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The strategic governance of the digital accounting environment: insights from virtual museums

Paolo Esposito (Department of Law, Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods (DEMM), University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy and WSB University in Gdansk, Poland)
Alessandro Braga (Department of Business and Law, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milano, Italy)
Alessandro Sancino (The Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK and Department of Business and Law, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milano, Italy)
Paolo Ricci (Department of Political Science, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy)

Meditari Accountancy Research

ISSN: 2049-372X

Article publication date: 28 October 2021

Issue publication date: 21 March 2023

812

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the strategic governance of the digital transformation of the accounting environment in cultural organizations, with a specific focus on practices of social responsibility and stakeholder engagement in virtual museums.

Design/Methodology/Approach

By adopting a multiple case study approach, this study investigated five Italian virtual museums and their digitalization processes. Data were collected and triangulated from multiple sources, including documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with 16 key informants.

Findings

Considering the digitalization of the accounting environment as a paradigmatic change, the authors identify three key transitions for its strategic governance: from the static, technical and physical to the relational, emotional and digital; from bureaucratic managerialism to value cocreation; and from traditional CSR to integrated external engagement. Moreover, the authors found that social responsibility and stakeholder engagement practices are used in a limited way, and that the use of social media appears to be increasingly important and to be carried out through an emergent rather than a deliberate strategy.

Research Limitations/Implications

The paper draws from a limited sample of case studies in one country and is based on exploratory research. This paper calls for more comparative studies using a longitudinal approach to investigate the impacts of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations.

Originality/Value

This study is one of the few studies concentrating on the effects of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations.

Keywords

Citation

Esposito, P., Braga, A., Sancino, A. and Ricci, P. (2023), "The strategic governance of the digital accounting environment: insights from virtual museums", Meditari Accountancy Research, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 366-380. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEDAR-03-2020-0837

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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