Abstract
In the thesis I study the way Greek hospitality organisations reconfigured their control arrangements in order to respond to the financial crisis. My focus is mainly on budgets and budgeting, but their relation with other control arrangements is also respected.I challenge static perceptions of budgeting practice, and I develop a framework that is able to address not only change and stability, but also motion in budgeting. The framework is a synthesis based on alternative approaches on structuration, namely on Adaptive, Reconstructive, and Strong Structuration Theories. Distinctive aspects of the framework are: (a) the effort to give volume to social space, (b) the approach of the relation between agents and structures from a duality and/or dualism perspective, and (c) the implementation of Aristotle’s Motion Theory in order to address the motion in budgeting actualisations that the budgeting potentials offer.
I conducted a post-event realist field study. Three hotel chain case studies are included in the thesis. Following the framework, I provide data on quite holistic organisational adaptations to the crisis. These include both the adaptation of budgeting practice after the triggering event of the crisis – the reproducing of budgeting – and the temporal outcome of structuration – the budgeting reproduction. The budgeting structures in the three cases were different before the crisis, as they were developed according to the local organisational histories. Budgeting, a practice, changed in the organisations after the crisis triggering. Likewise their differing precrisis practices took different paths after the triggering event. The findings indeed suggest that the potential actualisations that budgets offer to the agents are plural. Budgets and budgeting were actualised differently in the organisations after the crisis. As a result, interesting reconfigurations took place, like the proactive deviation management in one of the cases. Nevertheless, stability, motion, and change were co-present to the budgeting and organisational control structures.
Date of Award | 2013 |
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Original language | English |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisor | Lisa Jack (Supervisor) & Bruce Bowhill (Supervisor) |