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This paper considers the nature and effect of accounting disturbances on organizational micro-practices in three secondary schools in England. A close application of a developed model of Habermasian colonization provides a framing for both the ways in which accounting is implicated in organizational change and the effect of accounting disturbances on organizational micro-practices.

Qualitative field studies at three secondary schools were used to gather empirical detail in the form of interview data and documentary evidence. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and bursars.

Accounting disturbances that were constitutive-transactional in nature had the greatest influence on organizational micro-practices. Behavioural responses to accounting disturbances can be organizationally ambiguous, subtle and subject to change over time.

More field studies are needed, and there is scope to develop a longitudinal perspective to better understand the impact of accounting disturbances over time.

By framing the processes of accounting change using a developed model of Habermasian colonization, contributions are provided by illuminating aspects of both the processes of accounting colonization and the impact of accounting on organizational micro-practices. The findings also add to prior appreciations of reciprocal colonization, creative transformation of accounting disturbances and how accounting can be enabling.

This chapter combines quantitative studies of the connections between stressors and performance in accounting settings and identifies the mediators and moderators of stressors–performance relationships. Using meta-analyses and path analyses, this research compiles 72 studies to investigate the relationships of stressors with accountant and auditor performance. As hypothesized, bivariate meta-analyses results indicate that work-related stressors negatively affect performance, and burnout and stress are negatively related to performance, whereas motivation is positively related to performance. Moreover, a meta-analytical structural equation modeling indicates that role stressors have significant direct and indirect effects (through burnout and stress) on job performance. Accumulation of multiple samples through meta-analysis bolsters statistical power compared to single-sample studies and thus reveals the sign of residual direct effects of role stressors on job performance in accounting settings.

This paper seeks to further the understanding of the rather fragmented research in the area of quantitative management accounting research. The purpose of this study is to provide a synthesis and an extended discussion of the literature from the performance outcome standpoint and to foster future research in this area by identifying promising recent developments in the assessment of performance outcomes and gaps in the literature.

A literature analysis was adopted based on empirical studies and literature reviews published in a wide range of journals.

The overall conclusion of this study is that future management accounting research can still make progress in the measurement of performance outcomes.

Research published in English, and the period of the past decade was emphasized to examine recent frontiers of knowledge. The results imply that increasing and simultaneous analysis of various kinds of performance outcomes could be conducted, ranging from accounting‐based to social and environmental outcomes and relative‐to‐peers assessments in different settings. If possible, development of performance outcomes could be investigated with longitudinal and panel, in addition to cross‐sectional, research designs. Attempts could be made to analyze the nature of causality to advance both management accounting literature and social science research.

This study furthers understanding of behaviorally‐, organizationally‐ and strategically‐oriented management accounting research that has played a central role in assessing to what extent people are likely to succeed with their management accounting and control systems in various settings.

This paper presents a theoretical framework and several examples potentially useful for both academic scholars and practitioners.

The purpose of this research paper is to review various results regarding ethics in behavioral accounting. It critiques accountants’ ethical standards and discusses Islamic work ethics to solve related problems.

This research uses a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles on accountant ethics published in Scopus from 2011 to 2021.

The findings describe a broader trend with a focus on the internal and external factors that influence the ethical behavior of accountants. The external factors are culture, ethical climate and training and education, whereas the internal ones are demographics, emotions and moral intensity, honesty, intention, personal attributes and professional vs commitment. Furthermore, Islamic work ethics is presented to overcome the problem of ethical behavior among accountants.

It was concluded that knowledge of ethics in behavioral accounting provides sufficient scope for further research. The results show that the 11 criteria of Islamic work ethics produce quality work capable of avoiding violations while working for the good of the community and the environment.

The initial research focused on the relationship between Islamic work ethics in behavioral accounting.

This article consists mainly of a description, analysis and criticism of four research studies in the area of behavioural accounting. We have selected these particular studies because of the frequency with which they are referred to in articles on behavioural accounting in a wide number of journals, which have as their basic audience both practising and academic accountants. To generalise, the majority of these articles are concerned with how the behavioural variable in relation to accounting information should be managed, and vice‐versa, i.e. they are predominantly prescriptive. The prescription is sometimes presented as a set of guidelines for management action, based on references to research studie.

This systematic literature review analyses the determinants and consequences of executive compensation-related shareholder activism and say-on-pay (SOP) votes. The review covers 71 empirical articles published between January 1995 and September 2017. The studies are reviewed within an empirical research framework that separates the reasons for shareholder activism and SOP voting dissent as input factor on the one hand and the consequences of shareholder pressure as output factor on the other. This procedure identifies the five most important groups of factors in the literature: the level and structure of executive compensation, firm characteristics, corporate governance mechanisms, shareholder structure and stakeholders. Of these, executive compensation and firm characteristics are the most frequently examined. Further examination reveals that the key assumptions of neoclassical principal agent theory for both managers and shareholders are not always consistent with recent empirical evidence. First, behavioral aspects (such as the perception of fairness) influence compensation activism and SOP votes. Second, non-financial interests significantly moderate shareholder activism. Insofar, we recommend integrating behavioral and non-financial aspects into the existing research. The implications are analyzed, and new directions for further research are discussed by proposing 19 different research questions.

The management accountant has played an important part in commercial/industrial life. However, this role development is of comparatively recent origin compared with the wider profession of financial accounting. Whilst the early involvement of accountants in business organisations was concerned with the financial accounting aspects of the entity, organisations became more complex. This called for a re‐adjustment by the accountant in an endeavour to meet organisational demands for information. The historical development of cost accounting has been documented by David Solomons and it is clear that the major seminal influences were;

As one of the co‐authors of the first academic research papers published in a major accounting research journal on the subject of the balanced scorecard, the author was asked to reflect on his experiences with research in this area over the last 12 years since that first paper was published. The purpose of this paper is to do this through personal reflection and a literature review.

Employing personal reflection and a literature review, the author examines three issues: what motivated him to start this research program; the way the research program unfolded and its unintended consequences; and finally some reflections on the academic research enterprise as it is practised in North America that are reflected by the unintended consequences.

The author looks at the differences in psychology research traditions and how they shaped the research program on the balanced scorecard into an attempt to “debias” a problem rather than to bring strong human information processing theory to bear on how the scorecard dealt with some of the issues in its application. The author suggests that these different focuses explain how management accounting behavioral researchers lost an opportunity to have greater impact in the development of this performance tool.

The paper questions and documents limitations that arise from the reliance on an underlying psychology paradigm that focuses on human limitations, rather than one focused on aiding humans to perform better. It suggests that greater research contributions in management accounting could be obtained if more researchers focused on how management accounting information can be developed that takes advantage of human information processing strengths.

An understanding of the role of decision-making has been emphasised since the seminal works on human information processing and professional judgements by accountants. The interest in these topics has been reignited by the increasing digitisation of the financial reporting and auditing processes. Whilst the behavioural research on accounting is well-established, the application of seminal works in cognitive psychology and behavioural finance is lacking, especially from recent research endeavours. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of theories relating to accounting behavioural research by evaluating them against the theories of cognitive psychology.

Using theory synthesis, this research draws seemingly isolated strands of research into a coherent framework, underpinned by cognitive psychology.

Evidence from accounting and auditing behavioural research is largely consistent with the psychology and finance research on cognitive limitations and errors. There remains a lacuna in accounting behavioural research on debiasing techniques. Such research, if underpinned by a single, cohesive theoretical framework, is likely to have practical relevance.

The current research has theoretical implications for the accounting decision-making and uncertainty research. Areas for future research, based on identified gaps in the current accounting behavioural research, are also proposed.

The unavailability of practitioners is one of the disturbing realities that often prevent the use of experimental methods in accounting research. The availability of pragmatic alternatives to accounting practitioners demands that researchers explore such alternatives fully before conducting expensive experiments with practitioners. However, the use of students as surrogates for non‐students has been a controversial issue and this has led to an under‐utilization of the experimental method in management accounting research. Recent research has warned that relying solely on practitioners as subjects in experimental methods may result in “negative externalities”. The purpose of this paper is to inquire in to the feasibility of using student subjects in behavioral accounting research so that better judgments can be made about the benefits and dangers of using students in experiments.

The paper relies on a review and synthesis of the literature on the student surrogate debate.

The paper shows that accounting students may be adequate surrogates for practitioners in many decision‐making experiments.

The paper demonstrates that maintaining the experimental realism of a study and replications are more important than the type of subject when generalizing results.

The paper provides an analysis and synthesis of literature that will enable researchers to make sound judgments about the selection of subjects for experiments.