This study examines the relationship between managers' reliance on accounting based performance measures and their perceptions of role ambiguity. The sensitivity of this relationship to both job function (i.e. production versus non-production) and job structure is explored. The strong relationship previously found for production jobs does not generalise to non-production jobs, for which there is only a weak relationship between reliance on accounting performance measures and role ambiguity. In addition, this weak general relationship is not independent of job structure.