Middlesex University wins grant to help businesses (From Your Local Guardian)

Middlesex University wins grant to help businesses

7:45am Tuesday 16th August 2011 in Staines

Middlesex University has won a £13K highly sought after research grant from Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) to study management performance that will help UK companies and companies around the world to improve performance management and avoid some of the financial pitfalls of the last 20 years.

Senior Lecturer Pingli Li from Middlesex University Business School submitted the research proposal that was awarded the grant following a call from CIMA to investigate how performance management has evolved in the past two decades and to identify which organisations are now market leaders in this area. Applications were received from 14 different countries across four continents and after a rigorous selection process Middlesex University Business School produced one of four projects to be awarded funding. The research will be completed next year as part of the celebration for the 20th and 25th anniversaries of two seminal pieces of management accounting work, the Balanced Scorecard and Relevance Lost. Middlesex University Business School will examine the performance evaluation system used by Chinese state owned enterprises to see what can be learned.

Professor Richard Croucher, Associate Dean of Research of Middlesex University Business School at the Hendon Campus said: ‘This practically-oriented research on a matter of great importance not only to the Chinese economy but also to managers internationally, uses a set of highly sensitive and contextually-relevant measures to investigate the effectiveness of financial reporting. The award of this funding to a leading researcher in this school confirms Middlesex University Business School’s growing reputation as a site of management research.’ Naomi Smith, R&D Manager at CIMA said: ‘The last 20 years have seen corporate scandals, the dot-com bubble and the sub-prime debt crisis and these have shifted the role of management accountants from reporting and controlling through planning and analysis, to proactive performance management. It is our hope that this research will highlight best practice and lessons that can be used by companies in improving performance management.’ CIMA funds cutting edge research at business schools around the world. The results and findings are published on our website. For further information visit www.cimaglobal.com/thought-leadership.

Based on information supplied by Shirley-Ann Hickman.