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Due to globalization and digitalization, the world of work is undergoing comprehensive change. These trends are challenging management accounting (MA) and pressuring individuals and organizations to change. The literature postulates a replacement of traditional organizational careers by “new” career models characterized by dynamism and flexibility. However, the state of the art on careers in MA lacks empirical evidence and has disparate research interests.

In this study, the authors investigate the status quo of careers in MA, key influencing factors and assumed change in such careers. To do so, the authors conducted a quantitative empirical study, based primarily on the careers of 83 graduates of a department offering a MA major at a German-speaking university. Nine qualitative empirical interviews supplement the quantitative findings.

The authors’ findings indicate that while MA careers are changing, the characteristics of the profession are continuing to concur with the traditional organizational understanding of careers. Accumulated professional experience is the key factor to achieving a management position although management accountants tend to become more dynamic in terms of career paths and career understanding. Thus, employment in various functional areas opens new career paths in MA.

The methodology of analysing quantitative and empirical cross-sectional data and the resulting final sample size is too small to guarantee robust statistical inference. Moreover, further interviews would lead to greater data saturation.

The study sheds light on the under-researched question of how careers in MA proceed and develop. This could be of interest for practitioners working with management accountants such as personnel consultants.

This study contributes to the field through its comprehensive consideration of careers in MA in this changed context, thus providing new insights for academia and business practice.

This article focuses on the leadership development of young adults. The topic is of significant importance as leadership identity tends to form early in life, and its long-term implications contribute to leadership formation. The objective of this study was to gain insights into how leadership is constructed in young adults and how it is manifested in their preferred leadership identity.

This research was approached from a constructivist perspective, utilizing discourse analysis. The authors conducted a study involving 24 written essays by young individuals with a business background, in which they shared their early leadership experiences. Drawing upon a modified life story interview structure, the authors meticulously analyzed the content.

The authors identified eight discourses clustered into two groups according to the types of leadership orientation: toward oneself and toward others. The discourses in the toward oneself group consist of leadership as taking responsibility, leadership as courage, manifesting personal strengths and as a role/status. The toward others group includes discourses approaching leadership as balancing directivity, coordinating and organizing work, personalized approach and as performance management.

The major methodological limitations stem from the qualitative design per se. The findings based on qualitative data have limits in generalizing.

The authors' findings have practical implications for educators. The authors propose the utilization of critical self-reflection on early leadership experiences and self-narration as effective tools in nurturing and developing young leaders.

This paper underscores the importance of educating young leaders, as they can create a positive impact on their subordinates and society as a whole. By providing them with leadership skills, the authors initiate a chain reaction of influence that extends through different levels of leadership, leading to significant social change.

The authors' originality and contribution to the literature on leadership development lies in showcasing the diversity of perspectives on leadership among participants sharing a similar background and developmental stage. This holds valuable implications for educators working with this cohort.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the family firm identity is affected when it is no longer publicly communicated.

A case study approach was used to follow a third-generation family business, a large Swedish home electronics firm that acquired a competitor and, initially, continued using its family firm identity after the acquisition. This study longitudinally tracks the company and its owning family using archival data combined with interviews.

The case company decided to stop communicating their identity as a family business. Such a move initially appears counterintuitive, since it potentially threatens the family firm identity and leads the firm to forgo other advantages, e.g. in branding. However, the decision was based on arguments that were rational from a business perspective, leading to a decoupling of family and firm identity.

This study contributes to the literature by showing a decoupling of internally experienced and externally communicated identities. It further contributes to the understanding of the family firm identity concept.

This paper introduces a methodology to identify, analyse and represent heritage site attributes, emphasizing their impact on value, authenticity, integrity and management, with a case study on Ghadames, Libya. Inscribed in 1986 and moved to the In-Danger List in 2016 due to conflict, this work seeks to update the site's attributes and values for improved management.

This methodology, focusing on Ghadames, leverages recent heritage management advancements to monitor conflict-induced changes, aiming to enhance decision-making through a detailed analysis of the site's natural and cultural attributes.

Our findings highlight the need for systematic and holistic assessments of heritage site attributes and values, crucial for managing sites of both local and global significance. This approach is a key to understanding their identity, guiding interpretation, management and preserving cultural significance.

Developed for Ghadames, the methodology requires adaptation for other sites, underscoring the importance of identifying core tangible and intangible attributes that define a site's uniqueness.

Our developed methodology offers a replicable framework that can be modified by local heritage professionals to map attributes and assess the direct and indirect impact of conflict on heritage sites.

The detailed assessment provides a foundation for crafting informed policies and effective management strategies. It specifically targets minimizing the adverse effects of conflict on heritage sites' attributes. This effort is instrumental in preparing the necessary documentation to support the delisting of these sites from the UNESCO World Heritage Site In-Danger List, promoting their preservation and recovery.

Supporting distant teams is a frequent phenomenon. Through the lens of the social identity theory, this research aims to examine differences between local and distant fans regarding drivers of team identification.

A multigroup structural equation model was employed. The data were collected through an online survey with 1,285 sports fans.

Team distinctiveness constitutes an important aspect fueling identification for all fans, whereas congruence between own and team personality is important for local and displaced fans only. Team prestige does not impact identification for either group.

To build up a base of highly identified supporters, clubs should emphasize those aspects of team brands that fans consider distinctive. When targeting local fans, clubs should also focus on communicating the brand's unique personality aspects.

This is the first study that assesses the potential differences behind fans' social identification with local and distant teams.

In this paper, the authors empirically and theoretically analyze the scaling and control of talent development to highlight an important part of commercialization in football clubs, especially in the light of a growing transfer market.

Conducting a single case study of a Swedish football club, the authors adapt a view of the club as a “high-intensity” organization (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2004), one that inherently relies on strong identification of employees and the fostering of talent. This view allows us to detail the importance of both socio-ideological and technocratic forms of control involved in the talent development process.

The authors show how socio-ideological and technocratic forms of control were combined to establish the football club as a “talent factory” in the league, as well as the corresponding challenges when scaling talent development activities and how these challenges were handled. In doing so, the authors contribute to the broader accounting literature on talent- and human resource management, as the authors provide an example of how football clubs may commercialize without necessarily violating their fundamental sports values.

Talent management has mainly been studied in terms of increasing player wages and a focus on the cost of talent. As opposed to these perspectives, the authors highlight the revenue potential in developing players in the light of a growing transfer market and the relevance of talent development for the commercialization of football clubs.

This study aims to contribute to the field of customer portfolio management by proposing a novel approach rooted in dialectic critical realism (DCR). DCR, as an ontological theory, enables a fundamental reimagining of customer portfolio management as a dialectic process. The conceptualized dialectic portfolio management is motivated by the concept of “absence”, akin to Hegelian “antithesis”, which highlights limitations, problems and tensions in portfolio management. In essence, “absence” serves as a diagnostic tool that directs portfolio actions towards resolving problems by pursuing a more comprehensive “totality”, similar to the Hegelian notion of “synthesis”.

This conceptual paper theorizes DCR in business marketing and customer portfolio management.

DCR conceptualizes customer portfolios as relational structures characterized by omissions and tensions. These issues are addressed through a dialectic synthesis aimed at achieving a more comprehensive “totality”. Consequently, DCR guides portfolio management to continually re-think the connections and distinctions that define a portfolio within its network context. This dialectic process is facilitated by a novel vocabulary that enhances the understanding of network and portfolio relations, incorporating concepts such as “intrapermeations”, “existential constitutions”, “intra-connections” and “intensive” and “extensive” portfolio practices.

This study aims to foster a fresh and process-oriented perspective on portfolio management, drawing inspiration from the growing demand for enriched dialectic theorizing within the realm of business marketing. The adoption of a dialectic process orientation based on DCR revolutionizes the comprehension of portfolio management by fundamentally reimagining the underlying ontological assumptions that underpin the existing body of literature on customer portfolios. Moreover, DCR asserts that ethical considerations are inextricably linked to human experiences and associated practices, emphasizing ethics as an integral component of customer portfolio management.

This paper aims to critically examine the accounting and information systems literature to understand the changes that are occurring in the management accounting profession. The changes the authors are interested in are linked to technology-driven innovations in managerial decision-making and in organizational structures. In addition, the paper highlights research gaps and opportunities for future research.

The authors adopted a grounded theory literature review method (Wolfswinkel et al., 2013) to achieve the study’s aims.

The authors identified four research themes that describe the changes in the management accounting profession due to technology-driven innovations: structured vs unstructured data, human vs algorithm-driven decision-making, delineated vs blurred functional boundaries and hierarchical vs platform-based organizations. The authors also identified tensions mentioned in the literature for each research theme.

Previous studies display a rather narrow focus on the role of digital technologies in accounting work and new competences that management accountants require in the digital era. By contrast, the authors focus on the broader technology-driven shifts in organizational processes and structures, which vastly change how accounting information is collected, processed and analyzed internally to support managerial decision-making. Hence, the paper focuses on how management accountants can adapt and evolve as their organizations transition toward a digital environment.