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The purpose of this work is to test several incentive strategies for attaining new customers via electronic referrals, or e‐referrals. The paper aims to examine: the roles of both the magnitude of the incentive offered to the sender and the magnitude of the incentive offered to the receiver; and the effect of equity versus inequity of financial incentives for the two parties.

The study consisted of a large‐scale field experiment conducted with 45,000 members of an online mall. The participants were divided into eight conditions in an incomplete two‐factor 4×4 between‐subjects design, where not every combination of incentive magnitudes was utilized and the magnitude of the incentive offered the receiver and sender varied in size such that sometimes rewards were equal, sometimes receivers of the e‐referral had larger rewards, and sometimes senders of the e‐referral s received more. Dependent measures included the number of e‐referrals sent, the number of those e‐referrals that lead to a new customer registering, and the number of new registrants that converted to buyers from completing a purchase.

The results demonstrate that both the magnitude of financial incentives, and the relative magnitude of the incentives for the senders and receivers both influence e‐referral rates. Specifically, it was found that offering higher incentives to senders and receivers led to an increase in referral invitations sent, new member sign‐ups and new buyers. It was also found that the disparity between incentives offered to senders and receivers affected e‐referral rates and that inequity should favor the sender to enhance results.

This paper offers marketers valuable insights as to how different combinations of financial incentives to receivers and senders can affect e‐referral rates. The findings suggest that potential referrers respond not only to referral incentives but also to the disparity between their incentives and the receivers' incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how to apply the abductive research process for developing a theoretical explanation in studies on performance management and management control systems. This is important because theoretically ambitious research tends to require explanatory study outcomes, but prior research frameworks provide little guidance in this regard, potentially facilitating ill-defined research designs and a lack of common vocabulary and criteria for evaluating studies.

The authors introduce a methodological framework that distinguishes three interwoven theoretical abstraction levels: descriptive, analytical and explanatory. They use a recently published qualitative field study to illustrate an application of the framework.

The framework and its illustrated application make the systematic logic of the abductive research process visible and accessible to researchers. The authors explain how the framework supports moving from empirical description to theoretical explanation during the research process and where the three levels might open spaces for the positioning of novel practices and conceptual and theoretical innovations.

The framework provides guidance for an explanatory research design and theory-building purpose and has been developed in response to recent criticism in the field that highlights the wide gap between leading-edge practice and the lagging state of theory. It offers interdisciplinary vocabulary and evaluation criteria that can be applied by any accounting and management researcher regardless of whether they pursue critical, interpretive or positivist research and whether they primarily use qualitative or quantitative research methods.

This paper aims to examine the mobilization of management accounting (MA) numbers and metrics in social interactions. The purpose is to develop a model of how and why managers perceive and mobilize (new) MA numbers/metrics in a changing way over time in situated face-to-face interactions.

An observation-based qualitative field study of a change project in a large manufacturing company is used as the basis for our analysis.

The empirical study shows that MA numbers and metrics are essential when semi-distant managers strive to solve problems and achieve radical improvement targets, but that the ways in which existing and new metrics are perceived and mobilized during face-to-face interactions change over time. The study provides both a detailed account of the emergent nature of the transformation process and a number of mechanisms as to why managers (inter-)act the way they do to produce such change.

The paper problematizes the generally held view that MA numbers and metrics primarily work as a structuring device in face-to-face interactions, and also, how the processes are constituted through which MA is transformed into such a structuring device. The paper also adds new insights to our understandings of why managers (inter-)act the way they do to produce MA change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in management accounting change processes and outcomes.

The paper draws on an ethnographic study in a Southern European company and mobilizes leader–follower relations as a method theory to analyse the observations.

The findings show how a leadership dispute between two top managers can be amplified during the management accounting change process and percolate throughout an organization. The authors identify five contested areas where the role of accounting amplifies the leadership dispute by unfolding its reach to other organizational actors. The leadership dispute can shape and reinforce a fragmented organization, with some organizational members creating convergent leader–follower relations while others divert and fragment with an increased turnover. This amplification can lead to unexpected outcomes of the change process in terms of how and by whom accounting is performed.

The authors propose the study of leadership and followership as an important but, to date, largely neglected theme in management accounting research.

In contrast to the prior management accounting literature, the paper departs from a leadership-centric and role-based approach and employs a co-constructionist and relational approach to leadership and followership to analyse management accounting change. In addition, it applies and extends Alvesson's (2019a) theory on “divergent relationalities” between the presumed leaders and followers. In doing so, the paper also adds to the leadership field by theorizing and integrating the situation of a leadership dispute in this novel theoretical framework.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.

Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.

The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.

Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how evolving ideas about management control (MC) emerge in research about public sector performance management (PSPM).

This is a literature review on PSPM research through using a set of key terms derived from a review of recent developments in MC.

MC research, originating in the management accounting discipline, is largely disconnected from PSPM research as part of public administration and public management disciplines. Overlaps between MC and PSPM research are visible in a cybernetic control approach, control variety and contingency-based reasoning. Both academic communities share an understanding of certain issues, although under diverging labels, especially enabling controls or, in a more general sense, usable performance controls, horizontal controls and control packaging. Specific MC concepts are valuable for future PSPM research, i.e. trust as a complement of performance-based controls in complex settings, and strategy as a variable in contingency-based studies.

Breaking the boundaries between two currently remote research disciplines, on the one hand, might dismantle “would-be” innovations in one of these disciplines, and, on the other hand, may provide a fertile soil for mutual transfer of knowledge. A limitation of the authors’ review of PSPM research is that it may insufficiently cover research published in the public sector accounting journals, which could be an outlet for MC-inspired PSPM research.

The paper unravels the “apparent” and “real” differences between MC and PSPM research, and, in doing so, takes the detected “real” differences as a starting point for discussing in what ways PSPM research can benefit from MC achievements.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the role of the performativity theory for understanding how the calculative instruments of accounting provoke innovation and participate in the generation of values by activating processes that pervade everything rather than being limited to categorical spaces.

The paper draws on Judith Butler’s work and her notion of excitability to explain how multiple values may arise when accounting interacts with innovation. Through this lens, accounting, as a language based on signs, can be theorised as an ex-citable force involved in provoking and transforming innovation and its associated values, notably beyond innovators’ initial intentions. Thus, innovation is not a stable object but a pervasive movement diffusing multiple values.

By introducing the notion of pervasiveness, the paper argues that even if values can be imagined ab origine, they may not be contractible to a plan. The calculative instruments of accounting provoke innovation and participate in the generation of value(s) by activating processes that pervade everything rather than being limited to categorical spaces. In the course of this pervasive process, innovations, which are born to develop private interests, can possibly generate public goods.

The notion of pervasiveness the paper advances is used to challenge the division between business and social innovation. It well expresses the effects that ex-citable calculative practices put in place when interacting with innovation. It suggests that it is only possible to create productions – to assemble things – in ongoing processes, and the value(s) produced in such movements are always evolving and multiple. However, in this sense, they are social.

The purpose of this study is to characterise types of practices – or “routings” as they are denoted in this paper – that have been developed to incorporate non-financial inscriptions, representing value-in-kind (VIK) sponsorship resources, into accounting systems.

This study adopts field-based research, utilising Latour's (1999) concept of “circulating reference”, to illustrate how VIK (non-cash) resources were managed in an Australian sporting organization.

This paper contributes to our understanding of: first, how accounting infrastructure is constituted and stabilised by a network of multiple and overlapping accounting practices; second, how VIK resources are allocated and managed via local practices; and third, the importance of “budget relief” as a method of valuation in accounting practice.

Our paper has implications for understanding how financial and non-financial accounting inscriptions are related in practice, requiring both integration and separation within networks of multiple and overlapping routings of accounting practices.

Our work highlights previously unexplored accounting practices, which assist in the process of utilizing VIK resources in the context of a sporting organization.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how practical relevance of management accounting knowledge relates to research paradigms and theoretical pluralism.

The paper is conceptual in nature.

As the management accounting discipline is considered to be an applied discipline, a number of authors claim that management accounting research should develop relevant theory that can be used in practice. This call for increased practical relevance of management accounting knowledge interrelates with a debate on the desirability of theoretical pluralism and paradigm diversity in management accounting research. Drawing on the work of Nicolai and Seidl, the paper distinguishes different forms of practical relevance, and analyses the effects of theoretical pluralism on these different forms. The paper argues how theoretical pluralism particularly enhances relevance in a conceptual sense rather than an instrumental sense. The conceptual relevance of research may further be enhanced by interpretive research that acknowledges complexity and that has the potential to challenge the performativity of mainstream management accounting knowledge, without challenging the pursuit of efficiency as such. This is different from critical research. The instrumental relevance stemming from mainstream management accounting research entails de‐contextualization and simplification, and might create unintended self‐fulfilling prophecies.

The paper broadens the concept of relevance so that it includes conceptual relevance and legitimative relevance. It links these concepts of relevance to three research paradigms: a mainstream paradigm, an interpretive paradigm and a critical paradigm. For each paradigm, relevance is related to the use of theory.

The paper broadens the concept of relevance and advocates the pursuit of conceptual relevance, particularly through interpretive research.

The purpose of this study is to provide explanations for the factors affecting sustainability disclosures by a local coastal shire council in Australia. Drawing on the theory of accountability, a further aim is to examine how this information is communicated to stakeholders.

A qualitative and case study approach is adopted for this investigation. The main sources of empirical data are semi‐structured interviews with the senior managers of the council, observation and the use of publicly available documentation.

Significant issues relating specifically to this council were identified as managing population growth, planning for land use, climate change and community engagement. These issues were addressed through various forums such as the annual report, a sustainability report and through community engagement meetings. There was also little evidence to suggest that the global reporting initiative is influencing how the local council was accounting for its social and environmental activities.

Coastal regions are fragile areas that are subjected to varying degrees of pressure on their environment. This study suggests that community demand for information on sustainability is commencing to change the content of the council's annual report.

Much attention has been paid to the role and extent of sustainability reporting in the private sector, however, less research has been devoted to investigating this area in the realm of the government sector.