Hybridity in a hotel chain: designing a package of controls to sustain a hybrid mission
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 9 March 2022
Issue publication date: 25 October 2022
Abstract
Purpose
While prior control studies typically focus on organizations with an instrumental approach to corporate sustainability, this study concentrates on organizations with an integrative approach, as the latter is needed to address the grand challenge of sustainable development. As such organizations do not single out the financial objective as the dominant one, they pursue a hybrid mission. This study investigates how a control package can be designed that ensures the persistence of such a hybrid mission.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study is undertaken at a luxury hotel chain in which a financial and an environmental objective are continuously balanced. Self-determination theory is used to substantiate insights into how psychological need-supportive controls can be designed at all organizational levels.
Findings
This study highlights how controls are not only needed to direct staff behaviour towards the environmental objective but also to ensure that staff at all organizational levels prioritize the objectives in such way that the hybrid mission can be sustained. Besides structural differentiation and centralization of decision-making, the case organization designed need-supportive controls to foster staff's internalization of the environmental objective and value as well as of the integrative approach.
Social implications
As the need-supportive socialization process fostered staff's integration of the environmental value, this study highlights the transformational potential of controls.
Originality/value
This study provides a unique account of a control package directing staff behaviour towards the balancing of multiple objectives.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper has benefited from comments by participants at the International Management Control Research Conference (London, UK, 25–26 June 2019), the 31st CSEAR International Congress (St Andrews, UK, 27–29 August 2019), the EAA Virtual Annual Congress (26–28 May 2021), an accounting research seminar at the University of Groningen and a joint Tampere-Turku seminar. Comments from and/or discussions with Frank de Bakker, Irene Eleonora Lisi, Teemu Malmi, Ken Merchant, Paula van Veen-Dirks and especially Martin Messner were also helpful. Data collection assistance from Jolien Lievens was greatly appreciated. The authors are also grateful to the reviewers for their constructive advice and to the editor, Lee Parker, for his handling of the paper. Finally, Sophie Hoozée is thankful for the financial support of the BOF research fund of Ghent University (contract number BOFSTA2017004501).
Citation
Bouten, L. and Hoozée, S. (2022), "Hybridity in a hotel chain: designing a package of controls to sustain a hybrid mission", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 35 No. 8, pp. 1862-1891. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2020-4622
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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