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FACULTY WORKING PAPER NO. 1168

Accounting and the Reproduction of Culture: Budgets and the Process of Structuration

Richard J. Boland, Jr.

THE LIBRARY OF THI

NOV > y U#5

•:*SITY OF ILLINOIS

College of Commerce and Business Administration Bureau of Economic and Business Research University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

BEBR

FACULTY WORKING PAPER NO. 1168 College of Commerce and Business Administration University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign August, 1985

Accounting and the Reproduction of Culture: Budgets and the Process of Structuration

Richard J. Boland, Jr., Associate Professor Department of Accountancy

Prepared for the Workshop on Accounting and Culture, European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Amsterdam, June 5-7, 1985.

Prepared while visiting at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, May, 1985.

Thanks for helpful comments from Howard Thomas, Anne Huff and Marshall Scott Poole in the development of this draft.

Comments welcome, do not quote.

Accounting and the Reproduction of Culture: Budgets And the Process of Struct uration

Abstract

Anthony Giddens' theory of struct uration is used to analyze the role of a budget in mediating the structural properties drawn upon by managers in the production and reproduction of culture. The system of culture is the regularized pattern of inter- relations we observe and the structural properties of culture are the rules and resources used by agents to create and maintain the system of relationships. The analysis is based on a series of laboratory experiments conducted by Milne in which managers evaluated two candidates for promotion. In one condition a budget is present, in the other it is absent.

The analysis reveals several distinct and contradictory structural principles available to the actors which correspond to a fundamental contradiction inherent in late capitalism between the private appropriation of capital and the socialized pro- cess of production. These contradictory structuring principles confront the agents with a dilemma which budgeting as a cultural system allows them to transcend. Thus, budgets as a cultural system provide symbolic forms that parallel Geertz's inter- pretation of religion as a cultural system. Both are symbolic forms that allow actors to transcend the contradictions of society and maintain a belief in an overarching intellegence - a unity of goodness and truth - behind the paradox they confront.

Introduction

Culture is a term used so broadly and in so many diffused senses that I must take some time to clarify how I use the term in this paper. In the announcement of this workshop, culture is referred to as "the collective programming of the mind that is shared by the members of one collectivity as opposed to the members of another." The notion of programming the mind suggests a kind of determinism that I would argue against. But this definition does connote that what we are after in studying culture is not so much the detailed behaviour of an individual as the deeper structures that are at work in generating those behaviours.

Drawing on textbooks in anthropology, Clifford Geertz finds

culture variously defined as: (1)" the total way of life of a

people"; (2) "The social legacy the individual acquires from his

group"; (3) "a way of thinking, feeling and believing";

(4) "an abstraction from behaviour"; (5) "a theory on the part

of the anthropologist about how people actually behave";

(6) "a storehouse of pooled learning"; (7) "a set of standardized

orientations to recurrent problems"; (8) "learned behaviour";

(9) "a mechanism for the normative regulation of behaviour";

(10) "a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men". (Geertz, 1973, p 4) . This diversity of senses will no doubt be well represented at this workshop

and gives the concept of culture a scope that those of us who are exploring the broader role of accounting in society find especially attractive.

2

None the less, I will propose a fairly specific understanding of culture and the way it is continually produced and reproduced in a social process, and will discuss what one laboratory experiment with experienced managers suggests about the way budgets are implicated in the social process of producing culture. So I am not interested in how accounting practices differ in one culture versus another, nor in the unique role and responsibility of the accounting profession in different cultural contexts. These "culturally contingent" aspects of accounting are very much "surface features" of accounting and culture. A taxonomy of these surface features will no doubt prove of value to our community of scholars but it must be sharply distinguished from the "generative processes" of culture that are of interest here. Taxonomies of culturally contingent forms of life have been described by anthropologists through- out this century. Yet, they have led to precious little in the way of anthropological theory and have been summarized despairingly by Edmund Leach as prolonged exercises in butterfly collecting.

As opposed to the surface taxonomy of culturally contingent forms, I will follow a more semiotic approach as is currently pursued in anthropology by Geertz, Leach, Turner, Douglas, and Levi-Strauss among others, and by various representatives of the interpretive approach to social theory including Blumer, Goffman, Garfinkel, Gadamer, and Denzen, among others. By a semiotic approach I mean one that takes the surface features of behaviour not as something to collect, taxonomize and study in themselves, but as something that must be interpreted with the objective of discerning the structures of meaning employed

3

in their creation and use by social actors. Culture is then understood as the process by which actors draw upon and modify these structures of meaning in their day to day interaction. If they are like programs, they are like random access, self- monitoring and self-modifying programs.

In particular, I will draw upon Anthony Giddens for the concise statement of social theory that will guide this study of accounting and culture. Giddens is a remarkably prolific sociologist who has focused his energy on nothing less than a critique of all social theory that has preceeded him and the development of a unique, consistent theory of society that overcomes the failings he finds in his predecessors and sets a program for the future of sociological research. A body of work with the breadth of Giddens' cannot be adequately summarized in a few pages, but I will try to distill the skeleton of his "structurational" theory of society, drawing especially on his New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) and his Central Problems in Social Theory (1979). I will then use his structurational theory as a basis for my interpretation of the role of budgets in the process of producing and reproducing culture.

k

Giddens1 Theory of Structuration: The Production and Reproduction of Culture

Giddens builds his theory of social systems upon a theory of action. He thus links more traditional macro-sociological concerns, such as culture, to the individual actor and to the micro-level processes of face-to-face interaction and communication. He demands that \i/e respect the individual actor as the generative source of institutional features such as culture. A central idea for his theory of action is that individuals as members of a culture are skilled and knowledgeable about that culture. They "know how to play the game". This means that they not only can speak about what things are done and how things are done in their society, they also possess skills for acting in the culture and for monitoring and changing their actions in specific circumstances that are only known by them tacitly. In the sense of Polany:, "they know more than they can say." From his theory of action perspective, Giddens argues that culture is indeed a pattern, but not a pattern that can be grasped with a static "snapshot" of a society or a local situation. The pattern of a culture endures over time and is only revealed to us as we study processes of interaction that maintain the pattern over time. The pattern of a culture is produced through the situated action of individuals. Only by observing that action can we observe culture. Hence, Giddens emphasizes the continuous production of culture by skilled actors. Culture is never simply given, but is always being reproduced. A critical distrinction is made by Giddens between "system" and "structure". System he defines as the surface level of regularized social relations and practices in a social group.

5

It is the visible trappings of culture. Structure, on the other hand, are the rules and resources that are drawn upon by individual actors in their day to day interaction as they produce the social system. Structures are thus the medium of action and the medium through which actors produce the social system and their culture. But structures have a recursive quality. They are not just the medium of action, but are also the outcome of action. Each time an actor draws upon a rule or resource to guide action, the rule or resource is reconstituted and revalidated, often in a slightly modified form. That structures are both the medium and the outcome of situated social practice is central to Giddens theory and is referred to as the duality of structure.

In Giddens theory of action, social systems are produced through structuration. Structuration is the process by which responsible, skilled agents draw upon structures (mutually understood rules and resources) in order to act and to reflexively monitor, adapt and change their action. The structures that individuals draw upon in producing social systems are of three main types, which correspond to the requirements of communicative interaction. Actors draw upon; (1) interpretive schemes in order to make sense of their own and others actions; (2) standards of morality in order to make judgements of goodness and badness and (3) sources of power in order to effect desired outcomes. These are the three modalities of structuration that link the micro- level of interpersonal interaction with the macro level of culture. The individual's use of an interpretive scheme reproduces the Weltanschauung of a social system, the individual's use of power reproduces the mode of domination in

6

a social system, and the individual's exercise of moral judge- ment reproduces the order of legitimation in the society. As actors draw upon and modify these three modalities of structuration, they produce and reproduce their culture.

The process of structuration is not a simple image of one shared interpretive scheme, one shared set of moral norms and one shared basis for exercising povi/er and invoking sanctions. Each culture has a wealth of structural properties - multiple inter- pretive schemes, norms and sanctions at work at any one time. These multiple modalities of structuration mediate each other and in any specific situation, the rules and resources available are modified by the full set of structural properties being drawn upon. The multiple structural properties at work are not all harmonious, and Giddens gives considerable space to discussing the contradiction of structu ral properties that is an essential feature of any social system.

By contradiction of structural properties he means modes of structuration which tend to be drawn upon simultaneously, but also tend to contradict each other - to work against each other and set the conditions for each others failure. Gidden's draws on Marx to declare the fundamental contradiction of our age of late capitalism as the contradiction between the private accumulation of capital and the socialized process of production. In a less dramatic vein, the needs of the individual for self- assertion and strong ego identity are in fundamental conflict with the orderly, cooperative functioning of a group. As a result, contradiction, dilemma and paradox are essential features of social systems and the process of structuration that produces a given culture can be expected to be in constant tension from contradictory structural properties.

7

Finally, Gidden's structurational theory of action for under- standing culture emphasizes the double hermeneutic that should characterize any adequate analysis of culture. The actors themselves are performing a hermeneutic analysis as they draw upon structural properties of their culture in producing and reproducing it. They must be accepted as skilled, knowledgeable actors with valid schemes and sound interpretive abilities. The raw material of our research is pre-interpreted. We as researchers then have the double hermeneutic task of interpreting those interpretations. Giddens does not provide any simple formula for doing this, but in the analysis that follows I tell the story of one attempt to do so.

Data from the Milne Experiments

The dissertation of R Milne on "Budget Slack" (1981) provides an opportunity for analyzing the decision behaviour of experienced managers as a process of structuration, and for observing the differences that structurational behaviour in the same case situation when a budget is present or absent. We will review the data collected by Milne from 67 subjects in an executive MBA program who were presented with a case problem requiring them to decide to select a new Director of Corporate Personnel from two candidates currently in charge of Regional Personnel Centres for the same company. In one condition, data on actual financial and task performance of the two candidates was pro- vided. In the other condition, the same actual financial data was accompanied by budget data as well. The budget condition showed the actual expense of each candidate to be approximately equally close to their budgeted amount. A copy of the case

8

instrument is included as Appendix I.

The case reveals that the two managers have no qualitative differences in personalities or managerial styles, and that their two departments "are remarkably comparable in terms of number of employees serviced, employee turnover, training requirements, complexity of recruiting, and general workload. " On 57 activities determined to be "necessary and sufficient for the support of both the individual divisions and the achievement of the corporate goals," each performed satisfactorily, although one candidate, called East, had significantly more Satisfactory Plus ratings. East also is shovi/n as having performed more unspecified "Additional" actitivites that were neither required nor necessary. On the other hand, the financial performance data shows the other candidate, called West, spending considerably less than East (#459, 000 for West,

0 754,000 for East in 1980).

Milne proposed that East represented budget slack in that East did more things than were necessary and consumed more resources than were necessary to perform the equivalent function to West. Milne ran many versions of the experiment with different levels of budget slack and was interested in how the subjects pre- ferences for promotion varied with the level of budget slack present. Fortunately for my purposes, Milne asked his subjects to give the reasons for their decision to promote either East or West, but did not analyse those responses.

1 will take advantage of Milne's data by making an analysis

of those written responses, using Gidden's theory of structuration. The objective is to identify the differences in the structures,

9

the subjects draw upon in reflexively monitoring their conduct and making rationalizations of their choices. The existence of a budget and no budget condition allows us to identify differences due to the presence of a budget and hence to draw inferences on the way a budget mediates the process of structuration, or the process of producing and reproducing culture.

10

First Approach to Analysis: Modalities of Structuration

Before proceeding with an interpretation of the rationalizations given by the subjects in Milne's experiment, it should be observed that there is reason to believe that the presence of the budget does impact their decision behaviour. Table 1 shows the shift in preference between East and West in the budget and no budget conditions.

Condition

Promote Budget No Budget Total

East 22 17 39

West 10 18 28

Total 32 35 67

Decision to Promote East or West, 67 Subjects table 1

In the absence of a budget, subjects were egually divided between choosing East versus West. With a budget present, there is a pronounced shift toward East, with 70?o of the subjects choosing him for promotion. Clearly, the presence of the budget has mediated their decision. The first attempt to interpret the subjects reflexively monitored reasons for their choice was to pursue Gidden's distinction among the three modalities of structuration, and to code the budget and no budget responses for their differential use of the three modalities. Recall that the three modalities are: interpretive schemes, morality and power. First, the subjects responses were typed in a common format. Then, a research assistant was given Giddens definitions of the three modalities from Central Problems in Social Theory (pp 81-95). After

11

studying Giddens* definitions, the research assistant, armed with three colored pencils, read and reread the subjects reasons underlining what appeared to be statements of interpretive schemes in one color, statements of moral norms in another, and statements of power and sanctions in yet another.

The notion \i/as that if the presence of a budget made a difference in the process of structuration, we would see the subjects drawing upon different interpretive schemes, moral norms and power relations in their analysis, thus producing and reproducing a different cultural order in the presence of a budget. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning did not work. Apart from numerous difficulties and ambiguities in doing the coding, neither the research assistant nor I were able to identify any differences in the use of interpretive schemes, norms or power between the budget and no budget conditions. So this naive application of Giddens to Milne's data proved a failure.

Second Approach to Analysis: Argument Mapping

The next approach was to perform a content analysis of the arguments used by those subjects choosing East versus those choosing West in order to identify in skeletal form a map of the arguments used. This approach proved much more fruitful with very clear differences in the arguments given in support of East as opposed to those given in support of West. The presence or absence of the budget also makes some interesting, though less extreme, differences in the arguments used to support East or West.

12

Figures 1 and 2 present the structure of argument used in the no budget condition by thoese subjects choosing East and West, respectively. Each block shows the number of times that argument component was mentioned. It is apparent that the managers in Milne's experiment who choose East selected different features out of the case problem in creating their definition of the situation than those choosing West. The two schemes are unique and non-overlapping. They are not merely a slight modification of each other with a minor shift in the probability assessments leading to a different conclusion. There isn't one, common scheme to which they apply different values in reaching their conclusions, but two distinct ways of understanding that are at work here.

Those managers who selected East emphasized that his expenses are higher and that he is worth it. He has more satisfactory plus ratings, more unrequired activities and more personal dynamism, while West is not as impressive and needs to work harder. Those managers who selected West, on the other hand, emphasized that his expenses are lower and he focuses on the essential tasks in a consistent, organized way, while East does unnecessary things. The two schemes are not simple mirror images of each other with sign changes. Even in this relatively well-defined situation there is no single, common scheme being drawn upon. The culture has multiple, diverse structural properties (schemes) from which the manager as a skilled social actor must choose. The impact of the budget is not so much a mediation of behaviour within a scheme as it is a shift in the preference for drawing upon the multiple available schemes of the culture.

13

Tables 3 and 4 present the argument maps for subjects in the budget condition choosing East and West, respectively. The basic arguments are similar to the no budget condition with a few interesting exceptions. First, there is a pronounced increase in the emphasis on East's having performed additional activities and having achieved more satisfactory plus ratings. Second, there is an absence of any attempt to calculate cost per activity or cost per hour, or of any attempt to question the value of the additional activities. The presence of a budget thus appears to dull the subjects ability to critically analyze the activity being reported upon, and to heighten their fascination with excess. Third, the budget becomes a symbol of legitimacy and an object of interpretation in its own right. Subjects note that the existence of a budget connotes that the "additional activities" are not wasteful. But more importantly, they see the size of East's budget as demonstrating his aggressiveness, his success in battles with West, his access to "the right ears" and his superior experience.

Interpretation and Conclusion

There are two major themes I would like to develop briefly by way of interpreting this data in light of Giddens' theory of structuration: (1) the way the subjects themselves inter- pret the case and how a budget mediates that interpretation, and (2)~the fundamental contradiction of late capitalism embedded in the tacit schemata of these subjects and drawn upon in their production and reproduction of culture.

The subjects themselves performed a hermeneutic analysis of the case and the accounting and budget figures. In particular,

14

they bring East and West alive, and interpreted the nature and value of the reality behind the text of the reports. Most intriguing to me is the different way East and West are brought to life. East is described with terms that depict his psyche and his being while West is brought to life with terms that depict his day to day task behaviour and avoid the quality of his being. The terms (and frequencies) used to describe East and West are shown in table 2.

Both East and West are described as good, productive managers who are successful at motivating workers. Beyond that, East is progressive, knowledgeable, diversified, and out- going. He is a mover, a striver, a dynamo, a go-getter, and a leader who deserves the credit for others work. He is an added asset and can help the company grow. West, on the other hand, is consistent, efficient, balanced, and improving. He manages time and resources well. He meets his goals under limited conditions. He is meek and humble, and does what is best for the company - not what is best for himself alone.

West is thus the epitome of the compulsively rational/efficient manager we presume accounting and budgeting systems tend to support, if not create. East, on the other hand, is the bold, robber-baron entrepreneur. Our current mythology tends to attack accounting and budgeting systems for fostering a short term, narrowly-focused attention to immediate profits. Yet, in this controlled situation, we see experienced managers who are torn equally between the methodical, efficient functionary and the rougish over-achiever when presented with only actual accounting data, swing decisively in favor of the self-promoting entrepreneur when a budget accompanies the actual

15

results.

In structurational terms of producing and reproducing culture, the budgeting system is a mediating influence. It frees the manager to choose a scheme that glorifies the spirit and being of the individual \i/ho consumes more than his share to accomplish the required task. In part, I would argue, this is due to a desire in our culture (a structuring principle of our culture) that our institutions are good, true and beautiful. The presence of the budget not only legitimizes the behaviour it conceals, it confers a moral and aesthetic status to that behaviour that guarantees its goodness, its truth and its beauty. The behaviour is removed from critical scrutiny and confirmed as an integral part of the larger intellegence we believe is guiding the organizations \i/e surrender ourselves to.

Thus, accounting and budgeting systems are devices for trans- cending what Giddens identifies as the central contradiction of organizational life in our culture - the contradiction between the private accumulation of capital and the socialized processes of production. East is expropriating value from the other members and parts of the organization for his ovun personal satisfaction. He greedily consumes almost twice the resources to achieve the same outcomes, constantly increasing the number of people and the amount of expenses under his control. West, in contrast, is sacrificing his own personal accumulation of resources for the benefit of the communal efforts of the organization. He is playing his part as a good, contributing member of the team.

16

The two structuring principles (the private appropriation of capital and the socialized process of production) are both an active part of our culture. Milne drew upon these structuring principles of our culture in creating his case exercise, and his manager-subjects drew on the same structuring principles in making their interpretation of the situation. Confronted by both, as these subjects are, a dilemma is en- countered. East is exciting but self-serving, West is communal but uninspiring.

Budgets are symbolic systems that enable situated actors to transcend the dilemma of these contradictory structuring principles. They do so by confering an over arching, superior intellegence onto the apparent self-serving behaviour of the appropriator. In this sense, accounting is a cultural symbolic system in much the same way that Geertz portrays religion. The contradiction addressed by Geertz and Giddens is similar. We are told that self-sacrifice is good, yet all around us we see the greedy getting ahead and receiving the rewards. Those who look out for themselves are the winners, those who look out for other are the losers. We are told to believe in justice, yet the rain falls on the innocent and the sun shines on the evil doer. The sacred symbols of religion "induce . . . general ideas of order" and are "symbolic of some transcendent truths" that resolve these apparent paradoxes of daily life. (Geertz, 1973, p 98). Both religion and accounting systems provide "... an image of such a genuine order of the world which will account for, and even celebrate, the perceived ambiguities, puzzles, and paradoxes in human experience." (Geertz, 1973, p 108).

17

The structuring principles of culture are contradictory and confront managers with diverse, incompatible schemes from which they must select an oTder to impose on their worlds. Accounting and budgeting as cultural systems in a capitalist society do not resolve the contradictions, but provide a symbolic form for transcending them by promising an order behind the chaos, a communal intellegence behind the self- gratification.

18 References

Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

Giddens, Anthony, New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976).

Giddens, Anthony, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

Milne, Ronald, "Budget Slack", Unpublished Ph D dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1981.

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Appendix I Case Instrument from Milne Experiment

PROMOTION S2ISCTI0N

1. This ease situation asks you to do three things i

a. Use the Information provided in the case to select one of two managers being considered for promotion.

b. Hate each of the managers on a scale of zero to one hundred.

c. Provide the reasons for your decisions.

OVEHTEW

2. You are in a corporate home office that Is physically separated from its two decentralized operating divisions. Each operating division, call them last and West, has a personnel department and the home office has a personnel department as well. The Director of Personnel position at the home office

la vacant. You are required to select a person to fill this vacant position. You have narrowed your search down to the personnel department managers at the two operating divisions. You are now faced with making the final selection. The following information i3 available to you.

CTDIYUJAL CHARACTSaiSTICS

3« The personnel records of both managers have been reviewed and, though differences exist in specific background information, little significance can be attached to these differences. Both managers have excellent performance ratings which were prepared , aver several years , by several' different division managers. 3oth aanagers have been interviewed and observed in a social situation. Although they exhibit different personalities and have different "styles", no qualitative differences can rationally be assigned to these differences. The home office staff appears to have divided preferences, but both managers appear to have about equal support from the staff.

FINANCIAL

k. The home office im-lrtalr:?* financial performance data on the two personnel departments. Although the two divisions are physically separated by approxi- mately 12 miles, their personnel departments are remarkably comparable in terms of number of employees serviced, employee turnover, training requirements, complexity of recruiting, and general workload. It is normal procedure for home office executives who visit the divisions to report on activities observed. One area of concern is if managers fully utilize their physical resources (space, equipment, people, etc.). A review of several past reports on file indicates that both managers fully utilize their physical capacity and there are no retorts of idle resources . The division tersonnel department

20

Budget condition

PSBFOHKANCS DATA

on t^pSxSTorsrs ssriss1?! -^ - — * **

haa Identified 57 actlv±tt„ w££^ 5««°nnel departments. The home of Ice sufficient for tt. «^"f "££ Xri5£2at?I?a"d * *« «««arr 2d of the corporate Soa^^^^^^^i^^^ and the achievement criteria wnich reeulta In each a55itT«^P *UaUty °f l»=f°=»*xcs

~tin*3. ft. rating and ^^S^^JlE* *" ««=•"•

Unsatisfactory, Performance which clearly falla to aa.+ «, v.

of the apecified goal^ Met **" °*J«Ctiw

Marginal • ^

£;?££« ££2SLr — *• °>J""- • *»

Satisfacto ■"-/•! n _

Satisfactory Plua, jte^oy «hlch si^ficantly exceeds the W

are In addition to the 57 SjulSd «t^iT ?eraonael departnenta that category of activities is SvatfT** * 3ecausa thla optional

records the number^? \^£5It?£ aS^f^ ** h°BS °f?lc8 3i^ devote to such activitiea. *c**vl,~aa and tta number of aanhoura the divisions

7. 2oth 3.ts of performance data are on an attached page.

21

No Budget Condition

unfmdo not prepare or submit budgets. Budgets were attempted In T>rior years out were discontinued by the home office. Sxpense data foTthl St four years ia on an attached page. F"

PSRF0HMANC5 DATA

£•*£*£ S activities which KE&Sffft nSLSS ^ suf cient for the support of both the individual divisions and the acrievemen- of the corporate goals. The company has developed a quality of S^ormancT criteria wnich results in each activity receiving on. of four oe^rSS ratings. The ratings and their aeanings are as follows: "

Unsatisfactory: Performance which clearly fails to meet the objectiv.

of the specified goal.

-arginal: Performance which fails to aeet the objective, but

does make a contribution.

Satisfactory: Performance which aeets all of the rsquirsments of

the specified goal.

Satisfactory Plus: Performance which significantly exceeds the level

necessary to aeet all of the reauirements of the specified goal.

^CQ2L;0^-lfl.C8 SU*?i*Ma*a tte "tings of the 57 required items by

STSILJS^S^ pa2°=Md by "e dlVialoa Personnel departments gat are in addition to the 57 required activities. Because this out<onai

£3?*? actlvitl9,s *■ «*«• and unspecified, the boaTofl ice Saply ■ 7. Both sets of performancs data are on an attached page.

22

Both Conditions

RATINGS CN 57 REQUIRED ACTTVTTTES

Ratings 3y Year				Xunber of Activities Receiving 3ach Hating
1977i Un3a^isfactory Marginal Satisfactory Satisfactory Plus	East Division 0 2. *s 10	West Division 0 2 50 5
1978 1 Unsatisfactory Marginal Satisfactory Satisfactory Plus				0 0 17	0 0 8
1979 1 Unsatisfactory Marginal Satisfactory Satisfactory Plus				0 0 30 27	0 0 • 9
1980: Unsatisfactory Marginal Satisfactory Satisfactory Plus				0 0 27 30	. 0 0 *5 12
ACTTVTTIilS	P28F0HMH	IN ADDITION TO THS	57 REQUIRED ACTIVITIES
		East	Dl	vision	West Division
Nunber Tear Activit	of lies	i		Total Mar.no urs Used	Humber of Total Activities Manhours Used
1977 8				1160	3 309
1978 12				17W	5 U20
1979 17				2280	7 605
1980 21				27W	9 790

23

Budget Condition

BITOGET AMD ACTUAL SP5NS2 DATA (Thousands of Dollars;

2AST DIVISION

VEST DIVISION

1977: Salaries Squipment Other Total

1978; Salaries Squi-oment Other / Total

1979: Salaries Equipment Other Total

Budget Actual Expense

430	417
69	65
18	21
517	305"
590	595
67	69
570 •	11 575
563	56k
35	31

sg

Budget Actual Sreense

260 36 29

325

292

41

325 47

267 33

331

290 39

329

51

1980: Salaries Equipment Other Total

609

105

611 107 -J6

75*

365 54

55T

371 47 41

459

24

No Budget Condition

gggSSg DATA (Thousands of Dollars)

1977: Salaries Equipment Other Total

EAST DIVISION

$417 63

21

~506"

vest division

$267 33

-S

331

1973:

Salaries Squlpnent Other Total

$595 69 11

$290 39

1979: Salaries Squirsent Other

Total

$5&h "626"

$329

51

-A

1980: Salaries Squlpnent Other Total

$611 107

_J6 75*

$371

i*59

25

East has more Satisfactory plus ratings

East performs more Additional activities

23

■>

East has higher Expenses

11 .

East is personally more progressive, a dynamo, a mover, a striver.

11

■y

<r

But he is Worth it.

West is not as impressive. Needs to work harder.

ii»mip»*

<7

Therefore, Promote East 17

East has a lower cost per total activity

4

Are the added activities worth the expense? 2

East's expenses are higher because there is no budget

Arguement Map of Subjects Selecting East, No Budget Condition (n=17)

Figure 1

26

West has more satisfactory ratings

West has 7 lower expenses, less hours

18

East has more satisfactory pluses and extra activity 6

West has met goals, been consistent, efficient, well organized 15

9

West focuses on the basic task

There is no budget, therefore no manipulation 1

■9

East exceeds what is necessary 3

Are extra activities worth the expense ? 1

Both east and west are doing well 6

Therefore, promote West

Arguement Map of Subjects Selecting West, No Budget Condition (n=18)

Figure 2

27

East has more Satisfactory plus ratings

East performs more Additional activities

37

East has higher Expenses

1 ■

East is personally more progressive, a dynamo, a mover, a striver.

id*

•$

But he is Worth it.

West is not as impressive. Needs to work harder 1

Therefore, Promote East

2*

Both East and West are doing well 3

East is closer to budget Budgets are similar 2 Budget is irrelevant 1 Budget was accepted,

therefore no waste 1 East is aggressive in

budget 1 East has pipeline to

right ears 1 East has experience with

larger budgets 1 East won on -the budget 1

Arguement Map of Subjects Selecting East, Budget Condition (n=2^

Figure 3

28

West has more satisfactory ratings 3

West has lower expenses, less hours 10

West has met goals, been consistent, efficient, well organized 6 "

East has more satisfactory pluses and extra activity 6

West focuses on the basic task

East is closer

to budget 1

Budgets are similar 1

East exceeds what is necessary 3

Both east and west are doing well 1

J^

Therefore, promote West 10

Arguement Map of Subjects Selecting West, Budget Condition (ndO )

Figure H

29

Description of East by Subjects choosing East (n=39)

Description of West by Subjects choosing West (n=28)

East. . . is more

is a

productive (3) experienced (2) progressive (1) knowledgeable (1) diversified (1) outgoing (1)

mover (1) striver (1) dynamo (1) leader (1)

excellent manager (1) go-getter (2) added asset (1) motivator (A-)

Wes t • • •

is more productive (1)

efficient (1)

is a

motivator (1)

better resource manager (2)

is deserving of the credit doing more for the firm (2) helping company grow (1) cracking down on staff (1)

is

better time organized (1)

improving (3)

consistent and balanced (1)

doing a better job (1)

meeting all goals (9)

producing under limited conditions (1)

getting better percentages (1)

Descriptions of East and West ( with frequencies) Table 2

HECKMAN

BINDERY INC.

JUN9

Bound -To -Pic*

N.MANCHESTER. INDIANA 46962