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This paper aims to investigate the role of value measuring (VM) as an integrated part of a deal introduced to govern the cross-boundary relationship of state specialist- and primary care providers in the Norwegian health sector.

Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic case study, this study explores the role of payment for dischargeable patients (PDP), an incentive arrangement introduced as a mechanism of value appropriation intended to create stability in the relationship and support improved patient flows between care providers. The fieldwork took place over approximately 18 months, consisting of intensive participant observations, interviews and document studies.

The VM integrated in the PDP deal between the hospital and municipality, on the surface level, appears simple. The VM, however, rests on a very complex practice of information sharing where accounts on patient status, procedures and activities form the basis of the integrated VM. The deal and its VM, despite its ambitious aims, were not able to fulfill the expectations of a smooth appropriation of value through the management of monetary flows or supporting information sharing for value creation. The VM of the PDP deal aimed at bringing the parties closer together, rather created a distance where money matters became a source of tension.

This study investigates the interconnections of deals and VM in a public sector service context, showing aspects of deals different from that of prior studies into private sector deals.

The purpose of this paper is to review the Nordic research on accounting in inter-organizational relationships (IORs) and relates the Nordic contributions to the international literature. Additionally, it examines alternative approaches to the understanding of accounting in IORs and proposes some directions for future research.

Thirty-one papers were identified and assessed in terms of their topic, inter-organizational setting, theoretical approach, research methods and results. This study followed a six-step process from formulating objectives, through establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria, to paper selection and mutual assessments.

The Nordic literature presents a distinct approach to the understanding of accounting in IORs. The Nordic studies are characterized by theoretical pluralism, in-depth case studies and an interest towards micro-processes in a variety of inter-organizational settings and from the point of view of multiple parties.

The authors propose two specific areas of research: the interconnections between accounting measures, monetary flows and value creation as well as the role of accounting in creating stability and instability in IORs. These areas of research emphasize a stronger engagement with the core issues of managing appropriation and cooperation concerns and provide an outlook for novel insights into classical issues and increased integration within the field.

This paper studies how accounting information is used by actors in an innovation process. It investigates how accounting information influences and is influenced by the different actors. The purpose of this paper is to develop a more thorough understanding of the role of accounting in making the choices that form temporary solutions.

An in-depth case study of the development of a standard software release within the telecom industry.

This study has shown that accounting was a key ingredient when temporary solutions were formed in the innovation processes. Actors used accounting to stabilize the content of the release in the formation of the gate documents and used accounting to destabilize the content between the temporary solutions. It is difficult to evaluate whether the use of accounting improved or harmed the innovation. Further, the study also revealed that the use of accounting influenced and was influenced by previous and prospective future deals. This put new challenges on the use of accounting because it involved negotiation processes that influenced the accounting figures.

The findings provide insights into the procedures for finding temporary solutions in the innovation process and the role of accounting in these procedures.

This paper contributes by providing a more thorough understanding of the role of accounting regarding the choices that comprise the temporary solutions within the innovation process. In addition, it shows how accounting has a critical role both for settling on and modifying temporary solutions. Hence, the research demonstrated how studies of the role of accounting in innovation processes can contribute to the industrial network approach by giving a more thorough understanding of network dynamics and the process of attaining stability and instability in business networks.

The purpose of this paper is to report the outcome of an interdisciplinary discussion on the concepts of profit and profitability and various ways in which we could potentially problematize these concepts. It is our hope that a much greater attention or reconsideration of the problematization of profit and related accounting numbers will be fostered in part by the exchanges we include here.

This paper adopts an interdisciplinary discussion approach and brings into conversation ideas and views of several scholars on problematizing profit and profitability in various contexts and explores potential implications of such problematization.

Profit and profitability measures make invisible the collective endeavour of people who work hard (backstage) to achieve a desired profit level for a division and/or an organization. Profit tends to preclude the social process of debate around contradictions among the ends and means of collective activity. An inherent message that we can discern from our contributors is the typical failure of managers to appreciate the value of critical theory and interpretive research for them. Practitioners and positivist researchers seem to be so influenced by neo-liberal economic ideas that organizations are distrusted and at times reviled in their attachment to profit.

Problematizing opens-up the potential for interesting and significant theoretical insights. A much greater pragmatic and theoretical reconsideration of profit and profitability will be fostered by the exchanges we include here.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the research community focussing on problematizing profit and profitability in various settings. The discussion perspectives offered in this paper provides not only a basis for further research in this critical area of discourse and regulation on the role and status of profit and profitability but also emancipatory potential for practitioners (to be reflective of their practices and their undesired consequences of such practices) whose overarching focus is on these accounting numbers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how actors take on and ascribe the role of accountor and constituent in the process of giving and demanding of reasons for organisational conduct.

The on-going interactions in supervision meetings between the supplier of outsourced elderly care in Sweden and a local government administration were examined through a longitudinal study.

The paper proposes the concept of role attribution to characterise a strategy for handling complexity in public sector accountability processes. This complements previous research, which has described three main strategies for handling competing accountability demands: decoupling, structural differentiation and compromising. Role attribution was found to involve the supplier and purchaser of public services pursuing a specific resolution to an accountability demand by positioning themselves as jointly aligned with certain prospective constituents in the environment. Thus, while inter-organisational relationships can be a source of complexity for accountors, as already documented in prior research, the findings of this paper show ways in which the dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles can serve as a resource. The two organisations moved back and forth between cooperating to handle accountability demands from actors in the environment and assuming different accountor and constituent roles within their relationship.

The paper discusses the need to move beyond the taken-for-granted roles of accountor and constituent in analysing outsourced public service relationships. Specifically, the findings suggest that researchers interested in public sector accountability processes would benefit from designing their studies in ways that makes it possible to observe and theorise dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles.

The studied supervision meetings served as an arena where on-going accountability issues played out and were mediated through role attribution. Seemingly, there are possibilities to complement formal role descriptions and contracts with systematic processes for addressing on-going operational accountability issues within and beyond individual, formalised accountor–constituent relationships. From a societal perspective, it might be relevant to mandate more systematic procedural structures to support on-going accountability processes, for example, the creation and maintenance of interactive inter-organisational forums which can serve as a mechanism for systematic, yet situation-specific, handling of operational and strategic issues. At an organisational level, this paper shows a need that such forums merit on-going managerial attention and conscious staffing to secure both competence and stability.

The authors find a dynamic and situation-specific attribution of accountor and constituent roles, in contrast to prior research’s routine consideration of these roles as being predetermined by existing relationships of hierarchy and influence.

A highly relevant issue for management is the measurement and appropriation of jointly created value. The existence of relationships is challenging for accounting and for the sharing and appropriation of values. Interdependences that characterise business relationships make value measurement and appropriation problematic. Yet, measuring value is important for orienting managers’ behaviours, and it affects the solutions implemented in business relationships on which value creation and appropriation depend. Values are created in relationships because resources are combined through relationships. Defining clear boundaries is important to produce measurements, but setting boundaries in interdependent relationships and networks is always problematic, and to some extent, arbitrary.

Business relationships have a number of soft and multiple effects that are difficult to measure and consequently difficult to divide among the involved business actors creating specific appropriation problems. An interesting development is underway as companies attempt to develop special tools for handling these problems.