowledge and insight, to base decision making on in the context of plastic recycling.

In his presentation, Nicola discussed how this method can offer a clearer understanding of costs in plastics recycling. By breaking down the cost components, he demonstrated how it becomes possible to trace the origins of expenses more accurately and how this can be used in decision making processes regarding improved quality parameters in mechanical recycling. Another highlight of his talk concerned the exploration of how different integration and scaling scenarios can influence the final product's cost.

Last June, Dwight Waeye attended the 12th International Management Control Association Conference in Durham (United Kingdom). He had the opportunity to interact multiple times with a broad public interested in management control by:

• presenting his work-in-progress on how incentive systems and internal audits can influence whistleblowing behavior, co-authored with Sophie Maussen, at the doctoral colloquium.
• presenting his working paper “Financial rewards: The Trojan Horse of frivolous whistleblowing?”, co-authored with Sophie Maussen, at the conference.
• discussing the working paper of Chris Ford and colleague on how accounting visuals can be used in an innovative entrepreneurial setting

In addition to a great academic experience, Dwight had the opportunity to meet the author of the first academic article he read when starting as a PhD student. Can you guess the article? 

🎓 Interested in pursuing a PhD in accounting with a focus on experimental research at Ghent University? Sophie Maussen and Evelien Opdecam are looking for a PhD student! The exact research topic can be discussed with both supervisors.

💡We offer you a 6 year position in a great research team and inspiring environment. The position will start at the beginning of the upcoming academic year (September 2023). Besides doing research, you will also provide teaching assistance for the courses we are teaching.

Interested or you want some more information? Contact: 

• 📧 Sophie Maussen
• 📧 Evelien Opdecam 

Or apply now through: application-portal

This study investigates the mechanisms that link strategic orientation to choices regarding the purposes of cost information use. We do so by examining whether costing system design choices regarding complexity and diversity mediate the relationships between an exploitation or exploration orientation and cost information usage for decision making and control. Using survey data collected from 191 business units of medium- and large-sized Thai manufacturing and service firms, structural equation modelling demonstrates different patterns of results between an exploitation and an exploration context. As predicted, we find that costing system design choices are mediating mechanisms only in the context of exploration. By providing insight into antecedents and consequences of costing system design choices, our study complements prior costing research as well as studies on management control practices across different innovation modes.

Read the full article here: Do costing system design choices mediate the link between strategic orientation and cost information usage for decision making and control?

Reference: Daowadueng, P., Hoozée, S., Jorissen, A., & Maussen, S. Forthcoming. Do costing system design choices mediate the link between strategic orientation and cost information usage for decision making and control? Management Accounting Research: 100854.

On May first 2019, the new Belgian corporate law, “Wetboek van vennootschappen en verenigingen” (WVV) replaced the former “Wetboek van Vennootschappen” (W.Venn.). In this study, we focus in-depth on one specific novelty: the replacement of the former “Private Company with Limited Liability” (BVBA) by the “Private Company” (BV). Earlier, Belgium had voluntarily chosen to apply many of the stringent European regulations to the former BVBA. The BV now ends this phenomenon of “goldplating”. Although existing literature gives a profound justification to include less stringent regulation in corporate law, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to the impact on practice. This research reveals important insights for practitioners by means of a qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (database) study. In doing so, we conclude that the new BV, although much more flexible, does not differ fundamentally from its predecessor.

Read the full article here: Van BVBA naar BV: what's in a name?

Reference: Waeye, D., Maussen, S., & Everaert, P. (2022). Van BVBA naar BV: what’s in a name? Accountancy & Bedrijfskunde 2022(2): 20-38. 

Following up on their previous publication in Radiotherapy and Oncology (Defourny et al., 2019), the authors now report the policy implications of their interdisciplinary costing project, in which they estimated the cost of radiation treatments at the national level.

Read the full article here: Developing time-driven activity-based costing at the national level to support Belgian policy recommendations for radiation oncology.

Reference: Defourny, N., Hoozée, S., Daisne, J.-F., Lievens, Y., forthcoming. Developing time-driven activity-based costing at the national level to support Belgian policy recommendations for radiation oncology. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.

The new edition of the 'purple textbook' is as of now avaiable. In this new edition, new exercises are added, especially for service companies and non-profits.

Reference: Everaert, P., Hoozée, S., Bruggeman, W., 2022. Handboek management accounting: kostprijsberekening voor managementbeslissingen, 12de editie, Lefebvre Sarrut.

This study addresses differences and similarities in a wide variety of management control practices in Anglo-Saxon (Australia, English Canada), Germanic (Austria, non-Walloon Belgium, Germany) and Nordic firms (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden). Unique data was collected through structured interviews from 584 strategic business units (SBUs).

Read the full article here: The use of management controls in different cultural regions: an empirical study of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Nordic practices.

Reference: Malmi, T., Bedford, D.S., Brühl, R., Dergård, J., Hoozée, S., Janschek, O., Willert, J., forthcoming. The use of management controls in different cultural regions: an empirical study of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Nordic practices. Journal of Management Control.

Organizations pursuing a hybrid mission balance multiple objectives without singling out the financial objective as the dominant one, they. Based on a case study undertaken at a luxury hotel chain, this study investigates how a control package that fosters staff’s basic psychological needs can be designed to the persistence of such a hybrid mission.

Read the full article here: Hybridity in a hotel chain: designing a package of controls to sustain a hybrid mission.

Reference: Bouten, L., Hoozée, S., forthcoming. Hybridity in a hotel chain: designing a package of controls to sustain a hybrid mission. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.

Inspired by Maarten Vansteenkiste’s plenary presentation at an EIASM conference organized by our department, Evelyn Van der Hauwaert, Sophie Hoozée, Sophie Maussen and Werner Bruggeman draw on self-determination theory to explain the relationship between enabling performance measurement and managerial performance. As predicted, survey data from 186 Belgian managers confirm that autonomous work motivation mediates the relationship between enabling performance measurement systems and managerial performance through satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness).

Read the full article here: The impact of enabling performance measurement on managers’ work motivation and performance.

Reference: Van der Hauwaert, E., Bruggeman, W., Hoozée, S., Maussen, S., forthcoming. The impact of enabling performance measurement on managers’ work motivation and performance. Management Accounting Research.

This handbook (edited by Jan Bebbington, Carlos Larrinaga, Brendan O’Dwyer and Ian Thomson) showcases the broad spectrum of diverse approaches to environmental accounting which have developed during the last 30 years across the globe. In chapter 14 of the handbook, Lies Bouten and Sophie Hoozée provide an overview of prior research on eco- control practices and to offer critical reflections and avenues for future work.

Find the book here: Designing eco-controls for multi-objective organizations.

Reference: Bouten, L., Hoozée, S., 2021. Designing eco-controls for multi-objective organizations. In Bebbington, J., Larrinaga, C., O’Dwyer, B. & Thomson, I. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Environmental Accounting, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 194-206.

Time estimates are an important part of many costing systems. As they may be subject to estimation error and hence result in measurement error in product and service costs, it is important to understand the sources of this estimation error as well as mechanisms to mitigate them. We performed a computer-based lab experiment to test the joint impact of task interruption and interactive time estimation on the accuracy of time estimates. As predicted, we find that the negative impact of task interruption on time estimation accuracy is mitigated when participants are allowed to interactively discuss their time estimates before making a final time estimate alone. We explain our findings through the underlying effects of cognitive load and confidence. Hence, managers may improve the accuracy of their time-based costing systems by enabling an interactive time estimation process to offset the detrimental effect of task interruption.

Read the full article here: On the influence of task interruption and interactive time estimation on estimation error in time-based costing systems.

Reference: Maussen, S., & Hoozée, S. (2020). On the influence of task interruption and interactive time estimation on estimation error in time-based costing systems. European Accounting Review.

This article is also included in the second chapter of Sophie Maussen’s doctoral dissertation.

Read the full article here: Culture and management control interdependence: an analysis of control choices that complement delegation of authority in Western cultural regions.

Reference: Malmi, T., Bedford, D.S., Brühl, R., Dergård, J., Hoozée, S., Janschek, O., Willert, J., Ax, C., Bednarek, P., Gosselin, M., Hanzlick, M., Israelsen, P., Johanson, D., Johanson, T., Madsen, D.Ø., Rohde, C., Sandelin, M., Strömsten, T., Toldbod, T., forthcoming. Culture and management control interdependence: an analysis of control choices that complement delegation of authority in Western cultural regions. Accounting, Organizations and Society.

Read the full article here: National costs and resource requirements of external beam radiotherapy: a time-driven activity-based costing model from the ESTRO-HERO project.

Along with chemotherapy and surgery, radiotherapy is one of the three core therapeutic modalities for treating cancer. While brachytherapy places radioactive sources close to or into the tumour, external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) destroys cancer cells by using beams of ionizing radiation. In this interdisciplinary project with the university hospital, a time-driven activity-based costing model was developed to calculate the cost of EBRT treatments. To demonstrate the model’s capabilities, a dataset was constructed for the hypothetical country Europalia.

Reference: Defourny, N., Perrier, L., Borras, J.-M., Coffey, M., Corral, J., Dunscombe, P., Hoozée, S., van Loon, J., Grau, C., Lievens, Y., 2019. National costs and resource requirements of external beam radiotherapy: a time-driven activity-based costing model from the ESTRO-HERO project. Radiotherapy & Oncology, 138, 187-194.

Our experimental study reveals that in contrast to specialist readers, generalist readers perceive plain language CSR information as more credible than CSR information written in difficult language. Credibility of CSR information may thus be perceived differently by readers depending on their specialization.

Read the full article here: The impact of readability of corporate social responsibility information on credibility as perceived by generalist versus specialist readers.

Reference: Hoozée, S., Maussen, S., Vangronsveld, P., forthcoming. The impact of readability of corporate social responsibility information on credibility as perceived by generalist versus specialist readers. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal.

The EU’s requirements for country-by-country reporting of payments to governments by oil, gas and mining (extractive) and forestry companies consist of the Accounting Directive’s Chapter 10 provisions and the equivalent provisions of the Transparency Directive (collectively ‘the Directives’). The provisions require in-scope companies in the extractive and forestry sectors to publicly report details of payments they make to governments on an annual and per-country basis, including at project level.

To explore the efficacy of the EU law concerning reports on payments to governments, a report was prepared by the STAR Collective, an academic group (of which Sophie Hoozée is a member) from across the EU acting to enhance Social wellbeing through Transparency and Accountability Research.

Find the full article here:  A comparison of activity-based costing and time-driven activity-based costing.

Find the book here: Management Control: Concept, Methods and Practices

While promoting a holistic approach and highlighting the role of human motivation, the authors show how financial and strategic performance control processes can be integrated to create and improve internal strategic alignment. This book conceptualises the management control concepts, methods and practices used to manage both financial and strategic performance.

Reference: Bruggeman, W., Slagmulder, R., Hoozée, S., 2018. Management control: concepts, methods and practices, Intersentia, Cambridge, UK.

Using unique data from an interview-based survey encompassing 610 strategic business units from nine countries (seven European countries plus Canada and Australia), this study investigates whether certain configurations of management controls dominate in certain societies and whether the effectiveness of a given archetype of management control systems varies depending on the socio-cultural setting in which it operates.

Find the full article here: The impact of society on management control systems.

Reference: Greve, J., Ax, C., Bedford, D. S., Bednarek, P., Brühl, R., Dergård, J., ... & Willert, J. (2017). The impact of society on management control systems. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 33(4), 253-266.

Based on survey data obtained from 170 Belgian managers, Hoozée and Ngo found that contributions to process improvement mainly emerge through informational mechanisms rather than motivational mechanisms triggered by the participation process.

Find the full article here: The impact of managers’ participation in costing system design on their perceived contributions to process improvement.

Reference: Hoozée, S., Ngo, Q.-H., 2018. The impact of managers’ participation in costing system design on their perceived contributions to process improvement. European Accounting Review.

The findings of a survey among Belgian managers and management accountants reveal that, on average, corporate management have the stronger influence on management accounting system design but that their influence is mitigated by the involvement of parent companies and consultants.

Find the full article  here: Who influences the design of management accounting systems? An exploratory study.

Reference: Hoozée, S., Mitchell, F., 2018. Who influences the design of management accounting systems? An exploratory study. Australian Accounting Review.

Previous literature calls for further investigation in terms of precedents and consequences of learning approaches (deep learning and surface learning). Motivation as precedent and time spent and academic performance as consequences are addressed in this paper. The study is administered in a first-year undergraduate course. Results show that the accounting students have a slightly higher score for deep learning compared to surface learning. Moreover, high intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation have a significant positive influence on deep learning. Next, deep learning leads to higher academic performance; surface learning on the other hand leads to lower academic performance. The effect of deep learning on performance still holds, when we control for time spent, gender and ability. Consequently we can conclude that a deep learning approach is much more than ‘simply’ spending a lot of time on studying.

Find the full article here: The relationship between motivation, learning approaches, academic performance and time spent.

Reference: Patricia Everaert, Evelien Opdecam, Sophie Maussen. The relationship between motivation, learning approaches, academic performance and time spent. Accounting Education, 26 (1), 78-107 (2017).