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This paper aims to extend some of the theoretical propositions of Michael Power’s (1997) audit society thesis by exploring the capacity of organisations to push back against external accountability pressures. The paper positions the literature on non-governmental organisation (NGO) accounting and accountability as a “case study” against which the notion of the audit society is put to the test.

A qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature is used to analyse how NGOs have responded to audit society pressures – most notably funder pressures to adopt formalised accountability mechanisms. The different responses of NGOs to funder accountability demands are analysed using Christine Oliver’s (1991) typology of strategic responses to institutional processes.

This review of the accounting literature unveils that NGOs can adopt a range of strategic responses to funder accountability pressures that vary from passive conformity to proactive manipulation. The findings confirm that NGOs often perceive acquiescence to funder accountability demands as necessary to ensure organisational survival. Yet, the author also found that NGO resistance to funder accountability pressures is more common than previously assumed. Five dominant forms of “accountability resistances” emerged from the analysis: evading accountability, disguising accountability, shielding accountability, negotiating accountability and shaping accountability.

By conducting a qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature, the author was able to integrate the findings of prior research on NGO resistance to funder accountability demands, guide future research and extend Michael Power’s (1997) work by developing a more nuanced understanding of how organisations respond to external accountability pressures.

This study seeks to deepen the understanding of the political process underlying the establishment and evolution of corporate governance (CG) regulations in a developing country.

Drawing on regulatory space concept (Hancher and Moran, 1989) and Oliver's (1991) typology of strategic responses, the authors identify which actor participated in and benefitted from the establishment of a new transnational CG regulation in Pakistan. Data were collected through interviews and from the published secondary sources.

The findings highlighted regulations are being influenced and shaped up by the political process of negotiation, bargaining, manipulation and domination between powerful and resourceful actors in a given regulatory space. National regulators and regulatees can be indeed fervent opponents to the transnational regulations when it comes to protecting their well-rooted national interests.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by illustrating political processes through which internationally recognised CG practices are resisted, negotiated and implemented in the developing countries. The regulator must pay attention that the outcome of the regulatory change process is the result of carefully crafted and conscious strategies of actors in the regulatory space.

Relying on institutional theory and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the different strategies adopted by Spanish public universities to respond to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting.

Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as a series of email-structured interviews with key personnel from universities, a qualitative analysis of sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university.

The findings reveal that Spanish public universities have responded to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting by adopting acquiescence, compromise, avoidance and defiance strategies. The variety of strategic responses adopted by Spanish public universities suggests that these organizations have not fully adhered to institutional pressures.

The results of this paper would be useful for practitioners since it tries to demonstrate whether universities, which are facing increasing institutional pressures and demands from stakeholders, have been developing sustainability reporting practices.

Universities have a remarkable social impact that could be used to promote sustainability practices. This paper investigates how these organizations can contribute to sustainability reporting as they should reproduce social norms.

The sustainability reporting context is in a phase of change. This paper tries to contribute to the accounting research by analyzing the extent to which universities are engaged in sustainability reporting. Relying on these premises, Oliver’s (1991) framework might be an insightful theoretical perspective to examine the responses provided by universities to institutional pressures.

The purpose of this study is to understand how the degree of congruence between buyers’ and sellers’ intentions to negotiate impacts buyers’ postpurchase emotions and attitudes. In addition, the study examines whether buyers’ self-confidence and negotiation expertise can increase buyers’ perceptions of control and regret, as well as buyers’ postpurchase satisfaction and enjoyment with the purchase. Traditionally, marketplace exchanges have been classified as either fixed price or negotiated. The present research treats marketplace exchanges along a continuum of intention congruence to test the relationships between intention congruence and outcome variables of control, regret, satisfaction and enjoyment with the purchase.

The authors studied the perceived difference between buyers' and sellers' intentions to negotiate and how the difference impacts buyers' postpurchase attitudinal and emotional outcomes. A mail survey of automobile buyers resulted in a sample of 291 respondents. An automobile is a significant and irreversible purchase for a buyer. Thus, automobile markets often host transactions that evoke dissonance and regret for buyers if things go awry. In addition, buyers and sellers vary considerably in their desire to negotiate, thus reflecting a range of intention congruence in negotiation. Therefore, a survey of automobile buyers was considered appropriate for testing the effects of intention congruence on buyers’ postpurchase outcomes.

Results indicate that when buyers are willing to negotiate but sellers do not reciprocate equally, buyers feel less in control of a transaction. Contrarily, buyers experienced greater control and lesser regret when buyers’ perceptions of sellers’ intention to negotiate exceeded buyers’ own intentions to negotiate. Results also suggest that when buyers’ intentions to negotiate were congruent with buyers’ perception of sellers’ intention to negotiate, greater dyadic levels of negotiation marginally lowered buyers’ perceived regret. Overall, an intention-congruence perspective adds to the current understanding of negotiated exchanges and is a meaningful approach for improving postpurchase outcomes for buyers.

The study used only the consumers’ perspective of negotiation. Although this is supported by studies in power and dependence because the consumers’ perspective is valuable and valid, a true dyadic measurement of the negotiation process can only be obtained if the sellers’ view is also incorporated. This remains a key limitation of this study.

The results suggest that sellers may be better off honoring buyers’ intentions to negotiate. Intention incongruence negatively impacted buyer satisfaction when buyers perceived sellers to be less eager to negotiate. However, where sellers seem more eager to negotiate, incongruity favored buyers and positively impacted buyers’ postpurchase outcomes. Thus, for sellers, it is worthwhile to consider adding policies that honor negotiation.

Past research classifies marketplaces exchanges as either fixed price or negotiated. The present study uses intention congruence as a continuum between transaction partners. The intention congruence approach allows a closer examination of both the symmetry and strength of intentions to negotiate in a dyadic exchange. Given that markets are comprised of buyers and sellers who display considerable variability in intentions to negotiate, examining intention congruence allows for a more realistic study of negotiation behavior in business-to-consumer marketplaces.

Wars, and violent conflicts generally, can generate significant institutional dynamics and new legitimacy pressures for multinational enterprises (MNEs). The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature or source of institutional pressures facing MNEs in war and to examine how MNEs respond and navigate these institutional pressures.

This is a conceptual paper.

Through the theoretical lens of institutional theory and drawing on insights from the devastating Russian–Ukrainian war in Europe, the study provides a framework that explains the nature of institutional pressures impacting MNEs in a major war conflict and how MNEs respond to these pressures. Central to the framework is the impact of formal and informal institutions on MNEs during war. As a result of regulatory and social pressures, MNEs have to make important strategic decisions either to protect their legitimacy or to defend their economic objectives against institutional demands.

As the paper situates the pressures of war for MNEs in a formal and informal institutional context, this offers a new approach to understanding the costs and pressures of war on MNEs.

The rise of the regulatory state during the Gilded Age was closely associated with the development of institutionalist ideas in American academia. In their analysis of the emergent regulatory environment, institutionalists like John Commons operated with a fundamentally marginalist theory of value and distribution. This engagement is a central explanation for the ultimate ascendancy of neoclassical economics, and the limitations of the regulatory environment that emerged in the Progressive Era. The eventual rise of the Chicago School and its deregulatory ambitions did constitute a rupture, but one achieved without rejecting preceding conceptions of competition and value. The substantial compatibility of the view of markets underlying both the regulatory and deregulatory periods is stressed, casting doubt about the transformative potential of the resurgent regulatory impulse in the New Gilded Age.

Conflicting institutional logics are thought to be factors that hinder organizational changes in public institutions. Thus, this study explores the different strategies of public sector organizations to handle tensions from conflicting institutional logics in their day-to-day activities.

The authors argue that strategies for handling conflicting logics should not be treated separately. Rather, the authors show that within organizations, different strategies could be interconnected and depend on each other. The empirical insights come from a case study of a large German federal authority, in which management reporting was introduced with the intent to effect change in the organization.

The authors show how, over time, organization members confront the practice of management reporting with different approaches to address conflicting institutional demands and to find ways to create management reports that would be accepted by different addressees.

The study documents three states of responds to conflicting institutional logics: decoupling, compromising and hybridization. The authors highlight the power dynamics between the corresponding actors and the consequences for using management reports in these different states. Accordingly, the authors aim to provide profound insights into the microdynamics in the context of conflicting institutional logics.

The promulgation of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) into the healthcare (HC) sector is an invaluable procurement strategy to manage the suppliers effectively. This study aims to identify and prioritize the factors of integrating GPOs into the HC sector on the perspectives of the developing countries such as India.

The factors are identified from current literature exploration, experts’ support and experience surveys. The factors are scrutinized and shortlisted using the Delphi technique and analysed further using the best-worst model method.

The findings of the study highlight the cost reduction, fair distribution of savings and healthcare supply chain (HCSC) data standardization among others to be the most prioritized drivers. The consulting services provided by GPOs including training and development as a result of high competitiveness in the HC market has been prioritized the least.

The study bears some important implications for decision and policymakers. The managers should consider factors, namely, cost reduction, fair distribution of savings and HCSC data standardization on a priority basis that acts as motivation for the HC providers to join the GPOs.

The study provides valuable insights for HC providers to participate in the GPOs for cost savings and enhance the performances.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Danish higher education institutions (HEIs) navigate the demands and expectations of accreditation procedures, and how the limited freedom posed by accreditation schemes is used by HEIs by way of translation.

Through document studies of policy documents and the institutional self-assessment reports, the paper follows the concept of quality from the international level to the Danish national level, and onwards into the individual HEIs, where the authors examine how notions of quality are constructed through the translation of national regulation, guidelines and procedures of accreditation into the self-narratives of the self-assessment reports.

The authors find that the national guidelines for accreditation represents a complex translation of supranational guidelines by minimizing certain aspects and enhancing others. This national translation is then analyzed as the frame for the institutional translations where the analysis reveals how HEIs exercise a great deal of agency, within a quite narrow frame constituted by regulations and guidelines.

By using the Olivers (1991) typology of organizational responses, the authors discuss how the HEIs not only imitate and abide to institutionalized norms and concepts of quality but also reformulate, edit, omit and enhance certain elements of quality. The authors demonstrate that when accreditation meets the HEIs, it is clearly the national agendas that are most pervasive and offer the most relevant vocabulary for the HEIs.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.