The position of an internal audit function as a “servant of two masters” (i.e. management and the audit committee) may lead to a conflict of priorities. In this setting, the tone at the top set by the Chief Audit Executive (CAE) plays a critical role in balancing the potentially competing...

In this paper, we use the investment fraud of Bernard Madoff to inquire into the production of trust in the context of financial markets. Drawing upon empirical data related to U.S. individual investors (interviews and letters) as well as documentary material, we investigate the mechanisms...

Amongst professional activities, audit has increasingly departed from what the sociology of professions traditionally considered to be lying at the heart of the identity of the members of a professional body : the autonomy to judge the nature and amount of work that is necessary to treat the...

this paper analyses the transformations induced since 1970 in the French accountancy profession by the globalisation of France's economy.

Should you set up your own sales force or should you outsouce it? The standard analysis uses a cost basis to answer this question. It assumes that the direct sales force is largely a fixed cost and that the outsourced sales force is largely a cost that varies with sales. It then calculates the...

Office organization

This paper studies the process by which a change in the institutional logic of an organisational field diffuses through the management control system of a firm.

We examine an unusual form of path dependence, in which suppliers that take different decision paths end up in the same position: excessive vertical integration of the personal selling function. We argue that this is the case even though outsourcing is more seriously considered than ever, and...

Drawing on the concept of « trial », developed by French sociologists, this article analyzes the dynamics of employees’ performance evaluation systems, particularly those involving accounting performance measures. A case study is presented as an illustration of our proposal to consider these...

This survey of language needs was carried out to help create a better match between the actual use of foreign languages in their working environment and the training of future managers within the CEMS programme.