also use the protocols and performance reports to control
their dealership or department. Although dealership
managers do not necessarily have to use all the new
accounting information (provided by senior management)
within the dealership itself, they do have the obligation
to ensure that operational processes are executed according
to the protocols and to communicate at least the most
important performance information (such as sales volume,
gross margin and customer satisfaction) to the department
managers. In this paper we will focus on the dealership
managers and try to explain the differences between the
dealerships. We will explore the past and present leadership
styles of seniormanagementand thenew(non-family)
dealership managers.
Three dealerships have been selected for analysis.
Rather than investigating all the dealerships in the Stam
Groep to get a general view of accounting change in the
company, the choice was made to focus the analysis on the
dealerships which were ‘extreme’ in realizing the change
intended by senior management. This choice was based
on the assumption that the analysis of extremes would
contribute most to understanding accounting change. In
addition to the two extreme dealerships, one dealership in
the middle of the two extremes is investigated, to provide
a base point. In the first dealership (Soest), the dealership
manager and the department managers hardly use
the protocols and performance reports at all to control
the dealership and the departments. In the third dealership
(Leidsche Rijn), the dealership and department
managers use these protocols and reports very intensively.
The second dealership (Hilversum) falls between these two
extremes. The selection of these three dealerships was
based on preliminary discussions with the senior management
of the Stam Groep.
As an illustration of a new performance report, Fig. 3
contains the Balanced Scorecard for sales in 2003 of the
three selected dealerships and the Stam Groep as a whole.
The first column contains the various performance indicators.
The second column gives the weightings that senior