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This study aims to empirically investigate the role of accounting information quality (AIQ) as a mediating factor in the relationship between knowledge management (KM) processes and business performance (BP) of the financial institutions (FI) operating in Jordan.

Based on a literature review and knowledge-based theory, an integrated conceptual framework has been developed to guide the study. The study’s conceptual framework is constituted of three primary constructs, namely, KM processes (acquisition, integration and utilization), BP (financial indicators and non-financial indicators) and AIQ conceptualized using the International Accounting Standard Board’s (2010) framework fundamental qualitative characteristics (relevance, understandability, faith representation and comparability). Data has been collected through a self-administered questionnaire applied to 247 respondents. The targeted respondents have been FIs (commercial banks and insurance companies) in Jordan.

The main findings supported accounting information as a mediator factor in enhancing the relationship between the FIs’ KM process and BP (FI) operating in Jordan.

This study contributed to theory by filling a gap in the literature regarding the role AIQ as a mediator factor between the KM process and BP of the FI operating in Jordan as a developing country.

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.

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.

Accounting for intellectual capital is increasingly recognised to be one of the most fascinating and potentially far‐reaching challenges facing the accountancy profession. A growing literature, encompassing theoretical, empirical and practical elements, is currently emerging as researchers and practitioners endeavour to account for the hidden value that the intellectual capital concept denotes, and its pivotal role in the value creation process. To date, many of the most instructive advances have emanated from Scandinavia, reflecting these societies' sustained interest in necessity of accounting for the worth of employees, arguably the principal progenitor of intellectual capital accounting. Reports from a number of Australian, Canadian and European enquiries have added to the momentum of the intellectual capital accounting project, whilst affirming its links with contemporary debates about the information society, intangibles, knowledge management and business reporting. This paper reports and discusses some of the findings of a recently completed field study of intellectual capital accounting developments in the UK, funded by one of the professional accountancy bodies. Drawing on a series of semi‐structured interviews, it documents how senior managers in six knowledge‐based organisations view intellectual capital and related developments, their evolving attempts to respond to the challenges these present, and their progress in measuring and reporting their performance in these areas.

Changes in business environments have challenged the competencies (technical knowledge, skills and attitudes) of professional accountants. Accounting professions have responded by developing competency frameworks. In 2008, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) issued a draft competency framework encapsulating a broad range of knowledge, skills and attributes. The objective of the study reported on here was to determine training officers’ perceptions of the knowledge and skills requirements of entry‐level trainee accountants. SAICA could consider the findings of this study in the finalisation of its competency framework. The study reveals that nearly three‐quarters of all the topics in the current prescribed SAICA syllabus are considered to make at least an important contribution to the knowledge requirements of entry‐level trainee accountants. Although more than half the management accounting topics prescribed in the SAICA syllabus are perceived as being only reasonably important, further statistical analysis revealed that TOPP (training outside public practice) training officers disagreed significantly with their TIPP (training inside public practice) counterparts on the importance of management accounting topics and perceived them to be at least important. Except for specialised topics, all other topics covering the remaining core subjects (Financial Accounting, Financial Management, Taxation and Auditing) were perceived to be important or even more than important by the respondents. The study demonstrates that there is a movement towards an expanded set of competencies beyond the technical knowledge typically taught to prospective CAs, and that there is evidence of a need for today’s entry‐level trainee accountants to receive training in communication, analytical, interpersonal and computer skills.

This study examines whether management accounting knowledge and limited managerial discretion encourage and/or hinder the use of management accounting.

Based on the data obtained from public hospitals in Japan, this study tests whether top managers with more management accounting knowledge use management accounting more. Additionally, the study verifies whether lower managerial discretion leads to the use of less management accounting and conducts hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The results show that the higher management accounting knowledge is, the more likely management accounting is to be used. By contrast, the more limited management discretion is, the less likely management accounting is to be used.

The author's management accounting research based on the upper echelon theory has shown that characteristics such as the education and experience of top managers affect the use of management accounting systems. However, the impact of management accounting knowledge and managerial discretion, which is one of the important characteristics of top managers, on management accounting has rarely been studied.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research project carried out in an Italian university hospital that was facing a strategic challenge. The role of intellectual capital (IC) for university hospital strategic management is discussed after developing and applying an IC framework to enhance the visualisation of strategic IC elements.

An action research process has been applied in the studied setting based on Susman and Evered’s (1978) definition of the engaged research cycle.

The action research process allowed a gap between theory and practice to be bridged; the strategic control process resulted supported by new measures; a different approach to strategy management was launched, and other organisations perceived the relevance of the IC representation and wished to import it.

Research limitations are related to those recognised for the interventionist research approach.

The paper contributes to the improvement of managerial and accounting technologies for practitioners managing university hospitals and discusses a university hospital’s strategic goals.

The paper represents a methodological contribution related to the interventionist research stream of literature, and enriches the limited studies focused on IC in health care organisations. Furthermore, the paper enables appreciation of the role of academics in the convergence of theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a substantial organization gradually builds a management accounting system from scratch, changing its accounting routines by learning processes. The paper uses the experiential learning theory and the concept of learning style to investigate the learning process during management accounting change. The study aims to expand the domain of management accounting change theory to emphasize the learning-related aspects that can constitute it.

The paper provides an interpretation of management accounting change based on the model of problem management proposed by Kolb (1983) and the theory of experiential learning (Kolb, 1976, 1984). The study is based on a 14-year longitudinal case study (1994‐2007). The case examined can be considered a theory illustration case. Data were obtained from a broad variety of sources including interviews, document analysis and adopting an interventionist approach during the redesign of the costing system.

The paper contributes to two important aspects of management accounting change. First, it becomes apparent that the costing information change was not a discrete event but a process of experience and learning conducted through several iterations of trial-and-error loops that extended over the years. Second, the findings reveal that the learning process can alter management accounting system design in a radical or incremental way according to the learning style of the people involved in the process of change.

Because of the adopted research approach, results could be extended only to other organizations presenting similar characteristics. Several further areas of research are suggested by the findings of this paper. In particular, it would be of interest to investigate the links between learning styles and communication and its effect on management accounting change.

The paper includes implications for the management of learning during management accounting change, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this process.

This paper is one response to the call for an interdisciplinary research approach to the management accounting change phenomena using a “method theory” taken from the discipline of management to provide an explanation of the change in management accounting. In respect of the previous literature, it provides two main contributions, namely, the proposal of a model useful both to interpret and manage learning processes; the effect of learning style on management accounting routines change.

The pivotal role of knowledge management (KM) and its extensive implications have been debated in the academic literature with insufficient focus on its link to particular organizational control mechanisms such as performance measurement systems (PMS). To bridge this gap and building on resource orchestration theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationships between KM factors, PMS and corporate performance.

Based on a survey data set of 92 listed companies in Iran, the framework and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on partial least squares (PLS).

The SEM-PLS results indicate that knowledge assets are significantly associated with both PMS and corporate performance while knowledge process capabilities (KPC) are not significantly associated with PMS and corporate performance. This study also shows that PMS mediates the relationship between knowledge assets and corporate performance.

The results suggest that the use of appropriate management control systems plays an effective role in synchronizing, aligning and orchestrating a company’s various knowledge resources, which, in turn, can lead to superior overall performance.

Building on a unique synthesis of resource orchestration theory and the knowledge-based view of the firm, the results of this study provide the first empirical evidence on how PMS intervenes in the relationship between knowledge resources (knowledge assets and KPC) and corporate performance.

This paper illustrates a story of “rise and fall” of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) project in a Sri Lankan firm. The “rise” was due to a series of attempts made by CIMA (SL) for popularising BSC practice among business leaders and local consultants, and the “fall” was due to professional rivalry between engineering managers and accounting personnel and the decline of interest on the part of the owner-manager. In relation to these two opposing phenomena, the paper shows how and why the firm first receives the BSC project as a useful management system device, and later, how and why the management tends to undermine the use of BSC. The argument advanced is that the popularisation of BSC is part of a project of accounting knowledge diffusion which comes through the broader globalisation process, but the failure in sustaining BSC is due to the upsurge of professional rivalry and the rise of alternative management fads and the owner-manager's inclination to look at financial matters, rather than a BSC, as a basis for the appropriation of surplus. The underlying public interest implication is that even though globalisation project seems to be functional and positive, it provokes contradictions and resistance when new accounting knowledge is diffused from the centre to the periphery.