Remote working, management control changes and employee responses during the COVID-19 crisis

Gianluca Delfino, B. van der Kolk

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

© 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.Purpose: The authors examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working, triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, on management control (MC) practices in professional service firms (PSFs). In addition, employee responses to these changes are explored. Design/methodology/approach: The authors carried out a field study of MC changes in PSFs in Italy, the first country in Europe that was severely impacted by COVID-19. Interviews with PSF employees form the primary data source. Pattern matching was used to identify similarities and differences and investigate how employees respond to the MC changes. Findings: As a response to the shift to remote working, managers at PSFs made various MC-related changes. For instance, they increased the number of online meetings and made use of technologies to monitor employees from a distance. Employees reacted to this by engaging in “voluntary visibilizing practices”, i.e. by trying to make sure they got noted by their superiors, for instance by doing overtime. In addition, collected evidence suggests increased stress levels among employees, changes to employee autonomy, changed perceptions of hierarchies and a weakened sense of relatedness with others in the organization. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working on MC. In addition, this paper contributes by exploring employee responses to the MC-related changes. The findings add to the growing literature on MC and motivation, and the notion of voluntary visibilizing practices is mobilized to warn against over-commitment and self-exploitation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1376-1387
JournalAccounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal
Volume34
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Funding

The authors would like to thank Salvador Carmona, Ella Hafermalz, Nieves Carrera, Marco Trombetta, Bernadette Bullinger, the guest editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this work. This paper was presented at a research seminar at IE Business School and benefitted from feedback from the participants.

FundersFunder number
IE Business School

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