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The purpose of this paper is to examine workarounds from the perspective of the users of the system, focusing on the outcomes of workarounds and their effect on the quality of accounting information.

Interviews were conducted with employees in the accounting functions at two international organizations using SAP for their enterprise system. Results were coded by two experienced researchers and one undergraduate student, and included a categorization of the outcomes of workarounds.

The most striking result is the difference in views of workarounds between the two organizations. While workarounds are discouraged by the accounting function at both organizations, one seeks out workarounds and enforces standards while the other has not yet achieved process standardization. Not surprisingly, users view the workarounds of others as very detrimental to the quality of accounting information, but view their own workarounds as critical to maintain quality.

Organizations should obtain input from system users to document the extent that workarounds are used within the organization to determine the impact on the quality of their financial reporting.

The focus on outcomes of workarounds is an important shift in the literature, and more work is needed to further refine the categories used in this research, particularly for the effect of workarounds on internal controls and information quality. Additionally, this research surfaced a very strong difference in the actions taken to deal with workarounds, which may be due to organizational cultures.

This study aims to examine why students choose to or choose not to take and their perspectives of online courses, by obtaining responses from both students who have and have not taken online classes.

A survey methodology is used, including both open‐ended qualitative questions as well as a quantitative question.

Support for past research was found through students indicating the importance of flexibility and convenience in online courses. Countering past research was the high level of consistency between the two populations’ perspectives of online courses. Two key distinctions were found between the populations: the amount of focus on the cost of courses by those choosing not to take online classes, and the awareness of the need of self‐motivation needed in online courses by those who had taken them.

This research was conducted at just one organization, so generalizability across institutions would need to be confirmed.

Institutions need to be aware of what constitutes students’ choices and perspectives between the various methods of taking courses.

Students may need additional preparation and realistic expectations in order to increase the likelihood of being successful in an online course. Institutions also need to maintain the rigor of their online courses to maintain an overall positive social perception of online education.

This study made a distinction between perspectives of students having had an online course and those who had not, as well as a distinction between choice in selecting online courses and student perceptions of online courses. These perceptions were explored through both quantitative and qualitative responses.

There have been many studies that investigated the causes of workarounds, but there is less research on their outcomes, such as the impact on internal control. This study aims to investigate the use of workarounds by a multinational organization that implemented SAP about 10 years ago, and how those workarounds affected internal controls.

A qualitative study is performed by analyzing interviews with company personnel for a multinational organization. Employees selected for interviews are primarily users of SAP’s accounting functions.

Workarounds have significant impacts on the internal controls over financial reporting. Workarounds cause compensating controls to be implemented, which are often manual in nature, and decrease the organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

Workarounds become integrated into an organization’s activities to meet its business needs. This research raises questions to determine when maintaining organizational efficiency and control outweighs the need to provide customer service and other business needs.

Companies should consider whether their business processes can be modified to ensure that they can be handled within the enterprise system. In addition, the number of compensating controls required due to workarounds may decrease the organizational efficiency expected from having an enterprise resource planning system to ensure the integrity of financial information.

This paper moves beyond finding the causes of workarounds, and expands what is known about workarounds and their impact on an organization. An important contribution of this study is to consider the intersection of workarounds, ERP systems and internal controls.

While research has been conducted on the causes of workarounds, less is known about their impact on business processes and system outcomes. This study aims to investigate the impact on accounting information quality from workarounds implemented by personnel at a large global organization.

Interviews and qualitative analysis methods were used at one large multinational organization in the midst of a multi-year SAP implementation. A subset of employees in the desired categories (systems designers and advisors) was gained through snowball sampling.

Workarounds have significant impacts on the quality of both financial and managerial accounting information quality. System users are often unable to fully comprehend their place in the task chain, and thus are unaware of the implications of their actions on information quality.

Control issues are an inherent part of workaround outcomes, as is the notion of system success. The current research suggests a need for much more work in these areas, including additional exploration of the outcomes of workarounds.

The examples demonstrated very clearly that deviations from standard procedures have very real consequences. In particular, the completeness, neutrality and accuracy were impacted, making it difficult for the organization to achieve relevance and faithful representation in their financial information. Additional insights are provided concerning the importance of knowledge sharing and the degree to which an organization may achieve a more integrated information system.

This paper complements existing research on workarounds through analysis of impacts on accounting information quality. An important contribution of the current study is to continue the move away from focusing solely on the causes of workarounds, and instead investigate the outcomes.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.