Search results

This paper aims to critically examine the accounting and information systems literature to understand the changes that are occurring in the management accounting profession. The changes the authors are interested in are linked to technology-driven innovations in managerial decision-making and in organizational structures. In addition, the paper highlights research gaps and opportunities for future research.

The authors adopted a grounded theory literature review method (Wolfswinkel et al., 2013) to achieve the study’s aims.

The authors identified four research themes that describe the changes in the management accounting profession due to technology-driven innovations: structured vs unstructured data, human vs algorithm-driven decision-making, delineated vs blurred functional boundaries and hierarchical vs platform-based organizations. The authors also identified tensions mentioned in the literature for each research theme.

Previous studies display a rather narrow focus on the role of digital technologies in accounting work and new competences that management accountants require in the digital era. By contrast, the authors focus on the broader technology-driven shifts in organizational processes and structures, which vastly change how accounting information is collected, processed and analyzed internally to support managerial decision-making. Hence, the paper focuses on how management accountants can adapt and evolve as their organizations transition toward a digital environment.

The purpose of this study is to examine both accruals and real earnings management in a large sample of private companies in the UK using data from 2002 to 2009 following the implementation of the UK Act of 2006.

A panel data analysis using GMM has been adopted to examine the objectives of the study and answer the research questions.

The results of this study showed that the imposition of the Companies Act of 2006, on its own, did lead to changes in earnings management behaviour, in both accruals-based earnings and real earnings management. Moreover, this study also found that firms that chose to provide IFRS financial statements tended to show less discretionary earnings management, however, it tended to have no impact on real earnings management.

In accordance with the research findings, standard setters with some insight tend to determine how capital markets see the information provided under the legislation such as the UK Act of 2006 in developed countries and thereby ensure long-term sustainability in a modern and sophisticated financial world. This study provides an insight into the successful implementation of the UK act of 2006, and its influence on the aspect of financial reporting.

The novel conclusion reached in the study is that there exists a strong and direct link between the smooth implementation of UK Act of 2006 and the practices of both accruals and real earnings management in real-world business and financial scenarios, particularly, in private companies.

This study aims to explore the serendipitous discovery of integrated reporting (IR) by Alpha, an Italian small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). Alpha piqued the curiosity when the authors discovered that it experimented with IR alongside other management accounting practices, such as the Balanced Scorecard. As the authors reflected on Alpha’s experiences, the authors had to opportunistically develop a new framework to understand the change that was taking place at Alpha fully. Thus, the authors developed the serendipitous drift framework. This study contributes to addressing the gap between management accounting research that sees change as a planned, ordered process versus research that sees it as an unmanageable drift.

The authors ground the research on a qualitative methodology based on a single case study. This methodology allows us to focus on understanding what has happened at Alpha to discover new themes and provide theoretical generalisations. The authors developed the framework using middle-range thinking and fleshed it out using empirical findings from the case study. Middle-range thinking implies going back and forth between the theory and the empirical material. Therefore, the authors develop the serendipitous drift framework from prior theories and use it to inform the empirical study. In turn, the empirical material collected in Alpha helps refine and flesh out the serendipitous drift framework. The framework explains how Alpha leveraged serendipity to steer change towards favourable outcomes for them.

The authors find that the search for change undertaken by Alpha’s managers was non-specific but purposeful. Their dispositions were sagacious enough to recognise the potential value found in management accounting practices, such as IR and the Balanced Scorecard. They chanced upon new and unforeseen practices through trial and error, iteration, internal engagement and networking.

Overall, the results indicate that Alpha’s managers shaped the disorder of management accounting changes, even though it followed unexpected, uncertain and messy paths. Indeed, appropriate informal controls can act as a frame of reference for choosing, adapting and implementing new management accounting practices to shape the disorder. Informal controls can both guide and bound the experimentation process towards desirable outcomes.

The authors contribute to management accounting change theory by developing a framework rooted in serendipity and drifting theories. The framework identifies how searching, sagacity and chance are essential for making positive, unexpected discoveries. Therefore, the authors provide novel insights on how and why IR and other management accounting practices are eventually translated and adopted in the case company. Moreover, the serendipitous drift framework has the potential to help managers frame cultural controls to actively seek opportunities for valuable serendipitous eureka moments through networking and experimentation.

In this study, the authors examine artificial knowledge as a fundamental stream of knowledge management for sustainable and resilient business models in supply chain management (SCM). The study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of artificial knowledge and digitalization as key enablers of the improvement of SCM accountability and sustainable performance towards the UN 2030 Agenda.

Using the SCOPUS database and Google Scholar, the authors analyzed 135 English-language publications from 1990 to 2022 to chart the pattern of knowledge production and dissemination in the literature. The data were collected, reviewed and peer-reviewed before conducting bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review to support future research agenda.

The results highlight that artificial knowledge and digitalization are linked to the UN 2030 Agenda. The analysis further identifies the main issues in achieving sustainable and resilient SCM business models. Based on the results, the authors develop a conceptual framework for artificial knowledge and digitalization in SCM to increase accountability and sustainable performance, especially in times of sudden crises when business resilience is imperative.

The study results add to the extant literature by examining artificial knowledge and digitalization from the resilience theory perspective. The authors suggest that different strategic perspectives significantly promote resilience for SCM digitization and sustainable development. Notably, fostering diverse peer exchange relationships can help stimulate peer knowledge and act as a palliative mechanism that builds digital knowledge to strengthen and drive future possibilities.

This research offers valuable guidance to supply chain practitioners, managers and policymakers in re-thinking, re-formulating and re-shaping organizational processes to meet the UN 2030 Agenda, mainly by introducing artificial knowledge in digital transformation training and education programs. In doing so, firms should focus not simply on digital transformation but also on cultural transformation to enhance SCM accountability and sustainable performance in resilient business models.

This study is, to the authors' best knowledge, among the first to conceptualize artificial knowledge and digitalization issues in SCM. It further integrates resilience theory with institutional theory, legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory as the theoretical foundations of artificial knowledge in SCM, based on firms' responsibility to fulfill the sustainable development goals under the UN's 2030 Agenda.

Since the 1980s, governments worldwide have been implementing the move from cash to accrual accounting. Scholars initially considered the appropriateness of this accounting reform to be self-evident, but later they have expressed critical views. This paper systematises the existing literature intending to reflect on the adverse effects of adopting accrual accounting in the public sector and identify implications for future research.

The present study builds on a systematic literature review of 106 academic articles published between 1980 and 2021. It is based on the “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses” (PRISMA) method. Synthesising research through a transparent, rigorous and replicable process makes it possible to identify and discuss the adverse effects of adopting public sector accrual accounting.

Significant issues are linked to organisational impacts and accountability. Resistance to change is the main negative consequence and is more likely in countries that have chosen to adopt accrual accounting without maintaining cash accounting. The new accounting rules make accounting information more complex and arbitrary for citizens and politicians. How these criticalities should be addressed deserves further investigation.

This paper offers a comprehensive literature review on the drawbacks of adopting accrual accounting in the public sector. It could provide a general lesson to be applied to policymakers of other jurisdictions currently considering this transition to prevent the adverse effects and act proactively.

This study explores the relationship between leverage and earnings management in the context of Palestinian-listed companies, while also investigating whether audit industry specialization influences this relationship.

The data used in this study are extracted from public financial reports of 39 firms listed on Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX), spread across the service, insurance, industry and investment sectors, for the time period 2011–2022. A model is developed to test 4 hypotheses about the relationships between long-term and short-term debts, and earnings management, and then to examine the influence of audit industry specialization on these relationships.

The results depict a significant, negative relationship between long-term debt and earnings management. Whereas the association between short-term debt and earnings management is insignificant. Audit industry specialization is proven to have no influence on the relationships between the independent and the dependent variables. Results are robust for firms that changed their accounting policies and using different audit industry specialization proxies.

The association between leverage and earnings management is a significant research topic, given that previous research identifies credit ratings and debt covenant violations as key factors which motivate earnings management. This paper fills a substantial research gap by examining the relationship between the two variables in the context of Palestinian-listed firms, while emphasizing the distinction between long-term and short-term debts. It also highlights key relationships that have been neglected in this particular context, which adds to the body of literature. Furthermore, the research's findings provide a solid information base that is of great interest to accounting and auditing experts and that may be seriously evaluated to support and advance the PEX sector.

This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.

A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.

The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.

Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.

The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.

This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.

This paper aims to explore how the maieutic role of management accounting (MA) can be sustained in the context of MA digitalization.

The paper begins with practitioners’ descriptions of the context that makes the MA support of non-routine decisions maieutic. To understand how the maieutic characteristics can be sustained in future MA digitalization, the authors then analyze the discourses these practitioners have about artificial intelligence (AI) in providing MA support.

As a basis, the authors’ data show various maieutic characteristics within the use of MA answers in decision-making as well as within the MA process of generating such answers. The paper then identifies three MA digitalization discourses, namely, “computation,” “judgment” and human-AI “interaction” discourse, each with their unique agendas on how AI should be used.

The paper is based on the premises that AI and digitalization are often discussed without sufficient understanding about the context being digitalized. The authors’ data suggest that MA support in non-routine decision-making is fundamentally maieutic, and AI – as it currently stands – is not expected to change this by providing perfect answers. The authors provide novel insights about maieutic MA support and the current discourses on using AI in MA support, and how digitalization does not necessarily compromise maieutic MA support but instead has the potential to sustain or even enhance it.

This study aims to explore the formation of municipal risk management (RM) and the reasons for the differences of RM practices between the seven biggest cities in Finland.

The empirical data of this comparative qualitative case study comprises 33 interviews conducted with municipal managers. Supplementary material includes documentary material on municipal rules governing RM as well as annual reports and risk tools used in the municipalities.

This study found differences in cities with respect to when, how and why RM practices had evolved. The results indicate that differences in RM practices and development paths between cities are largely explained by the differences in the original reason to initiate RM, time span since its introduction, professional and educational backgrounds of risk managers, local risk events and accounting infrastructure such as RM tools developed in a city. These findings also suggest that even within the same municipality, different functions can be at different phases regarding RM.

This study reports on RM as a new form of accounting in the field of Finnish municipalities. This highlights how fairly uniform considerations at the field level lead to variation in the elaboration of RM practices at the municipal level. The study finds that different paths in the development of local RM involve iterative evolution between the phases of emergence, largely explained by contextual differences. This study contributes to understanding the emergence of new accounting forms in a municipal RM context.

While companies worldwide are largely comprised of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a significant amount of management accounting (MA) research focuses on larger organisations, thus leaving MA practice in SMEs relatively under-researched. This paper aims to examine MA adoption (MAA) and its interfaces with MA challenges and business performance from a small business perspective.

A sample of 502 small businesses is investigated with an embedded mixed methods research design comprised of qualitative content analysis, factor analysis and analysis of variance.

Up to 78% of small businesses are facing MA challenges that stem from organisation, systems, personnel and/or resources. Based on the present findings, MA challenges do motivate small businesses to at least consider investing in MAA as small businesses facing challenges are more likely to acquire systems and services than those reporting no issues at all. Hence, small business managers seem to not only recognise where their challenges lie, but also seek ways to improve the situation through MAA. The analysis also reveals that companies with the highest MA know-how have the best average solvency, suggesting that small businesses indeed benefit from MAA. Interestingly, the performance at medium levels of know-how declines while investments increase, revealing a “decreasing solvency phenomenon”. Potential explanations are, e.g. the MA not fitting the company’s exact needs, or information usability and use being limited by poor MA understanding.

The originality of the research lies in exploring the interfaces between MA challenges, MAA and small business performance using distinctive embedded mixed methods research design.