De controller als choice architect - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

D R . V I C T O R S . M A A S
4
D E C O N T R O L L E R A L S C H O I C E A R C H I T E C T
Abstract
Management accountants are choice architects: they provide information
that is used in managerial decision making and they have considerable
influence on the monetary and non-monetary incentives that drive
managers’ decision-making processes. Over the past two decades, our know -
ledge of how people make economic decisions has increased tremendously.
However, this has had only very little impact on the design of management
accounting and control systems in organizations. Consequently, management
accounting is (again) at risk of becoming irrelevant. To secure its relevance,
management accountants need to become aware of their role as choice
architects and need to develop into professionals whose core competence is
to provide insight into quantitative information as a product of human
decision making and, vice versa, to explain and predict decision-making
behavior as a response to quantitative information. Academic management
accounting research should facilitate this development. How this can be
done is illustrated using three examples of practically relevant research
areas: subjective performance evaluation, internal transparency and the
design of the control function in organizations.