Organizational Slack in Decentralized Firms: The Role of Business Unit Controllers
研究大型分权企业中组织松弛的成因，发现业务单元控制者若更侧重为经理提供决策信息而非公司控制信息，则松弛程度更高；松弛具有持续性且与业务单元增长正相关。
We study the determinants of organizational slack in large decentralized firms and focus in particular on how management accounting systems (represented by business unit controllers) affect slack. We rely on an adverse selection model to derive several predictions and to motivate our tests. Consistent with this framework, we find that organizational slack (measured by achievability of business unit managers' performance targets) is higher in settings where business unit controllers focus relatively more on providing decision-making information to business unit managers than on providing information for corporate control. We also find that organizational slack is persistent over time and positively associated with business unit growth, our proxy for the extent of information asymmetry between corporate headquarters and local business unit management.