This thesis examines the role of internal auditors in three key areas: strategy, control models and control self assessment. Research findings are based on the results of a survey of a specialist group of professionals with an interest in Control Self Assessment. This group comprises both internal auditors and non-internal auditors. Membership is multinational and a full range of industries is represented. The actual and potential contribution that internal auditors can make to strategy is assessed and evaluated, with particular reference to the Balanced Scorecard. Control models were examined to identify use and effectiveness and the potential link with successful implementation of Control Self Assessment. Control Self Assessment was also examined as a specific activity. This part of the research addressed how it was perceived by the respondents and their organisations, and also to examine the importance of facilitation skills and IT support. The results show that internal auditors already play a significant role in strategic issues, and that there is a significant awareness of the potential benefits of the Balanced Scorecard to internal audit practice. Control models are seen as highly important to the effective implementation of Control Self Assessment, which can be seen to have developed into a mature and established audit tool.

This thesis investigates the effectiveness of Corporate Governance (CG) reforms in Pakistan. Using a sample of 160 Pakistani firms from 2003 to 2013 and governance data collected manually from the annual reports, this thesis investigates seven closely related and important corporate issues that are related to the compliance of governance rules. Specifically, it aims to : (i) investigate the degree of CG compliance with 2002 Pakistani Code of CG (PCCG); (ii) determine whether the introduction of 2002 PCCG has improved Pakistani CG practices; (iii) investigate the determinants of CG compliance and disclosure for Pakistani listed firms; (iv) test the nexus between CG compliance with the 2002 PCCG and firms’ cost of capital (COC); (v) investigate the impact of different individual CG mechanisms on listed firms COC; (vi) examine how different ownership structures impact on firms’ COC; and (vii) analyse relationship between CG structures and Cost of Equity (COE) as well as Cost of Debt (COD) for Pakistani listed firms. These empirical investigations report some important results. First, the reported findings suggest that Pakistani firms have responded positively to governance disclosure requirements over the eleven year period from 2003 to 2013. The results also show that the introduction of the PCCG in 2002 has improved CG standards by Pakistani listed firms. Second, the reported results related to the determinants of CG compliance demonstrate that significant and positive association between institutional, government and foreign ownership with CG compliance. However, findings relating to the determinants of CG compliance show a negative and significant association between board size and block ownership with CG compliance and disclosure. The study finds no significant relationship between director ownership, audit firm size and the presence of female board members with the constructed Pakistan Corporate Governance Index (PCGI). Third, the investigation on the relationship between CG and COC report a significantly negative nexus between PCGI and firms’ COC. The investigation on the association between ownership structures and COC report a negative and significant nexus between block ownership with firms’ COC. Further, a number of robustness analyses performed in this study suggest that the empirical results reported in this study are generally robust to the alternative CG variables, alternative COC variables and potential endogeneity problems.

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This thesis is a study of the role of management control practices in global production networks (GPNs). The research is informed by a case study of an Egyptian garment factory that acts as a supplier for a French retailer of sports clothes. This thesis is inspired by its empirics. In Egypt, most of the exporting factories in the garment industry work as suppliers to foreign retailers or branders. This supplier-customer relationship is founded on the mutual transfer of knowledge from the customer. This is manifested in their requirements in terms of the product specification, quality and time of delivery. However, these are not the only requirements. In order for the factory to be selected as a supplier to the foreign retailers, the factory undergoes a detailed process of auditing in which the customer practices their negotiating power in asking for specific changes in the factory in terms of the factory’s structuring practices, human rights practices, quality control procedures, as well as management control practices. The management control requirements include cost reduction strategies, performance measurements, and reward systems for workers. The factory’s management collaborate with the customer’s team in order to apply these changes. The customer depends on visual information tags that are hung all over the factory, and electronic reports, as well as the physical attendance and observation of their team members as communication mediators through which they diffuse the required knowledge throughout the factory and view the factory’s operations. Techniques such as expanding the workers’ skills, self- and peer controls and group rewards are gradually taking place on the shop floor in order to meet the requirements of the customer. The relationship between the supplier and the customer is theorized within the framework of what is called global production networks or ‘GPNs’. GPNs are argued to be the geographic consequence of the movement from a modern to a postmodern economy. A postmodern economy is an informational economy in which advanced capitalist countries have decentralized the production processes to subordinate countries. Drawing from the theoretical framework developed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in 2000 in Empire and extended by the work of Gilles Deleuze in 1992 in Postscript on the Societies of Control, this thesis argues that GPNs are used as one of the postmodern economic mechanisms that are facilitating the transformation of forms of power from discipline to control. As a response to this transformation, new forms of management controls are emerging in the factories of subordinate countries (i.e. the suppliers). The findings of this study show the importance of developing the technology used in both the production of goods and the communication of information within and out of the boundaries of the factory. This technology will support the development of the factory along the production network as well as improving the visibility of the factory’s operations to achieve instant and continuous control.

What does this thesis do? This thesis uses Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to examine how a UK retailer’s organization and strategy, and, in turn, its form of management accounting was shaped by its supply chain. The thesis does this by reporting on four related themes in the form of four inter-connected essays. The first essay undertakes a state-of-the-art review of the literature. It examines how accounting issues within supply chains permeate ‘matters of concern’. In accordance with this idea of ANT, the essay illustrates how issues emerged, controversies developed, and matters evolved through an actor-network of accounting researchers within the supply chain domain. This leads on to the second essay, which exemplifies the nature of the UK’s retailing industry within which the supply chain case organization emerged and developed. The purposes of the essay are twofold: to introduce the contextual ramifications of the case organization; and to illustrate the emergence of a new market logic, which led to the creation of a global supply chain and a new form of management accounting therein. The third essay reports on a qualitative case study. It analyses the dualistic relation between ostensive and performative aspects of supply chain strategy, reveals how accounting numbers act as an obligatory passage point within this dualism, and makes a contribution to the ANT debate around the issue of whether and how a dualism between ostensive and performative aspects exists. The final essay reports on another case analysis of institutionalizing a heterarchical form of management accounting: a distributed form of intelligence that penetrates through lateral accountable relations. The analysis reveals a new form of management accounting characterised by ambiguity; it emphasizes the possibilities of compromises and negotiations, and it thus contributes to knowledge by combining an aspect of ANT with heterarchical tendencies in the world of contemporary organizations. Finally, the thesis concludes that it is the supply chain that organises today’s neoliberal capitalism; and it is management accounting that unites both human and non-human actors within such supply chains, despite that form of management accounting being ambiguous. The thesis comprises the introduction, these four essays, and the conclusion.