Jan Pfister is an Adjunct Professor in Management Accounting and Control and a tenured Senior Lecturer at the Department of Accounting and Finance at Turku School of Economics. He is an Affiliated Researcher at the House of Innovation (HOI) as well as the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets (Misum) at Stockholm School of Economics, and an active participant at the Berkeley Innovation Forum (BIF).

His current research focuses on a range of topics related to management control systems design and practice, and how efficiency pressures affect employee motivation, innovativeness, and performance. He is also interested in broader societal changes based on the emergence of innovative technologies, including digital platforms and ecosystems. He has been teaching at the bachelor, master, PhD, and executive levels, and supervising several PhD students.

Before joining the University of Turku, he worked at Lancaster University Management School and the University of Zurich. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, Lancaster University, and at Stockholm School of Economics, holds a Docentship at the University of Jyväskylä, and obtained a Doctorate from the University of Zurich. His dissertation was published as a book by Springer, entailed a paper that won a Best Paper Award at the Research Ethics Symposium of the American Accounting Association, and received recognition by Financial Executives International, that disseminated a summary as Issue Alert to its worldwide members (link to book).

Selected Publications

Bassani, G., Pfister, J.A. & Cattaneo, C. (2021) Management accounting change as an amplifier of a leadership dispute: An ethnography of convergent and divergent leader-follower relations, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, forthcoming.

Pfister, J. (2020) The pitfalls of achieving cost-efficiency in the creative organization (case study and teaching notes on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation), In: Hartmann, F.G.H., Kraus, K., Nilsson, G., Anthony, R.N., & Govindarajan, V. Management Control Systems, second edition, 387-392.

Pfister, J.A. & Lukka, K. (2019) Interrelations of controls for autonomous motivation: A field study of productivity gains through pressure-induced process innovation, The Accounting Review, Vol. 94, No. 3, 345-371.

Pfister, J.A., Jack, S.L. & Darwin, S.N. (2017) Strategizing open innovation: How middle managers work with performance indicators, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Vol. 33, 139-150.

Pfister, J. (2014) Controlling creativity and innovation: Paradox or necessity? In: Otley, D. & Soin, K., Management Control and Uncertainty, Palgrave McMillan, 134-148.

Pfister, J.A. (2012) Issue Alert: Managing organizational culture for effective internal control, Financial Executives Research Foundation, USA.

Pfister, J. & Hartmann, F. (2011) Managing organizational culture for effective internal control (book review), The Accounting Review, Vol. 86(2), 738-741.

Pfister, J.A. (2009) Managing organizational culture for effective internal control: From practice to theory, Springer Physica-Verlag: Heidelberg, New York (245 pages).