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Prior research provides evidence that firms make accounting choices to avoid violation of debt covenant provisions and the resulting costs of technical default. We extend this research by asking why some firms refrain from making accounting policy changes when faced with costs of technical default. We considered two possible explanations. First, we hypothesise that these defaulting firms may lack the flexibility to make accounting changes. Second, we hypothesise that these defaulting firms may lack incentive to change accounting methods. Results confirm prior research and indicate that defaulting firms make more accounting changes than non‐defaulting firms. The decision by defaulting firms to change or not change accounting methods during the three years ending in the year of a technical default of debt covenants can be explained in part by the ability of the firm and by the incentives of the firm to make a change.

This paper seeks to explore the way charity accountants understand, interpret and legitimate or delegitimate the introduction of accounting and reporting changes (embedded in the extant charity statement of recommended practice), before these are actually implemented.

Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with accountants in large UK and Republic of Ireland charities, the manner and extent to which forthcoming changes in charity accounting are legitimated (justified) or delegitimated (criticised) is explored.

Acceptance of accounting changes in the charity sector by formal regulation may not be necessary for future required adjustments to practice to be legitimated. Using interviews carried out before the implementation of required changes, the results suggest that other factors, such as national culture, identity and mimetic behaviours, may play a major role in the homogenisation and acceptance of accounting and reporting rules. In particular, it is argued that mimetic pressures can be much more influential than regulative pressures in legitimating change in the charity sector and are more likely to lead to the embedding of change.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it explores rhetoric and legitimation strategies used before changes are actually implemented. Second, it contributes to filling a gap in charities’ research related to intra-organisational legitimation of managerial and accounting changes, illustrating institutional-field identity at work to preserve shared organisational values and ideas. Finally, the research illuminates the importance of particular contextual pressures and individual legitimation arguments during accounting-change processes.

This study examines the association between the use of a package of contemporary and a package of traditional management accounting practices with organizational change and organizational performance.

Data were collected based on a mail survey distributed to a sample of 740 public sector organizations.

The findings indicate that while the prevalence of traditional practices is still dominant, such practices were not associated with organizational change or performance. Rather, those organizations that use contemporary management accounting practices to a greater extent experienced greater change and stronger performance.

The findings suggest that contemporary management accounting practices can assist public sector practitioners in improving performance and promoting organizational change.

The study provides an empirical insight into the use and effectiveness of management accounting practices in the public sector. The study provides the first empirical analysis of the effect of using a package of management accounting practices in the public sector.

Accounting for quality and improved organizational performance has recently received attention in management control research. However, the extent to which process innovation changes have been integrated into management control research is limited. This paper contributes to that integration by drawing from institutional adaptive theory of organizational change and process innovation strategies. The paper utilizes a 2 by 2 contingency table that uses two factors: environmental conditions and organizational change/learning strategies, to build a process innovation framework. A combination of these two factors yields four process innovation strategies: mechanistic, organic, organizational development (OD) and organizational transformation (OT).

The four process innovation typologies are applied to characterize innovations in accounting such as activity based costing (ABC). ABC has been discussed as a multi-phased innovation process that provides an environment where both the initiation and the implementation of accounting change can occur. Technical innovation can be successfully initiated as organic innovation that unfolds in a decentralized organization and requires radical change and double loop learning. Implementation occurs best as a mechanistic innovation in a hierarchical organization and involving incremental change and single loop learning. The paper concludes that if ABC is integrated into an OD or OT intervention strategy, the technical and administrative innovation aspects of ABC can be utilized to manage the organization’s operating activities.

The paper extends the organizational learning framework: Structural-Functional (SF)-single-loop or Conflictual-Radical (CR)-double-loop learning to the management accounting literature. The sociological approach of organizational learning is utilized to understand those contingent factors that can explain why management accounting innovations succeed or fail in organizations.

We view learning as enhancing an organization’s strategic competitive advantage by making it better able to adopt and diffuse innovation in respond to changes in its environment in order to manage improved performance. The success of management accounting innovations is contingent upon whether its learning process involves SF-single-loop or CR-double-loop learning to adopt and diffuse process innovation.

The paper suggests that the learning strategy that the organization chooses is the reason why some management accounting innovations are more successfully adopted than others and why some innovations are easily diffused in some organizations but not in others. We propose that the sociological approaches to learning provide an alternative framework with which to better understand the adoption and diffusion of process innovations in management accounting systems.

It has become evident that management accounting researchers need to pay particular attention to an organization’s approach to adoption and diffusion of innovation strategies, particularly when they are designing and implementing process innovation programs for an organization. According to Schulz (2001), there are two interrelated stages of the learning that can shape the outcome of the innovation process in an organization. The first stage is related to the acquisition/production (adoption) of knowledge that results in gathering information, codification, and exploration. This is followed by the second stage which is the distribution or dissemination (diffusion) processes. When these two stages – adoption and diffusion – are applied within an accounting context, they address issues that are commonly associated with the successes and/or failures of management accounting innovations.

Although innovation involves learning, the nature of the learning process does not completely describe the manner in which an innovation affects the organization. Accordingly, we suggest that the two interrelated organizational sociological dimensions of innovations processes, namely, (1) the adoption and diffusion theories of Rogers (1971 and 1995), to approach organizational learning, and (2) the SF (single loop) and CR (double loop) approaches to learning be used simultaneously to describe management accounting innovations.

When an innovation is implemented, it initially can be introduced as an incremental change, one that can be limited in both in its scope and its breadth of administrative changes. This means that situations which are most likely to benefit from its initiation can serve as the prototype for its adoption by the organization. If successful, this can be followed by systemic accounting innovations to instituting broader administrative changes within the existing accounting reporting and control systems.

This paper aims to discuss the alternative perspectives for studying management accounting and organizational change. It provides a comprehensive basis for the research of accounting and organizational change conducted in terms of theories used, influential factors, systems applied, dynamics and aspects of change.

The paper applies a “theoretical framework” for studying accounting and organizational change based on obtaining an institutional perspective. By achieving this theoretic construction in the integration of a number of different works, this can summarize the common elements, contrast the differences and work in a way that extends the methodology. It is determined exclusively on a hybrid approach through the adoption of alternative perspectives and complements recent recommendations for bridge building and methodological pluralism among the different debates and perspectives concerning accounting and organizational change research.

The findings emphasize that the nature of organizational change is not static, rather, it is dynamic and varying over time. Organizational changes are occurring in both extra- and intra-organizational factors that shaped changes in accounting systems in organizations. The study concludes that accounting and organizational change literature has divided theoretical strands into two main perspectives: rational perspectives and interpretive and critical perspectives. Rational perspectives represented by the conventional mainstream of research can be classified into two approaches, normative economic models and positive economic models, which are grounded in neoclassical economic theories. On the other hand, the interpretive and critical perspectives emerged as alternatives to rational perspectives to explain accounting and organizational change within its broader social and economic context.

The paper has significant implications for the ways in which change dynamics can emerge, diffuse and implement at multilevel of institutional analysis. It also explains the interaction between the accounting and organizational change, which identified that change is both shaped by, and shaping, wider socio-economic and political processes. This broad sensitivity to the nature of change has important implications for the ways of studying accounting and organizational change. Hence, it has important implications for the way in which successful change can be defined in accounting and organizational change literature.

The study contributes to both accounting and organizational change literature by providing a comprehensive review about the development of institutional theory as it examines how the organization is simultaneously subjected to a high level of efficiency and considerable institutional demands. Thereafter, the domain of accounting and organizational change research itself will be extended.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the process of accounting changes and beyond budgeting principles (BBP) in the public sector as influenced by the institutional framework. It also looks beyond the outcomes of implementing budgeting changes to take into account the complexities of the factors that drive and shape the cumulative processes of accounting change.

The study presents the results of an interpretive case study in the Jordan Customs (JC) as good evidence from developing countries. It uses the triangulation of data collection methods including interviews, observations, and documents and archival records.

The paper found that JC changes to their accounting systems were influenced by the BBP, with the new budgeting systems implemented based on reconsideration and re-enacting of theoretical accounting bases and procedures. As a result, the accounting changes were managed by modifying the laws and regulations. Among the accounting changes included in the Beyond Budgeting (BB) approach in JC was relative performance evaluation, as an alternative to fixed budget targets. Rolling forecasts were prepared the BB and were employed in JC’s revenues section and the technical aspects of preparing those relied on E-views software. Most BBP were successfully implemented as values, controls, teams, goals, rewards, resources, coordination and governance. Other BBP have faced some resistance in areas of transparency, trust and accountability.

The paper uses the case study approach that yielded insightful lessons. It reveals the organizational interaction with the external environment and how BBP is influenced and shaped by isomorphic pressures. It also shows the successful and unsuccessful BBP with-(out) resistance in the public sector. This paper has important implications for change dynamics that can emerge from a BBP approach at the institutional level. It also explains the interaction between the “external” origins and “internal” accounts, which identified that accounting is both shaped by and shaping socio-economic and political processes. This broad sensitivity to the nature of accounting has important implications for how accounting change along with BBP is studied.

The paper is one of the few case studies in the accounting literature on organizations that change budgeting practice by adopting BBP. The study provides a detailed explanation of the dynamics of accounting changes through BBP in the public sector. It also provides pieces of evidence about the IPSAS and public accounting reforms in developing countries.

To explore the contributions made by two strands of institutional research that have been applied to the study of management accounting change: “old institutional economics” and “new institutional sociology”. To propose ways of developing these theories, and in general to develop an institutional understanding of management accounting change.

Analysis of the literature on management accounting change, with a special emphasis on the literature drawing on institutional theory. Theoretical discussion based on the concept of the “circuits of power”. Illustration with observations made during a case study of an organisation in which attempts to promote change in management accounting were conducted in recent years.

Identification of some complementarities between these two strands of institutional theorising, and suggestions of how they can be developed by drawing on insights from the “circuits of power” framework.

The case study analysis is limited to an illustration of the theoretical discussion. A building of bridges between the various developments in institutional approaches to management accounting change is necessary.

The paper is of value to researchers studying management accounting change. It clarifies the theoretical underpinnings of the institutional frameworks and suggests areas for institutional research into management accounting change.