The mediating effect of shop-floor involvement on relations between advanced management accounting practices and operational non-financial performance indicators

This study investigates the relationships between the extent of shop-floor (SF) involvement (SFI) and the deployment/use of management accounting systems (MAS) instruments; namely, advanced management accounting practices (AMAPs) and non-financial performance indicators (NFPIs). In contrast to the extant research that presumes a direct influence of the deployment of AMAPs on the use of NFPIs, we adopt a radical approach and investigate whether the extent of SFI mediates this presumed relationship between the two MAS instruments, a link overlooked in previous studies. This study investigates such a relationship at SF level; hence, operational NFPIs (ONFPIs) are considered. Our study is distinguished by validating, as its contribution, a single construct for SFI. Structural equation modeling analyzes the data collected from cross-sectional surveys of 313 U.K. manufacturing firms. The findings show that the extent of SFI mediates the AMAPs-ONFPIs relationship; hence, it represents a key omitted link in understanding this relationship. Our findings indicate that the deployment of AMAPs influences the extent of attributed SFI, and, subsequently, that organizations prioritize the use of relevant ONFPIs in performance measurement systems (PMS) at SF level. The implications of the findings for both theory and practice are discussed.