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3.2 Research instrument Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study — Table 2 3.2 Research instrument Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study

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Figure 1. Antecedents of job satisfaction and employee service quality Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study

Figure 2. Antecedents of employee satisfaction and employee service quality The model specifies that supportive management affects both job satisfaction and work effort, whereas service climate affects work effort directly and job satisfaction indirectly via work effort. Employee service quality is affected by both work effort and job satisfaction. Work effort also influences employee service quality through job satisfaction. An empirical test of the model showed that job satisfaction was a better predictor of employee service quality triggered by supportive management. The model has been extended in a further study (Yoon et al., 2004) which proposes three antecedents of employee satisfaction, viz., perceived organizational support, perceived supervisory support and customer participation. Perceived organizational support is the perception of employees that the organization acknowledges their contributions involvement of customers physically, mentally, and while delivering product/service. These three parameters have their own constructs and scope of definition. The model is figured below pertinent factors affecting service quality: o its fullest extent and thinks about their well-being every time, whereas, perceived supervisory support is the development of a climate of trust, helpfulness, and friendliness with the respective supervisors. On the other hand, customer participation is represented by the emotionally with the process Figure 2) which shows all the

Based on the above discussions, the researchers have proposed a model of job satisfaction for management accountants with three antecedents: organizational support, supervisory support, and business environment support (Figure 3 below). Organizational support includes five factors (benefits, policy support, equality, caring, and working environment), supervisory support includes another five factors (suggestions, self-respect, independence, authority, and attitude) and business environment support includes six factors (economy, customer, competitor, regulator, supplier, and nature) resulting a total of sixteen factors of managemen accountants’ satisfaction grouped into three categories. Considering the underlying contingency theory, management accountants’ satisfaction depends on both internal and external parameters, where internal means within the organization and external means outside the organization. Out of three antecedents, organizationa support and supervisory support fall in internal group and business environmen support falls in external group. According to the above diagram (Figure 3), management accountants’ satisfaction has two dimensions, satisfaction with the system and satisfaction with the job. Organizational support, supervisory support and support from the business environment affect both the dimensions positively. At the same time, satisfaction

An abundance of research has been conducted to examine employee attributes, as well as to investigate the extent of employee attributes influence job commitment and performance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Meyer et al., 2004). A pioneering study conducted by Heskett et al. (1994) proposed the service-profit chain (S-PC) notion that highlights the importance of employee attributes to deliver high levels of service quality to satisfy customers in order to enhance business performance. Loyal employees are presumed to be positively correlated with high service quality in the S-PC (Heskett et al., 1994) which is figured below:

Figure 5. Relationship between employee satisfaction and perceived value being commi Yee et al., account for t eads to a res he employer his employee conditions; in return, employees will be loyal to committed to norm of reciprocity in social exchange theory states he relationship between employee loyal ponse by another party. In the context of is devoted to building a relationship of s by fulfilling their needs through offeri ted to delivering services with a high level of quality 2010). Loveman (1998) demonstrated that employe positively correlated with service quality. Social exchange theory can y and service hat an action t ong-term emp making extra efforts to offer services wit n oO customers e loyalty is be applied to quality. The by one party he social exchange theory, oyment with ng them favorable working heir employer by being a high level of quality as a means of reciprocity to their employing organizations (Flynn, 2005; Wayne ef al., 1997; Yee et al., 2008). In summary, we may assume wi h the findings of the study done by Vilares and Coelho (2003) who have concluded that perceived product and service quality have been seriously dominated by perceived employee satisfaction, perceived employee loyalty, and perceived employee commitment (Figure 5).

Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study Figure 6. Employee-profit model (Xu & Goedegebuure, 2005)

‘ ICMAB is the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh, the only national level institute in the country, to conduct research and impart accounting education in the field of cost and management accounting in Bangladesh. As the study targets management accountants in practice, the population of the study covers only management accountants from manufacturing firms. The study does not posit that management accountants are not working in service industries. The rationale behind the choice of manufacturing firms is to keep the findings of this study focused on a particular type of industry. Due to the absence of an approved and authenticated list of manufacturing firms in Bangladesh, a sample frame is thought of the manufacturing firms where professional management accountants are working. This is done through the scrutiny of membership directory of ICMAB? for the year 2016. Considering the budget and time constraints, the researchers have conducted a cross-sectional field study based on small sample size. This approach of sub-optimization of research design decisions may lead to lower level of scientific rigor (Sekaran, 2003) and the readers are advised to read the findings keeping these limitations under consideration. The scrutiny of ICMAB directory results 200 companies as given in Table 1 below where the members of ICMAB were working. The study does not consider any service industry and companies operating outside Dhaka (capital city of Bangladesh). Out of the 200 companies, management accountants from 47 companies expressed their reluctance to participate in the survey. Other 153 companies are considered as the sample for the study. The questionnaires are no received from 28 companies though they were sent reminder, and 12 of the received questionnaires were rejected due to the missing data. Finally, a total of 113 questionnaires are used for data analysis based on which the research draws major conclusions. Each responding organization is considered as one unit of analysis in this study.

The questionnaire has separate sections to cover management accountants’ satisfaction across 16 different categories, 5 of which are defined as perceived organizational support, 5 others as perceived supervisory support leaving other 6 to be classified as business environment support. As already mentioned, con approach is applied to identify these factors keeping the context of country and firms under study, while the internal factors are grouped under organizational and supervisory support categories and external factors are grouped under business environment support category. The framework is extended further to add consequences of satisfaction across loyalty, commitment, product qua service quality. All these factors ensure value for the customers which ul ingency ress the ity and imately lead to profitability that again becomes a satisfier for management accountant.

Table 3. Respondents’ Profile

Accounting and Management Information Systems Good percentage of the respondents are affiliated with professional accounting institutes. Some of them are already qualified members and others are senior fication. In terms of years of are having more than 5 years he respondents to address the s and precedents. In another case, it reveals that only 18% of the respondents have an intention to switch their current job. It signifies that the accounting practitioners are no which may be driven by their satisfac student members who are very close to their certi experience, a good percentage of respondents (78% of experience. It reflects the required maturity of t questionnaire related to satisfaction, its anteceden managerial hierarchy, only 22% respondents are ho position. And these respondents come where there are independent departmen accounting re asymmetry of participating management ion with from high firms, management accoun initiatives in t heir respective firms. ants hold y decen ionnaire, hus it is expected t either to severely job-hopper he existing job. In terms of ding lower level management ralized organization s taking care of cost and management ated issues. Due to the structured ques referred by top level management and t feedback given by them. It is also good these executives are hat there will be no to observe that in most of the p level or mid-level positions which is important to undertake customer pleasing

Like respondents’ profile, corporate profile of the responding firms is also very rich. More than 80% of the firms are in operation for more than 10 years. More than 40% of the firms are having more than 1,000 employees. Around 40% of the firms have annual turnover of more than BDT* 1,000 million. It gives some idea regarding the maturity, stages of life cycle, value of the firms, and target market size of the responding firms all of which are important for surveys relating to satisfaction. Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study

Table 5. Summary of descriptive statistics of selected parameters Mean value of all the satisfaction parameters is above 5 out of 7 which gives a rosy picture on the level of satisfaction of management accountants. Value dimension even results a value above 6 out of 7. And the participating firms are also making on an average 12% profit within a range of 1% and 40%. From this summary information, it could be concluded that the parameters individually show a promising scenario of management accounting practices in Bangladesh. It is mentioned as promising since management accountants are getting required support to demonstrate their performance which is reflected in their satisfaction parameters (both job and system). Ultimately it leads to confirmation of value dimensions for the customers which is reciprocated by handsome profit for the organizations. To understand the association between the parameters, a correlation analysis is done with the results shown in Table 6 below:

Table 6. Correlation

Table 8. A summary of regression analysis considering management accountants’ satisfaction

Understanding management accountants’ satisfaction: A conceptual study Pibst WlOOCr Is TUN tO LQCHULY WHCUICr QHICICHt LaClOrs UK DCHCIIIS, WOTKITTS policy, equitability, caring and working environment can explain changes in perceived organization support aggregately or individually. The model becomes significant (p<0.001) with a R? value of 0.438 meaning 44% of the changes in organizational support is explained by the ingredients. However, out of five ingredients, only equitability becomes statistically significant (p<0.01). The second model is run to identify whether different ingredients like suggestions, self-respect, independence, authority, and attitude can explain changes in perceived supervisory support aggregately or individually. The model becomes significant (p<0.001) with a R? value of 0.450 meaning 45% of the changes in supervisory support is explained by the ingredients. However, out of five ingredients, only attitude becomes statistically significant (p<0.01). The third model targets to identify whether different ingredients like economic scenario, customers’ involvement, competition, regulatory supports, suppliers’ power, and natural uncertainty can explain changes in business environment support aggregately or individually. The model becomes significant (p<0.001) with a R? value of 0.482 meaning 48% of the changes in business environment support is explained by the ingredients. However, out of six ingredients, only customers’ involvement and suppliers’ power become statistically sjonificant (n<0.01) First three models canture all the three hroader

In all the three cases, the null hypotheses have been rejected and alternate hypotheses are accepted. Thus, management accountants’ satisfaction with the

Table 11. A summary of regression analysis considering different value dimensions

Table 12. Test of hypotheses on value dimensions In all the cases as mentioned above, the null hypotheses have been rejected and alternate hypotheses are accepted except two cases. Employee satisfaction does not affect employee commitment and product quality does not affect value. In all other cases, alternate hypotheses are accepted. Management accountants’ satisfaction develops loyalty and ensures product quality and service quality. Satisfaction may not develop employee commitment, but employee loyalty helps to build employee commitment. And employee commitment affects both product and service quality. Very important finding is that product quality does not affect value, but service quality does.