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The purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge claim of management accounting research using qualitative research methods, in particular, the interpretive case study, and its evaluation using “convincingness” criteria demonstrating the textual authenticity, plausibility and criticality of case study findings.

Qualitative research in the management accounting field considers both context and function (Burchell et al., 1980). This study sets out the rationale for adopting qualitative methodologies such as interpretive case studies in which rich, contextual and detailed data were collected and analyzed (Miles and Huberman, 1994; Mason, 2002). Methodological issues related to research design, analysis and evaluation are discussed by drawing on frameworks of social science research design. The paper sets out the procedures of an interpretive case study essential to ensuring the procedural validity of research which can be evaluated more accurately using the criteria of “convincingness” rather than positivist measures of the reliability, validity of data and the generalization of results. Textual authenticity, plausibility and critical interpretation, and how these hallmarks of “convincingness” can reflect the procedural validity of accounting research are described.

Qualitative research strategies such as the interpretive case study, which consider the complex settings of accounting change and practice, are found to offer deep understandings and convincing explanations of accounting change. Affirming that accounting is firmly established as a social science, the paper finds that the authenticity, plausibility and criticality of research in this field.

The relevance of qualitative research to contemporary accounting research is considered as an effective method to explicate theory and inform practice, which suggests that new measures to evaluate related research are required to develop the potential of selected qualitative research methodologies in accounting domains.

Qualitative research in management accounting focuses on the interpretation of meanings found in people and organizations that are subject to the influence of contextual variables. Human attributes underpin accounting conventions and change resulting from continuous technological and regulatory advances. This paper’s comprehensive account of interpretive case study research emphasizes the significance of evaluative criteria that relate, beyond reliability, to the richness of the text. This, thus, encourages and supports new and emerging researchers to seek qualitatively coherent and critical interpretations in management accounting research.

The aim of this paper is to assess and explain the role of grounded theory (GT) in interpretive management accounting research (IMAR) and seeks to answer the question: can interpretive researchers use GT? And if so, how?

This is a theoretical paper that attempts to investigate how researchers can use GT in relation to their ontological stance, methodological position and research methods.

The paper suggests that GT offers a balance between the expediency of the research findings, thereby allowing researchers freedom to interpret management accounting practices, and the development of rigorous theory from IMAR.

The paper provides an analysis of GT from an interpretive perspective and, clearly, there are other research perspectives which could have been discussed.

GT can be a powerful tool that researchers could use to collect and analyse empirical data. However, researchers need to align GT with the broader paradigm they adopt when researching social phenomena. The paper provides some general guidelines for IMARs who want to use GT in their research.

This paper shows that GT can offer interpretive researchers a way of balancing the need to develop theory, which is grounded in everyday practices, and the recognition that the research process is inherently subjective. However, it is argued that in interpretive research GT cannot provide a simple “recipe book” which, if followed rigorously, will result in a high‐quality research (i.e. valid, reliable and unbiased). Nevertheless, the guidelines provide a way for IMARs, who use GT to improve the quality of their research findings.

This chapter explains the research design. An interpretive methodology was considered most suitable for the study. Informed by an institutional framework, the interpretive methodology was selected for this monograph for its strengths of focusing on the research context, interactive processes, and meanings that are not measurable by quantitative approach. The interpretive methodology is also consistent with the ontological and epistemological positions of the researchers. Data were collected from interviewing four groups of key persons and a document survey. The data triangulation and multiple perspectives helped increase the reliability and validity of the study. Also, conducting data collection in a natural setting produced a rich data source. This enabled the provision of an enhanced understanding of the operation and effectiveness of corporate governance and financial reporting practice in a real setting. In addition, the systematic set of data analysis procedures helped improve research rigor and develop conceptual and theoretical understanding of issues of interest.

In recent years, there has been a growing desire to more fully integrate informants into the overall research process. In response to this trend, the purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the usage and outcomes of the member checking technique for enabling more participatory interpretive research practices. Information systems (IS) research has utilized this technique, but it has not yet undergone a thorough analysis in this context. Additionally, interpretive IS research is in need of means and tools for engaging with informants during the data analysis and interpretation process.

The data for this study originated from an inquiry into the position of usability work within its cultural context, and this study has adopted a hermeneutic lens to make sense of the member checking technique, which positions informants as co-analysts and co-interpreters to make sense of both their organizational realities and researchers’ interpretations of those realities.

The analysis shows that during the research process, the informants reproduced, questioned, and cultivated the researcher-crafted texts that they were given to interpret, both individually and collaboratively. The study shows that member checking contributes to fulfilling the criteria set for interpretive IS research in a variety of ways.

The study contributes to interpretive IS research method practice by offering IS researchers insights into and guidelines on the usage and potential outcomes of the member checking technique.

The examination of the member checking technique through a hermeneutic lens is a novel approach. For IS research, the study explicates the usages and outcomes of member checking in more participatory interpretive research practice. Also novel in this study is that member checking is examined as a collective endeavor.

Methodological pluralism in consumer research is usually confined to post‐positivist interpretive approaches. Argues, however, that a positivistic stance, radical behaviourism, can enrich epistemological debate among researchers with the recognition of radical behaviourism′s ultimate reliance on interpretation as well as science. Although radical behaviourist explanation was initially founded on Machian positivism, its account of complex social behaviours such as purchase and consumption is necessarily interpretive, inviting comparison with the hermeneutical approaches currently emerging in consumer research. Radical behaviourist interpretation attributes meaning to behaviour by identifying its environmental determinants, especially the learning history of the individual in relation to the consequences similar prior behaviour has effected. The nature of such interpretation is demonstrated for purchase and consumption responses by means of a critique of radical behaviourism as applied to complex human activity. In the process, develops and applies a framework for radical behaviourist interpretation of purchase and consumption to four operant equifinality classes of consumer behaviour: accomplishment, pleasure, accumulation and maintenance. Some epistemological implications of this framework, the behavioural perspective model (BPM) of purchase and consumption, are discussed in the context of the relativity and incommensurability of research paradigms. Finally, evaluates the interpretive approach, particularly in terms of its relevance to the nature and understanding of managerial marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the contents of the special issue and to clarify and extend conceptual and managerial debates concerning interpretive consumer research (ICR).

A discursive approach is adopted. The arguments are supported by quotes from authoritative publications in the field.

Researching the consumer has progressed far beyond the research for managerial implications and has become a major focus for the social sciences. In the field of qualitative market research, interpretive approaches to studying consumer behaviour are playing an increasing role. However, the economic and psychological heritage of consumer behaviour impedes appreciation of their aims, analytic logics, and methodological contributions. Ten issues about ICR are detailed in order to provide an integrative overview of what ICR is or is not.

Provides an insider's view and serves as a useful overview of debates and developments in the field.

Activities on direct value chain directly add value to the products/services delivered to the customers. This value addition can be further enhanced by taking up flexibility initiatives on these direct value chain activities. The purpose of this paper is to identify flexibility initiatives on the direct value chain and carry out their valuation.

Since different value addition criteria (i.e. benefits and costs) may be both tangible and intangible, an interpretive valuation based on multi-criteria framework would be desirable. The paper deploys the efficient interpretive ranking process (IRP) for this purpose. It uses total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to derive weights of criteria based on their respective driving power. The paper also makes a methodological contribution to assess transitive dominance in IRP based on transitivity check as used in the modified TISM process.

The paper uses a multi-criteria valuation to examine the proposition that the flexibility initiatives will add a higher value as we go downstream in the value chain. The flexibility initiatives linked with marketing such as product upgradation and switching, customized services and dynamic pricing are found to be most value adding in character.

The main limitation of this study is that it is generic in nature and need to be replicated in multiple case situations. The methodology proposed can be utilized for specific case analysis for flexibility valuation on the direct value chain.

The practitioners may be able to use the proposed method of TISM–IRP with improvements in real-life applications. The proposed multi-criteria valuation is interpretive in nature and can be utilized by practicing managers in group settings even if they do not have complete data.

The strategy and operations researchers will find promise in the methodology to investigate and prioritize the initiatives planned to enhance flexibility in different value chain activities. The researchers on multi-criteria decision making will find the methodological enhancement proposed in terms of graphically deriving the transitive dominance to be useful in other applications as well.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for understanding how alliance partners interpret alliance functioning and how these interpretations shape their subsequent behaviors. Also, to discuss how interpretive schemes in cross‐national strategic alliances impact upon the management of the problems arising from the cultural conflicts and discrepancies inherent in such alliances.

Proceeding from the notion that interpretive schemes have important implications for the evolution of cross‐national alliances, the paper describes the two fundamental interpretive schemes that relate to sensemaking – that of sensemaking of and in chaos, and examines how an appreciation of these interpretive schemes enable us to better manage cultural conflicts and discrepancies that inevitably arise in cross‐national alliances.

The framework makes clear that the two types of interpretive schemes − “sensemaking of chaos” and “sensemaking in chaos” − need to be appreciated as interpretive frames that are present among the alliance managers to effectively interact and influence partner firms.

Briefly, the two types of the interpretive schemes call for different strategies for developing them. Alliance partners embedded in different national cultures rely on interpretive schemes to make sense of the conflicts and discrepancies that emerge in cross‐national alliances.

The paper responds to the need of managers with alliance responsibilities for a framework to help develop the most effective ways of managing interpretive schemes in alliances for productive interactions and performance.

Researchers have studied processes of improving road traffic-safety culture by explicitly evaluating the socio-psychological phenomenon of traffic-risk. The implicit traffic-system cues play an important role in explaining urban traffic-culture. This paper aims to ascertain an interpretive framework of the alternative processes of road traffic safety culture is antecedent to promote traffic-safety behaviour in Indian urban context. Subsequently, the authors discussed the reasons for those relationships exists.

Four experts of the urban traffic-safety domain participated in total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) study by completing an interpretive consensus-driven questionnaire. The drafted interpretive model was evaluated for road users proactive action orientation about the traffic-safety decision.

The evolved directed graph (digraph) of the culture of urban traffic-safety management was a serial three-mediator model. The model argued: In the presence of traffic-risk cues, people may become apprised to safety goals that initiate traffic-safety action. Consequently, expectancy-value evaluation motivates the continuation of traffic-safety intention that may lead to the implementation of adaptation plan (volitional control), thus habituating road users to traffic-safety management choice.

The modellers of traffic psychology may empirically estimate and test for the quality criteria to ascertain the applicability of the proposed mechanism of urban traffic-safety culture. The decision-makers should note the importance of arousal of emotions regarding traffic-risk, reduce the impact of maladaptive motivations and recursively improve control over safety actions for promoting safety interventions.

The authors attempted to induce an interpretive model of urban traffic-safety culture that might augment extant discussion regarding how and why people behave in an urban traffic system.

Examines the process of change in hospitals that has emerged following the introduction of the health quasi‐market in 1991. Blends empirical evidence with Greenwood and Hinings’ archetype and tracks of change concepts to analyse the process which is labelled quasi‐market transformation (QMT). Argues that, before 1991, hospitals tended to operate within structures and systems underpinned by an interpretive scheme. Represents these similarities of configuration as the directly‐managed (DM) hospital archetype. When change initiatives challenged this configuration, the outcomes were negotiated and resulted in “adjustmental” change. In contrast, shows the introduction of the quasi‐market to have involved the first transformation of the DM archetype’s interpretive scheme, systems and structures. Analyses four years of transition to reveal that QMT has been interpreted differently within hospitals. However, presents data to suggest that many hospitals now display significant similarities in terms of configuration. Represents these similarities within the emerging Trust hospital archetype.