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The mediating role of accounting controls between supervisors' empowering leadership style and subordinates' creativity and goal productivity
Author(s) -
Boedker Christina,
Chong Kar Ming
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
accounting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.645
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-629X
pISSN - 0810-5391
DOI - 10.1111/acfi.13009
Subject(s) - creativity , leadership style , supervisor , ambiguity , psychology , productivity , style (visual arts) , social psychology , applied psychology , business , management , economics , computer science , history , archaeology , macroeconomics , programming language
This study investigates the impact of subordinates' use of accounting controls on their job performance in circumstances where their supervisor adopts an empowering leadership style. We surveyed 98 Australian managers in the disability and manufacturing industries. The results show that diagnostic and scanning use mediate the relationship between supervisors' empowering leadership style and subordinates' creativity and goal productivity. When supervisors engage in empowering behaviours, subordinates are more likely to draw on accounting controls to cope with the greater information demands and job ambiguity inherent to such a leadership style. Furthermore, scanning use increases creativity whilst diagnostic use reduces creativity.