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The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective discourse about a particular interventionist research project utilising a critical framework.

The paper uses Alvesson and Deetz's tasks of critical research to analyse the application of interventionist research methodology and address the issues of access, data collection and ethnographical concerns.

Access issues are expanded to consider the concerns of the researcher and the researched. Interventionist research needs to develop a methodological approach moving beyond the concept of triangulation and to develop the concept of “catalytical” processes, expanding the emic and etic functions of interventionist research. The paper identifies that skills of the researched and the researcher need to be developed and recognises that the skills required are different to those currently possessed by academic researchers.

The paper examines only a single application of an interventionist research project conducted over a short period of time with a specific outcome in mind.

This paper provides a discussion of a working example of an interventionist research project and highlights to researchers and practitioners some of the advantages and disadvantages of undertaking such an approach to solving organisational problems.

The reflective critical discourse as outlined in this paper contributes to the practice of interventionist research by opening up further the discussion of how it can be implemented in practice and what are some of the considerations from both the perspective of practice and the skills base of the participants.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction and overview of the various papers in this special issue.

A short discussion of the main quests of interventionist research and how these are related to the papers in this special issue, is undertaken.

The essence of interventionist research is its methodological location, researching where practice and theory meet.

Interventionist research places strong demands on the individual researcher's interpretative, social, and abstracting skills in order to carry observations to ontological and epistemological levels.

Interventionist research is rich in research designs and specific intervention types. Selecting the “right” one is strongly related to the connection the researcher makes with the social context she/he will operate in. Changes over time in both design and intervention can be expected, given the dynamic, longitudinal and interactive nature of interventionist research.

This special issue provides examples of a varied set of interventionist research situations, including the selection of typical intervention methods and how knowledge contributions were extracted.

Although management accounting tools and techniques are developed to solve practical problems in organizations, there is a lot of criticism of management accounting research for not having an impact on practice. In interventionist research, the “shaping” of an intervention to solve a practical problem is an important step. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the findings of management accounting research can be reviewed to make them practically applicable in shaping an intervention.

The paper is based on the author’s experiences with an interventionist research project.

Systematic literature reviews, which are common in engineering and medicine, bring together the academic knowledge that can contribute to solutions for a specific practical problem, including a definition of the ways in which this knowledge can be applied. Inspired by the methodology for conducting such reviews, this paper proposes how interventionist management accounting researchers can use existing theoretical knowledge in shaping interventions that aim to solve a practical problem. After an intervention, the analysis of the intervention’s unforeseen effects can provide a basis for the refinement of the theory identified in the literature review.

Such a literature review can be organized according to four approaches to taking theoretical knowledge into practice. Unforeseen effects of the intervention can guide the selection of additional theory that helps to interpret these effects and refine normative and academic theory.

In management accounting it is uncommon to review the literature with the aim of shaping a solution for a practical problem. This paper explores how literature reviews that focus on a specific practical problem can contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the approaches to consumer protection in UK financial services before and after the global financial crisis.

This paper reviews the literature on behavioural economics and psychology, and uses it as the basis for a critique of the UK's approach to the supervision of financial services firms and the protection of their consumers.

Non‐interventionist approaches to consumer protection, which are based on the traditional theories of the law and economics movement, have failed. As a result, there is now a shift in thinking towards more interventionist approaches.

By understanding the likely impact of the regulatory reforms the academic research community can assist the regulator to understand the best way to ensure desirable outcomes for users (consumers) of financial services.

The moves to reform UK financial regulation after the crisis have only recently got under way and a lot of the reforms have not been widely debated or written on.

Dynamic assessment in the educational setting has been shown to offer many benefits for students with speech and language disorders. This chapter highlights the benefits of dynamic assessment and describes the limitations of static assessments. Because dynamic assessment can be implemented in many ways, three scenarios have been designed to provide an overview of some of these variations. Scenario 1 includes a graduated prompt approach for assessing abilities in the production of speech sounds using a standardized dynamic assessment. Scenario 2 includes a graduated prompt approach for assessing the linguistic skills underlying spelling errors. Scenario 3 includes a test-teach-retest approach for determining the presence of language impairment in students who speak a nonmainstream dialect of English. Suggestions for goal setting and increasing dynamic assessment applications for students with speech and language disorders are presented.

This paper aims to propose an interventionist research model for cost measurement in small manufacturing companies.

The study was based on an interventionist model that consisted of two phases – training and intervention. The innovative model used in the study combined Labro and Tuomela’s (2003) framework with the socialization, externalization, combination and internalization model developed by Nonaka et al. (2001), and it was subsequently applied to two Brazilian manufacturing companies.

The main findings were as follows: the training phase is the one that generated the greatest impact on the cost calculation; competitors should not be invited to participate in the same program; it is necessary for the researchers to have professional experience of the subject being investigated and to have experience of micro and small enterprises; the training phase must be presented using appropriate language; and a better understanding of the costs can increase entrepreneurs’ confidence when negotiating prices with clients.

The main limitation was the small number of companies that were included in the study. Future research could involve longitudinal studies to evaluate the long-term results of interventionist studies.

The study showed that even small business owners can implement costing techniques, but that this requires the development of an environment of knowledge creation, followed by an implementation phase. The model can be replicated on a large scale, with affordable costs.

Improving the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises, which are high employers, with low implementation cost is a demand of society.

The model proved to be valid, and it could easily be replicated on a larger scale; the study therefore helps to demonstrate the benefits of interventionist research.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand management accounting automation by exploring the programmability of management accounting work.

We build upon the literature on digitalization in management accounting and draw upon the pragmatic constructivist methodology to understand how digitalization takes place at the individual actors' level in accounting practice. The paper uses a data set from an interventionist case study of a machinery manufacturer.

We examine an actual process of automating management accounting tasks. During this development process, surprisingly, calculation tasks remained more fit for humans than machines though, initially, they were thought to be programmable.

According to our findings, practitioners may interpret experts' nonprogrammable work tasks as programmable and seek to automate them. Only identifying the factual possibilities for automating accounting-related work can lead to automation-improved efficiency. Our findings can be increasingly relevant for advanced analytics initiatives and applications within management accounting (e.g. robotic process automation, big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence).

Practitioners need to carefully analyze the entity they wish to automate and understand the factual possibilities of using and maintaining the planned automatic system throughout its life cycle.

The paper shows that when processes are assessed from a distance, the nonprogrammable management accounting tasks and expertise can become misinterpreted as programmable, and the goal of automating them has little chance of success. It also shows possibilities for human accountants to remain relevant in comparison to machines and paves the way for further studies on advanced decision technologies in management accounting.

Believes that green accounting should be rendered open and accountable and be properly subject to a democratic process to avoid shrouding it in a mystifying expertise. Offers a timely and substantive contribution to the debate about how green accounting might be regulated. Believes the accounting profession will stop some distance short of recommending a substantive interventionist regulation. Feels that a voluntarist and market‐based stance is likely to be advocated or preferred. Makes out the case for a substantive interventionist form of regulation and points to the need in practice for something better than the status quo. Seeks to justify an interventionist stance in terms consistent with critical theory.

The purpose of this paper is to address the distinctive problems of interventionist research that originate from intervention in ongoing practices as opposed to the experiment's design of a theory‐relevant context.

The paper is an essay, based on arguments of mapping closely and understanding the work environment of the managers under study, and of re‐framing (or re‐education) practices.

The paper finds that the intervention is valued in terms of improved practice, as well as theoretical contribution.

Learning theories (organizational and individual) should be included in the toolbox as well as methods of observing ongoing practices.

Interventionist research changes the way organizations think about how they organize their work (the appellate case); learning theory impacts work organization very concretely.

Management itself is intervention in organizational work practices, intervention in management practices will be something akin to Argyris et al.'s second loop (or Rorty's abnormal discourse) learning, which can be understood as re‐framing (or re‐education) practices. The use of case narratives and storytelling as ways of data capture are of particular interest in that respect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the philosophical and practical compatibility of actor-network theory (ANT) and interventionist research (IVR) and search for explanations for their scant combined use. The scope of investigation is limited to accounting, management and organization studies (MOS), but the findings are believed to be applicable in other social sciences as well.

An analysis is conducted of accounting and MOS research in addition to interviewing eight accounting scholars who have applied IVR and/or ANT in their research.

A comparison of the philosophical and other features of ANT and IVR suggests that they should be relatively easily combinable in studies. Based on interview material, three types of barriers to combining ANT and IVR are identified: perceived epistemological incompatibility, fear of going native or losing neutrality and academic tribes. However, subsequent analysis indicates that none of these forms an insurmountable obstacle to the combination.

The combined application of ANT and IVR could benefit both IVR and ANT researchers in management accounting as it would enable them to conduct theoretically grounded studies on dynamic processes, such as the emergence and implementation of accounting innovations, to pose original research questions and to find new perspectives to accounting phenomena.

Employing ANT and IVR in combination could increase organizational interest in management accounting research.

The paper contributes to the discussion on the compatibility of different research approaches and highlights ways in which researchers could benefit from combining ANT and IVR.