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This study aims to empirically examine the influence of management control systems (MCSs) on knowledge acquisition from innovation failure (KAFIF), which further impacts empowerment, creativity and organizational innovation. This study argues that enabling an MCS positively influences KAFIF, whereas controlling the use of an MCS negatively influences KAFIF. Further, KAFIF positively impacts empowerment, creativity and organizational innovation.

This study aims to create a comprehensive stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) framework. This framework includes an MCS (belief, interactive, boundary and diagnostic) as a stimulus, KAFIF as an organism and creativity, empowerment and organizational innovation as responses. The data were gathered using an online survey administered to a sample of 321 employees working in India’s micro, small and medium enterprises and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that there is no correlation between belief control and the acquisition of knowledge from the failure of innovation, interactive control has a positive association with KAFIF and boundary control has no relationship with KAFIF. Diagnostic control has a significant negative association with KAFIF. Further, this study found that KAFIF positively associates with empowerment, creativity and organizational innovation.

This study is among initial studies that examine the influence of MCSs on KAFIF, which impacts empowerment, creativity and organizational innovation. Further, it helps be one of the initial literature on studying KAFIF rather than innovation success.

This paper aims to examine the levers of control (LOC) framework in the context of managing projects. The authors explore the impact of diagnostic systems, interactive systems, beliefs systems and boundary systems on project performance and explore the association between control levers.

Using data gathered from 113 project managers representing 38 organizations, the authors used the partial least squares path modelling algorithm to analyse the data.

The analysis validates the LOC framework in the context of managing projects and reveals the interrelatedness of control systems and their impact on project performance.

The conclusions support the current emphasis on performance reporting and change control and highlight the need to consider the interdependencies between control levers.

This study re-conceptualizes project control by using the LOC framework in the context of managing projects as temporary organizations. This provides a model for investigating and understanding project management control systems that consider the interaction of control mechanisms. Furthermore, the associations between the four control systems and project performance are examined, rather than individual mechanisms in isolation.

According to popular belief, transparency is a versatile tool for the governance of organizations: it is supposed to help in mitigating problems such as corruption, economic deficiencies, and a lack of legitimacy. However, is it a truly effective panacea, as it has been envisioned by its advocates? Empirical research gives reason to doubt, indicating that there is a wide gap between the idealized expectations of transparency and its practical merits. Organizations face severe difficulties when they try to implement such measures, especially because their daily activities often deviate significantly from societal expectations. Putting a combination of Erving Goffman’s frontstage/backstage theory and Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory to use, this chapter conceptualizes organizations as social entities constantly engaged in boundary-maintenance, which not only comprises – in Luhmannian terms – “operative closure” (the autonomy of a system from direct influence of its environment) but also boundaries of visibility. It is thus not at all surprising that organizations regularly try to circumvent the implementation of transparency and develop new practices of secrecy. This chapter outlines an integrative conceptualization that enables researchers to reject mundane visions of how transparency ought to improve organizations, and suggests new pathways for empirical research.

An important requirement when producers apply for protected designation of origin (PDO) or protected geographical indications (PGIs) is to adapt and agree on a concise definition of the geographical boundaries and area of the product. Whereas PDO products must be both strongly ecologically and culturally embedded in the specific area, PGI products are allowed a weaker degree of embeddedness. The research question of this paper is: How are geographical boundaries becoming PDOs and PGIs? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The analysis is based on diverse forms of empirical material. Document studies of laws, policy documents, etc. have been analyzed to uncover what kind of measures and concepts that have been important for implementation of the scheme in Norway. Interviews with producer organizations have involved the persons responsible for working out product regulations in producer organizations. Interviews have also been conducted with key informants representing public administrative bodies administering the regulation. All interviews have been semi-structured.

The analysis identifies a set of important conditions for the boundary work of PDO-PGI in Norway. The conditions can generally be said to be characterized by a weak understanding of the food-people-places nexus and a strong reliance on instrumentalised system logic in how to deal with the map-nature dimension in boundary work. The short answer to the research question is that geographical boundaries are becoming PDO and PGI through controversies.

The controversies are characterized by what is defined as cultural adaptation work. The actors overall adaptation work is understood as the sum of the practices that takes place in the interplay between people’s translations of language and knowledge, reorganization of social relationships and transformation of materiality. The interplay is embedded in the tension between the global and the local, the old and the new and results in both intended and unintended consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of management control systems (MCS) in organisational change towards sustainability. In particular, it examines the extent to which MCS may be instrumental in transformative organisational change in this sphere.

Through an in-depth case study of an Australian multinational corporation in the property sector, this paper explores the possibilities for MCS to influence organisational change towards a multi-bottom-line, balanced approach to social and environmental challenges facing corporations. MCS are conceptualised using Simons’ (1995) Levers of Control framework. On the question of sustainability, the approach adopted in this paper contrasts with much of the prior literature that largely takes a predominantly pragmatist approach and equates sustainability performance with financial performance. The prior literature generally reports a positive role for MCS in organisational change efforts. By contrast, drawing on the typology developed by Hopwood et al. (2005), this paper views sustainability as requiring a balancing of economic, social and environmental concerns.

The findings indicate that although MCS are not irrelevant, they do not play a transformative role in enabling deep-seated organisational change towards sustainability. The critical literature on the nature of MCS is drawn upon to explore the reasons for the observed non-role.

The analysis sheds light on factors that may influence the effectiveness of conventional notions of MCS in organisational change. The findings contribute to the debate regarding the suitability of continued efforts at using conventional notions of management accounting and MCS in enabling organisational change towards greater social and environmental sustainability. The paper also highlights the value of a critical examination of the usefulness of management accounting and control practices in the context of organisational change towards sustainability.

Seeking to move beyond limits in order to solve problems is an important part of organizational learning and is therefore potentially emancipatory. Communicating across boundaries in order to expand capabilities might contribute to understanding and therefore to community building. When limits to current capacities are experienced, individuals who admit their own limitations set the stage for both organizational learning and emancipatory processes. Stories of two different departments in the same organization are contrasted in terms of the micro‐emancipatory processes that led to deliberate change in one and not the other. Attention to, and respect for, the three key functions of boundaries is proposed to make a difference in experiences of autonomy and community.

This article deals with how to test for and evaluate interdependence among control practices in a management control system using structural equation modeling. Empirical research on the levers of control (LOC) framework is used as an example. In LOC research, a path model approach to interdependence has been developed. The appropriateness of this approach is evaluated, developed, and compared with the correlation of residuals approach (seemingly unrelated regression) implemented in the wider complementarity literature. Empirical examples of the different models are shown and compared by using a data set on LOC of 120 SBUs in Sweden. The empirical results show that modeling interdependence among control practices in a management control system as non-recursive (bi-directional) paths or as residual correlations evidently affects the conclusions drawn about interdependence in terms of both presence and magnitude. The two models imply different views on how to conceptualize interdependence and are not statistically and empirically comparable. If using non-recursive path models, several model specification issues appear. To be able to identify such models, this needs to be carefully considered in the theory and research design prior to data collection.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to further advancing of IMP as a research field by setting up and starting a theoretical conversation between system theory and the IMP.

The approach is based on a narrative literature study and conceptual research.

The authors find that system theory and cybernetics can be regarded as important sources of inspiration for early IMP research. The authors identify three specific theoretical “puzzles” in system theory that may serve as useful topics for discussion between system theorists and IMP researchers.

Only a handful of papers have touched upon the relationship between system theory and IMP before. This paper combines a narrative, historical analysis of this relationship with developing specific suggestions for using system theory as a vehicle for further advancement of IMP research.

The purpose of this paper is to problematize the need for debate in operationalizing the planetary boundaries framework when accounting for the Anthropocene.

This paper’s aim is achieved through a literature review focusing on the assumptions around the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and organizations. The author conducted an integrated review of 91 documents discussing the operationalization of the planetary boundaries framework and the need for debate.

This paper develops two major findings. First, the author identifies the four main dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated: social, normative, narrative and control aspects. Second, the author exposes proposals in the literature that have the potential to fuel the debate, but which are themselves a source of debate.

This paper argues that, while being scientifically informed, the planetary boundaries framework leaves decision-makers with critical choices and decisions that need to be openly debated. This paper identifies some relevant proposals for doing so.

This paper underlines the need to open forums of debate for scientists and other stakeholders to raise the democratic legitimacy of the planetary boundaries framework.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the very first papers to investigate dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated to respond to the challenge of its operationalization.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the application of documentation and recording techniques for World Heritage conservation using the case studies of the Petra Archeological Park (PAP) in Jordan and the Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Information System (CHRIS) in Central Asia. In the PAP case study, these techniques could aid in the assessment of risks faced by World Heritage properties and threats to the integrity of the Outstanding Universal Values (OUV). With respect to the Silk Roads CHRIS case study the Geospatial Content Management System (Geo‐CMS) proposed aims to improve information management and collaboration among all stakeholders.

Integrated surveying techniques and information management systems together with active stakeholder participation can be used as conservation and management tools. In the case of PAP, using a systematic documentation tool (MEGA‐J) to conduct site condition and risk assessment of cultural heritage and combining photographs, maps and GPS measurements within a GIS platform allows for identifying the location and intensity of risks, and the degree of vulnerability within the PAP boundaries and buffer zone. In the Silk Roads CHRIS project the Geo‐CMS brings together data from different fields, e.g. geography, geology, history, conservation, to allow for a holistic approach towards documentation, protection and management of a number of diverse sites to be combined in serial transnational World Heritage.

The study provides insight into how digital technologies can aid in heritage documentation and conservation, including stakeholder involvement and training. Moreover, by means of the two case studies it can be shown that a combination of digital technologies allows for an efficient mapping of buffer zones and risks and how a Geo‐CMS can form a common platform to manage large quantities of information of different origin and make it accessible to stakeholders in transnational projects.

This paper discusses the use of digital technology and the participation of stakeholders in heritage conservation and documentation when dealing with complex World Heritage properties, e.g. serial transnational and archaeological ensembles at high risk.