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This paper provides a perspective on the field of nonmarket strategy. It does not attempt to survey the literature but instead focuses on the substantive content of research in the field. The paper discusses the origins of the field and the roles of nonmarket strategy. The political economy framework is used and contrasted with the current form of the resource-based theory. The paper argues that research should focus on the firm level and argues that the strategy of self-regulation can be useful in reducing the likelihood of challenges from private and public politics. The political economy perspective is illustrated using three examples: (1) public politics: Uber, (2) private politics: Rainforest Action Network and Citigroup, and (3) integrated strategy and private and public politics: The Fast Food Campaign. The paper concludes with a discussion of research issues in theory, empirics, and normative assessment.

Drivers and barriers for employee ownership vary between countries because of differences in Politics, Institutions and the Economy (PIE). By analyzing this variation, the purpose of this study is to answer why employee ownership has developed fast in the United States and not in Denmark.

The drivers and barriers for employee ownership are identified from the scientific literature, and the main societal dynamics are identified through the PIE model covering the dynamics between politics, institutional change and the economy. Politics focuses on different social groups influencing the development of institutions driving or hindering employee ownership in the economy.

United States has followed a self-enforcing circle with broad political support of “shared capitalism,” including the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) type of employee ownership. In Denmark, the labor movement rejected worker cooperatives as a main strategy and focused on building up the welfare state. Center-right parties favored employee stocks, but the institutional framework never overcame the barriers for employee ownership.

This is the first study to perform an analysis of politics, institutional change and economic development to explain drivers and barriers for employee ownership and to make a comparison between the development of employee ownership in the United States and Denmark.

Western liberal states are considered to be secular in nature, with a presumed neutrality of state laws from religious values and norms. However, this claim overlooks the inherent influence that religious groups (namely, dominant Christian churches and groups) have as informal institutions. According to neo-institutionalists, informal institutions, like these religious norms and values, interact with and influence formal state institutions. As such, it could be argued that the norms and values of dominant religious groups within the state have a role in shaping governmental policies and the law. This is evident when examining the debates around multiculturalism and religious freedom that arise in liberal democratic states such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the recent Sharia debates that have arisen in each of these jurisdictions illustrate that the secular state legal system is often positioned as “neutral” and free from religious influence – and thus incompatible with, and unable to, accommodate the religious orders of minority groups. However, this idea that the state is entirely free from religious values is a fallacy that ignores the historical role and influence of Christian churches in each state. In opposing the accommodation of Sharia in private dispute resolution, common arguments include the inherent patriarchal nature of the religion leading to further oppression and disadvantage of Muslim women when seeking resolution of personal law matters (i.e. divorce and property settlements). The secular state law is positioned against this (and religion more broadly) as the “fair” and “just” alternative for minority women – protector of individual rights. Though this ignores the inherent gender hierarchies embedded within formal state institutions, including the legal system that has been implicitly shaped by religious moral values to varying degrees – where minority women are also faced with a set of gender biases. When combined with the internal pressures from their communities and families this can often place them in a double-bind of disadvantage. In this paper, I draw on feminist institutionalism to examine the informal institutional norms that arise from dominant Christian churches in Australia, Canada, and the UK. In particular, the ways in which these informal norms have influenced the development of state laws, and continue to operate alongside the legal system to shape and influence governmental policies, laws, and ultimately the outcomes for Muslim women.

Over the last four years in Spain, a strong autonomist movement (15M), based on radical democracy and mistrust of any kind of instituted politics, seems to be turning toward statist and institutionalized politics. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions: Can we speak of a community fetishism, as opposed to State fetishism? Do autonomist social movements have a spatial project as opposed to a State spatial project? Why do horizontal and self-management-oriented social movements turn to the conquest of the State in the current framework?

The empirical evidence for this study stems from a qualitative methodological approach. The authors used two different types of sources. First, direct observations from the authors’ own engagement in social movements in Spain from 2011 to the present are used. Second, this work is part of a systematic research on spatial dynamics and the evolution of collective action in Spain. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with activists involved in social movements from 2012 to 2015, in which time informal interviews were conducted, and documents and observational notes were also collected.

Social movements have tended to develop alternatives to state spatial projects, partially as a result of an institutional setting that has been progressively closed to political alternatives to the neoliberal state. This last point leads to the posing of politics as completely independent of the political arena of the State (community fetish). From the first square occupations to the subsequent organization in local meetings, the 15M movement was the last expression of this tendency in Spain, while the turn on State political institutions responds to the obvious limitations of community fetishism in the context of the social and political tensions of the Spanish crisis.

This analysis contributes to the current debates on social movements in two ways. First, the authors investigate a usually neglected agent in the production of spatial political projects and strategies such as social movements. Second, the specific case of the 15M movement in Spain strongly shows the contradictions and limitations of the movements, which supposedly do not aspire to replace the State’s sovereign power through the idea of community fetishism.

The field of nonmarket strategy has expanded rapidly over the past 20 years to provide theoretical and practical guidance for managers seeking to influence policymaking. Much of this scholarship has built directly on spatial and “pivotal politics” models of lawmaking. While extremely helpful at identifying crucial targets for lobbying, these models treat all policymakers as identical in their abilities to advance legislative agenda items through various policymaking hurdles. We build upon these earlier models, but include policymakers who vary in their relative effectiveness at advancing measures through the legislative process. We identify how the implications of our model deviate from those of conventional (pivotal politics) analyses. We then present an empirical strategy for identifying effective Lawmakers in the United States Congress, and illustrate the utility of this approach for managers developing nonmarket strategies in legislative institutions, relying on the case of banking and financial services reforms between 2008 and 2011.

Many functionalist models of international cooperation rely on punishment by states to enforce cooperation. However, the empirical record suggests that such state-based accounts offer an incomplete explanation of international trade cooperation. We argue that when theoretical approaches are adjusted to incorporate aspects of domestic politics and institutions, two key insights emerge. First, political pressure from domestic industries can be key in creating demand for violations of trade agreements. Since such pressure is affected by stochastic shocks, the temptation of leaders to commit trade violations can vary over time. The presence of a dispute settlement procedure (DSP) provides flexibility that allows leaders to respond to such pressure by occasionally committing violations and then compensating their trading partners, if the DSP finds that the violation was not subject to exceptions in the trading agreement. This flexibility enhances the willingness of leaders to sign cooperative agreements in the first place. Second, domestic politics can function as an enforcement mechanism for ensuring compliance with international trade agreements and DSP rulings. Voters can condition their electoral decisions on whether their leader complies with socially beneficial trade agreements. The DSP plays an important role in this account as an information-provider. For voters to hold their leaders accountable, they need information about what choices their leader has made and whether his actions constitute compliance with an international agreement. The DSP provides transparency and reduces uncertainty about these factors.

This paper explores accounting change in the product development department of a small UK chemicals manufacturer. An institutional framework of accounting and a framework of power mobilisation help tease out the dynamics of the processes of change. The case highlights power over resources, decision making and meanings as being key facilitators to the implementation of accounting change. It also demonstrates barriers to change and conflict which emerge as new accounting routines fail to impinge on existing laboratory ways of thinking. Focusing on the processes of accounting change within a specific organisational setting illuminates aspects of the change process which more conventional “static” approaches would likely ignore.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the new Budget Act (2015) and the new budget cycle influence and were influenced by the contextual environment of the Tanzanian parliament and how this changed parliamentarians’ (MPs) budgetary oversight roles.

The paper employed analytical concepts explained in the contextual framework proposed by Alsharari et al. (2015) to explore changes in budgetary oversight roles after the implementation of the reforms. Interviews, video clips and document review were employed in the data collection. Data were analyzed using the thematic approach.

The values of the new Budget Act and the new budget cycle were in conflict with the prevailing institutions, political and power aspects. The MPs modified a few provisions in the new Budget Act and in the new budget cycle. Legitimating budgetary oversight roles as a result of institutional pressure emerged but stopped. Although there was a change in MPs formal powers and MPs involvement in budgetary oversight, there was stability as the change was ineffective.

The paper only extracted relevant aspects of the contextual framework, which were sufficient to achieve the objective of the paper. Moreover, the study was conducted only a few years after the implementation of the reforms. Therefore, it might be too early to reach conclusions. Yet, the paper serves as the basis for further studies investigating changes in budgetary oversight roles after the implementation of the reforms.

In order for the parliament to hold the government accountable to the electorate, there is a need for reforming the nature of the government system, improving MPs capacity, harmonizing Budget Act with prevailing constitution and demonstrating the political will to use MPs’ formal powers. The findings suggest that effective change in budgetary oversight by focusing on formal institutions only is unlikely.

This paper provides a more robust explanation on how the integration of institutional, political and power aspects shape budgetary oversight roles in parliaments. It is the first paper to explore accounting change using the contextual theoretical framework in an organization of a parliamentary nature. The paper responds to Kim’s (2018) call for conducting case studies to explore changes in budgetary oversight roles by investigating potential attributes of institutions when operating in practice.

This paper aims to introduce and discuss a new contextual framework to explain the processes of management accounting change in various organizations.

Having an institutional perspective, the paper develops a “conceptual contextual framework” of management accounting change. The methodology to accomplish this theory building consists of an integration of a number of different works summarizing the common elements, contrasting the differences and extending the work in some fashion. Particularly, it draws on theoretical triangulation by adopting three approaches: old institutional economics for internal processes and factors (Burns and Scapens, 2000); new institutional sociology for external processes and pressures (Dillard et al., 2004); and power and politics mobilization (Hardy, 1996).

The proposed framework provides an understanding of the complex “mixture” of interrelated factors that may influence management accounting change at multi-institutional levels: political and economic level, organizational field level and organizational level.

The framework extends institutional theory-based management accounting research as well as provides a comprehensive basis for examining dynamics of accounting in the institutionalization process. Through further research, the framework will be extended and refined.

The paper has practical implications for practitioners and officers as well as for the accounting profession and academics alike.

The proposed contextual framework provides insights into the processes of change by focusing attention on the underlying institutions that encode accounting systems or practices in three institutional levels: political and economic level, the organizational field level and organization level. Examining the tension between institutionalized beliefs and values that may occur between these three levels of institutions will enhance our understanding of management accounting change in organizations.