Accounting and the reproduction of culture : budgets and the process of structuration

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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Comments welcome, do not quote.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.

19

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