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The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

The authors examine how a not-for-profit organisation (NPO) coordinates NPO's actions during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic to remain focussed on strategic and operational goals.

The authors conducted a live case study of an NPO as the crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. Drawing on a sensemaking perspective that incorporates sensegiving, the authors develop a framework of five types of organisational sensemaking. The authors analyse weekly planning meetings during which managers discussed past performance, forecast performance and the forecast duration of current cash reserves.

The authors show how three of the five types of organisational sensemaking helped to coordinate actions. The authors highlight how accounting information triggers organisational sensemaking processes; but depending on the type of organisational sensemaking, accounting information has little further role. The authors also show that the stability of decisions depends on the types of organisational sensemaking.

The authors show how coordination as a management control practice is enabled by organisational sensemaking within an NPO during a crisis. Organisational sensemaking enabled the agreement of actions, which enabled coordination. Accounting practices provided trigger mechanisms to facilitate organisational sensemaking.

Since this study is the first to examine sensemaking processes and accounting practices in coordination in an NPO in a pandemic, the authors contribute to the limited research on NPOs during crises and on the management control practice of coordination. The authors extend the accounting literature on sensemaking by showing that, whilst accounting triggers organisational sensemaking, accounting is only implicated in one type of organisational sensemaking and by revealing the different outcomes of the different types of organisational sensemaking.

This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.

Social franchise chains have social goals rather than – or in addition to – commercial or profit-making goals. But are these social goals, disclosed by social franchisors, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, if so, which ones?

The authors examine the disclosure of SDG-related information on websites of 69 social franchise chains operating in Africa.

The authors' main findings show that social goals disclosed by social franchisors are aligned with certain SDGs that are general in nature and not just sector-dependent, except in the case of education.

The authors' paper contributes to the practice by providing examples of the types and varieties of social goals social franchisors can pursue. Moreover, entrepreneurs might be encouraged to launch their franchise concept as franchisors who contribute to SDGs at an international, national or regional level or to join franchise chains as franchisees who contribute to SDGs at the local level.

The authors' findings show the potential for social franchise chains in developing countries to target and contribute to achieving SDGs.

The authors' paper adds to the limited literature on SDGs and, more specifically, on the role of the private sector, in particular social franchisors, in targeting and achieving SDGs.