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The paper aims to provide an overview of the rationale for qualitative research in management accounting. It discusses how qualitative research could serve the development of theory, and provides guiding principles for qualitative investigation. It also seeks to identify common problems in qualitative studies and lays out avenues for further qualitative inquiry.

The paper relies on critical reflection and deductive logic in its discussion, drawing on a wide range of theoretical pronouncements and methodological literature, as well as on some illustrative field studies in management accounting.

The paper opens a broad panorama: it emphasizes field research as a necessary counterweight to textbook appreciations of management accounting, to idealized economic models and to consultancy‐oriented agenda. It identifies how field research serves theory development in different ways, providing a set of practical principles which assist qualitative efforts. The paper also specifies pitfalls in qualitative studies and shows areas where the future potential of qualitative investigations can be focused.

This is a paper that motivates the “qualitative” management accounting scholar. But it also assists in a pragmatic way the qualitatively oriented management accounting scholar – especially someone with little prior experience in empirical fieldwork and in the theoretical interpretation of qualitative data.

The paper provides a source of inspiration, an instructive reflection and a practical guide for the qualitatively oriented, but still somewhat hesitant, management accounting scholar.

Management control is needed in international joint ventures (IJVs) for successful management and performance. While IJV management control and performance concept has been widely explored, in the construction sector, the core understanding of the design of the two concepts is still lacking. This has resulted in the neglect of important questions and directions for research and practice improvement. This study aims to conduct a critical survey of prior studies addressing the conceptualization of management control and performance in IJVs and to propose a framework for studying the performance implications of management control in international construction joint ventures (ICJVs).

Using Scopus database and search terms, a systematic desktop search was conducted to retrieve empirically related peer-reviewed papers for this study.

Drawing on the transaction cost, institutional and relational logic, the first inclusive hypothetical model for studying the relationship between different dimensions of management control mechanism and multiple performance criteria in ICJVs is presented. The model proposes a measurement method for both the management control and performance and explains how they can be established in ICJVs.

The proposed framework provides a methodology to understand the dynamics of management control and performance implications in ICJV. Specifically, uncovering the critical paths will assist ICJV frontliners to approach management control in a more holistic and systematic way to promote achievement of ICJV goals.

The study gives a firm ground to the construction industry, which is accurate and educational for related fields concentrating on several other forms of cooperative relationships.

Recent accounting research has connected the coercive and enabling types of formalisation (C/E) (Adler and Borys, 1996) with the distinction between diagnostic and interactive controls (D/I) proposed by Simons (1995, 2000) to tackle research questions on complex control situations involving both the degree of employee autonomy and patterns of management attention. The diverse conceptual approaches used for connecting C/E and D/I have led to fragmentation in the literature and raise concerns about their conceptual clarity. In this paper, we assess the conceptual clarity of various forms of connection between C/E and D/I. Firstly, we conduct an in-depth content analysis of 59 recent papers, and inductively identify three points of conceptual ambiguity and divergence in the literature (namely, the perspective from which a phenomenon is studied; whether categories capture choices driven by design or by style-of-use; and the properties of control systems). We also observe that the literature proposes various forms of connection (i.e. coexistence, inclusion, and combination approaches). Secondly, we use the three detected points of ambiguity and divergence as assessment criteria, and evaluate the extent to which conceptual clarity is at risk under each form of connection. Based on this assessment, we provide guidelines to enhance the conceptual clarity of the connections between C/E and D/I, propose several research models, and indicate opportunities for future research in this area.

Management of customer participation (CP) in service production and delivery is of critical concern for service managers, as CP can result in various positive but also negative outcomes. However, an integrated understanding on how service providers can manage CP is still missing. The purpose of this paper is to gather and synthesize the extant knowledge on the constituents of CP management into a comprehensive framework, and to offer an extensive agenda for future research.

A systematic literature review of existing research is conducted. A total of 181 journal articles are analyzed in five steps: attaining basic understanding, coding, categorization, comparison, and further analysis.

The authors provide identification and categorizations of the customer inputs, their antecedents, the management approaches, and the outcomes of CP. To date, CP management has been addressed from three distinct perspectives: human resource management that treats customers as partial employees; operations management that focusses on customer functioning during the service process; and marketing that highlights the roles and value outcomes for customers.

The authors call for further research that addresses the relationships between the antecedents, customer inputs, management approaches, and outcomes of CP, and argue for extension of contextual diversity. The detailed research agenda provided is helpful for interested researchers.

The study offers managerial insights on how the degree and quality of CP can be improved by applying the various management methods examined in academic research.

As the first comprehensive review on this topic, this paper brings together the dispersed knowledge on CP, integrates it into a comprehensive framework of CP management, and paves the way for future focussed research.

This paper aim to review existing research in the management control systems field in the banking industry. It identifies gaps in the existing literature and suggests some directions for future research.

The review was carried out principally by consulting leading accounting journals, followed by other relevant journals covering all publications from the inception of the particular journal to 2010. The published articles are categorized by their research topics, theories, methodologies and settings.

The review reveals a dearth of detailed studies on management controls in the banking sector. As evident from the sizeable number of descriptive studies, most prior studies do not engage in an in‐depth inquiry into control issues of banks, and most lack clear articulation either theoretically or methodologically. It finds that currently little is known on the concerns encountered by banks and the nature of management control practices deployed.

This review is selective and, while illustrative of the state of management control research in the banking sector, does not attempt a comprehensive coverage of all research. However, it identifies gaps in the current literature and makes calls for further research on a number of management control issues in the banking industry. Further, in light of the review findings, the paper offers some lessons and insights for practicing managers.

Although some general reviews on various facets of management accounting across time have been undertaken by past researchers, industry‐based reviews have not been their focus. Through a systematic review of management control research in the banking arena, this paper shows that despite both the significant position occupied by the banking industry in nations' economies and the importance of management controls for banks, there remains a need for researchers to pay adequate attention to exploring control issues in this sector.

This study investigates the usage of modern management accounting techniques popularly referred to as “strategic management accounting” (SMA), and the extent to which innovation attributes (namely relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability) determine SMA usage intensity.

Survey data was obtained through a structured questionnaire from 45 out of 56 publicly listed manufacturing companies on the Mainboard of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse data.

Whereas the overall usage rate of SMA as an innovation is generally moderate, there is significant difference in SMA usage intensity across industries in the manufacturing sector due to environmental uncertainty. Compatibility emerged as the strongest determinant of SMA usage intensity, implying that commercial enterprises would intensely apply SMA to remain innovative, to continuously improve and to incorporate strategy in accounting practice in a bid to survive competition. SMA will witness extensive usage if it aligns with the competitive strategies of an organisation.

The attributes of innovation measured treat all SMA techniques as one, but did not measure relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability for each of the techniques. Future studies may consider investigating how innovation attributes specifically affect each SMA technique. The dimension of compatibility investigated in the study lean towards the alignment of SMA with competitive strategies. Taking into account the multidimensionality of compatibility as an innovation attribute, future studies may examine how past experience of implementing new ideas, as well as compatibility of SMA with corporate culture and value system, affect the dissemination and diffusion of management accounting innovations.

The paper proposes that although innovation attributes may partly explain SMA usage, coercive factors such as competition and environmental uncertainty may also be responsible for the decision to adopt innovative management accounting practices. The study therefore calls for a critical appraisal of how coercive institutional factors such as competition, regulation and actions of key stakeholders influence the decision of organisations to adopt an innovation.

This paper contributes to knowledge by challenging existing knowledge and presenting evidence that innovation attributes acclaimed to determine the spread of an innovation may be inapplicable in certain settings due to some environmental challenges. The study also contributes to knowledge by developing a composite scale for measuring innovation attributes specifically adapted to management accounting innovation, which can be used in future studies.

Management accounting practices are expected to adapt and evolve with changing information requirements. The purpose of this study is to determine factors that drive management accounting adaptability (MAA) in organisations using the agility lens.

This study identifies three factors that drive MAA through their support of agility. Specifically, the impact of top management team knowledge, team-based structures and information system flexibility on MAA is examined. The hypotheses are tested using data collected from an online survey of Australian and New Zealand companies.

The results support the proposed relations and explain a significant variance in MAA. Also, consistent with previous findings, a positive association between MAA and management accounting effectiveness was found.

This study illustrates the value of using the agility lens in the context of management accounting change, which is under-explored in the accounting literature relative to other disciplines such as production economics.

This study recommends management to refrain from behaviour that encourages and maintains the status quo. Influencing the factors identified in this study can encourage more innovation in management accounting and improve adaptability when changes to organisational contingencies occur.

This paper explores and adopts the concept of agility to complement dominant theories in the management accounting change literature. The concept of agility is unpacked and applied to review existing literature to explain how management accounting may become more adaptable and open to evolving. The resulting model identifies factors that support sense-making and responding as constituents of agility. This study also extends a recent study by Yigitbasioglu (2016) on the link between information technology and MAA by building a more powerful model in terms of scope and explanatory power to explain the ability of management accounting to change over time.

This paper seeks to respond to Otley's calls for future research to take an integrated and longitudinal approach to examining the operation of performance management in real organizations. The paper reviews 120 field studies published in Accounting, Organizations and Society and Management Accounting Research over the past 15 years.

The Otley's performance management framework is used to classify the field studies in terms of five central issues that relate to objectives, strategies, target setting, reward systems, and information flows.

The key findings are that only nine field studies examine the integrated performance management framework in any depth, and the research to date is fragmentary with regard to, for example, the performance management issues studied and theories used.

Implications from this research include the need to examine the operation of the integrated performance management framework together with in‐depth research methods to understand the system in use, rather than the intended design of performance management processes. Future theoretical development could also be enhanced by better selection of research sites and building on prior studies. The limitations of this review include journal bias and limitations associated with classifying the diverse range of field studies using any framework, including the Otley's framework.

The novelty of this review lies in using Otley's framework to classify the expansive performance management literature and to document the extent of the integrative nature of the field studies, the depth of the studies, and the diversity of theories applied.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of environmental characteristics, business partnership relationship, knowledge complementarity, organizational characteristics on knowledge management practices and innovation performance.

The research used primary data, i.e. data obtained directly from the distribution of questionnaires to respondents, namely, the company’s managers/leaders/directors in the companies that became the research sample. Data were collected by sending questionnaires either by mail or email to the respondents. To examine the effect of environmental characteristics, business partnership relationship, knowledge complementarity and organizational characteristics on knowledge management practices and innovation performance.

Environmental characteristics, business partnership relationship, knowledge complementarity and organizational characteristics partially have a significant effect on knowledge management practices. Environmental characteristics and business partnership relationship partially have a significant effect on innovation performance, while knowledge complementarity and organizational characteristics have no significant effect. For other constructs, knowledge management practices are able to be a moderator variable, which can relate these constructs with innovation performance.

The research using the diffusion of innovation paradigm, the combination of market-based and knowledge-based paradigms is expected to fill the previous research gap and become the first uniqueness and originality, as well as characteristic of this research. The second originality is this research examines the role of the knowledge management practice variable as the moderator variable. Then, the third originality is this research investigates the relationship between business partner relationship and innovation performance. These three originalities are still rarely studied in previous studies, so this research will further complement, expand the study, especially in the knowledge management, innovation performance area.

Previous studies examining the relationship between gender and conflict-management strategies have generally reported weak or inconsistent results. This paper aims to study extends past research by examining the main and interactive effects of gender on conflict-management strategies over time. The authors propose that conflict-management strategies commonly employed in the workplace are impacted by worker gender as predicted by face negotiation theory and vary over time based on the “generation” of the worker.

To test the study hypotheses, a field study was conducted to assess main and interactive effects of gender and generation on the five strategies for conflict management: Integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. Questionnaire data were collected over four decades (1980s-2010s) from employed students (N = 6,613). Data analysis was performed using a multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results suggest female employees consistently use more noncompeting strategies (integrating, obliging, avoiding and compromising) than male employees and male employees consistently use more competing strategy (dominating) than female employees. All the main and interaction effects were significant.

While this study involved primarily students in the USA studying management at two major public universities, there may be implications for a more global population of workers. However, the results support the notion advanced by face negotiation theory that men will generally seek to save face while women will generally avoid conflict in consideration of others.

This study demonstrates that workers employ different conflict-management strategies over time and the use of certain strategies varies by gender. An implication of this study is the need to regularly reassess selection, training and evaluation processes for managers. In addition, supervisors should encourage employees to enhance the effective use of cooperative (integrating, obliging and compromising) strategies and focus on specific situations when uncooperative strategies (dominating and avoiding) may be needed.

By using face negotiation theory as the organizing framework to examine changes in conflict-management strategies over time, this study contributes in a substantial way to the understanding of how gender and generation interact to influence the selection and use of conflict-management strategies in the workplace.