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This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.

A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.

The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.

Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.

The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.

This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into the gap between management accounting professional’s role and the societal expectations of the management accounting professionals in Sri Lanka.

A quantitative research approach was adopted to identify the statistical gap of the management accountant’s role and society’s expectations. Four business sectors were selected from Colombo Stock Exchange as of 31 December 2018. Sample consisted of 160 entities; 480 questionnaires were distributed among three stakeholders (financial accountant/manager, management accountant and human resource manager). Out of the 228 responses received, only 171 responses were usable. Exhibiting an overall response rate of 35.6 per cent.

The role expectation of management accountants varies significantly across the selected business sectors in Sri Lanka. There is an increasing demand for contemporary management accounting skills in Sri Lanka.

The insights of this study would be of use to policy makers and policy implementers to examine and develop remedial measures to enhance the creditability and transparency of the management accounting profession in Sri Lanka. Academic and professional educational providers can identify future trends and necessary skills of management accounting to improve management accounting curriculum.

The evidence from this study contributes to the literature of societal importance of management accounting from a Sri Lankan perspective.

Academic interest in role changes of management accountants (MAs) has increased during the past two decades. Role changes imply identity reconstructions as they do not only require an external legitimacy, but professionals have to internalize a new role script. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing changes concerning MAs by providing an identity perspective.

This paper systematically reviews the literature on the changing role of MAs from an identity perspective, based on a conclusive sample of 64 articles.

This review identified several external factors such as professional associations and educational institutions as well as organizational and individual factors that impact MAs’ identity and act as change drivers. MAs’ identity is linked with their image in the public and within the organization and is challenged by increasing demands, conflicting expectations and technological progress. Hence, the literature sample illustrates a fragmented and contradictory picture regarding the changes of MAs’ identities and roles and displays that the idea of a simple movement from one identity to another is misleading. Furthermore, the identity perspective offers new issues for management accounting research, practice and education such as nested identity, multiple or desired identities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to review the literature of MAs’ changing identities and roles from an identity perspective. This perspective enables a novel focus on internal views, perceptions and internalized meanings of MAs connected with their role instead of exclusively debating changed external behavior expectations.

The plethora of changes in the corporate governance landscape over the past two decades has the potential to tighten governance regimes and influence the preference of supervisory board members vis-à-vis the involved decision-making role of business unit (BU) controllers and their independent fiduciary role. Stricter financial reporting and compliance requirements may lead organizations to prioritize the latter role. However, recent studies support the need to balance these roles, inducing the potential for role conflict. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the influence of a tight and loose governance regime on this balance as preferred by supervisory board members.

This study uses a unique data set from an experiment among 73 supervisory board members. The authors take their perspective because compliance with governance codes and corporate policies are relevant topics for their function.

The authors find evidence for the preference of supervisory board members for “all-round” BU controllers who, irrespective of the governance regime, demonstrate substantial levels of fiduciary and decision-making qualities and deal with the resulting role conflict.

The outcomes of the experiment among supervisory board members provide evidence for their preferences concerning the balance of the two primary controller roles and for the potential of role conflict. The authors have not found studies that provide such empirical evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of entrepreneurs’ social competence (SC) on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance.

Primary data of 250 manufacturing SMEs were collected through a survey method. The influence of SC on performance was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Overall, the findings suggest that SC dimensions have a positive influence on SME performance in terms of nonfinancial perspective. More clearly, the findings show that out of five dimensions of SC, which include social adaptability, social perception, social expressiveness, persuasiveness and impression management; social perception, persuasiveness and impression management have direct effect on customer perspective; persuasiveness, social expressiveness and social adaptability have a direct influence on internal business processes and social adaptability, social perception, impression management and social expressiveness are directly related with learning and growth. Contrary to expectations though, social perception and social adaptability were significantly and negatively associated with internal business processes and customer perspective, respectively, while there was no significant correlation between social expressiveness, persuasiveness and impression management with customer perspective, business processes and learning and growth in that order.

The current study affirms that SMEs managed by entrepreneurs and managers who possess high levels of SC, may have a better performance compared to those operated by entrepreneurs with low levels of SC. This justifies a need for SME entrepreneurs and managers to work hard to improve their SC capabilities.

This study is pertinent and unique because, it extensively examines each of the five dimensions of SC in relation to nonfinancial indicators of SME performance. Besides, the study also provides additional evidence of the impact of SC on SME performance by suggesting that entrepreneurs who are socially competent are more likely to own highly successful ventures.

Through a comprehensive review of the literature on open innovation (OI), this study aimed to achieve two objectives: (1) to identify the main thematic areas discussed in the past and track their evolution over time; and (2) to provide recommendations for future research avenues.

To achieve the first objective, a method based on text mining was implemented, with the analysis focusing on 1,772 journal articles published between 2003 and 2018. For the second objective, a review based on recent and relevant papers was conducted for each thematic area.

The paper identified nine thematic areas explored in existing research: (1) context-dependency of OI, (2) collaborative frameworks, (3) organizational dimensions of OI, (4) performance and OI, (5) external search for OI, (6) OI in small and medium-sized enterprises, (7) OI in the pharmaceutical industry, (8) OI and intellectual property rights, and (9) technology. The analysis of the most recent papers belonging to the more investigated areas offers suitable suggestions for future research avenues.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no review has yet been undertaken to reorganize the OI literature.

Inspired by new findings on and perceptions of risk governance, such as the necessity of taking a broader perspective in coping with risks in companies and working together in interactive groups with various stakeholders to deal with complex risks in the modern world, the purpose of this paper is looking for new ways to deal with financial risks. Current methods dealing with those risks are confronted with the problems of being primarily based on past data and experience, neglecting the need for objectivity, focusing on the short-term future and disregarding the interconnectedness of different financial risk categories.

A literature review of risk governance, financial risk management and open foresight was executed to conceptualize solutions to the mentioned-above problems.

Collaborative financial risk assessment (CFRA) is a promising approach in financial risk governance with respect to overcoming said problems. It is a method of risk identification and assessment, which combines aspects of “open foresight” and the financial risk management and governance literature. CFRA is characterized as bringing together members of different companies in trying to detect weak signals and trends to gain knowledge about the future, which helps companies to reduce financial risks and increase the chance of gaining economic value. By overcoming organizational boundaries, individual companies may gain the knowledge they would probably not have without CFRA and achieve a competitive advantage.

A conceptual paper like the one at hand wants empirical proof. Therefore, the authors developed a research agenda in the form of five propositions for further research.

This paper discusses the existing problems of financial risk identification and assessment methods. It contributes to the existing literature by proposing CFRA as a solution to those problems and adding a new perspective to financial risk governance.

This study aims to contribute to the open innovation (OI) literature by investigating the transitions between three phases in the OI process (i.e. idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization) and how these are moderated by different forms of shared leadership (i.e. transactional, and transformational) as perceived by participants in the OI process.

The authors tested a set of hypotheses using moderated mediation PLS-SEM models on a bootstrapped sample of OI participants (N = 173).

The authors found a direct relationship between idea generation and realization, as well as indirectly through idea promotion. This study implies that the promotion of ideas by participants can be beneficial in inter-organizational OI teams, as promotion of ideas provides a linkage between the generation of ideas and the idea realization phase. However, while shared leadership has been shown to be beneficial in conventional teams, the authors found evidence that this may not be the case in inter-organizational OI teams. Higher levels of shared transformational leadership from colleagues with whom employees do not share the same organizational background may hamper the promotion of ideas.

In contrast to the mainstream view, the authors found significant evidence that transformational shared leadership negatively moderates the direct relationship between idea generation and the promotion of ideas and the indirect relationship between idea generation and realization via idea promotion.