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Researchers win CIMA grant to help businesses
Researchers from Loughborough University have won a highly sought after £36K research grant from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) that will benefit medium and large sized businesses in the UK seeking to improve their current performance management systems and gain a better understanding of how these currently help or hinder performance.
To celebrate the 20th and 25th anniversaries of two seminal pieces of management accounting work, the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ and ‘Relevance Lost’, CIMA commissioned four projects research to investigate how performance management has evolved in the past two decades and to identify which organisations are now market leaders in this area.
The Loughborough research proposal, submitted by Professor Lin Fitzgerald and a team from the Accounting and Financial Management discipline at the university’s School of Business and Economics, was one of the four projects to be awarded funding following a rigorous selection process that saw applications from 14 different countries across four continents.
The project at Loughborough University recognises that proactive performance management is increasingly important as globalisation, technology and economic pressures drive organisational change. To cope with these pressures a number of leading-edge organisations are now adopting the Shared Service model to drive performance improvement. This project will focus on the process of performance management within Shared Service Centres and how this contributes to the broader performance management of organisations. Five leading organisations from both the public and private sectors will be used as case studies for the research which is due to be completed next year.
Naomi Smith, R&D Manager at CIMA said: ‘The last 20 years have seen corporate scandals, the dot-com bubble and the sub-prime debt crisis and these have shifted the role of management accountants from reporting and controlling through planning and analysis, to proactive performance management. It is our hope that this research will highlight best practice and lessons that can be used by companies in improving performance management.’
Professor Angus Laing, Dean of the School of Business and Economics said: ‘Research is integral to Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics. We value research of the highest level that informs academia and is instrumental in helping shape and influence the wider world across both the public and private sectors. This project blends rigour and relevance through active engagement with influential professionals at the core of the corporate world.’
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