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The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the consequences of the diffusion of generic project management knowledge.

This paper is conceptual in its nature, using short examples of four different areas (education, research, certification and practice) to show the diffusion of project management knowledge throughout these areas.

In this paper the authors argue that relevance may be lost at two levels. The first loss occurs when the practice of project management is transferred, through generalisation and standardisation, into what is generally known as “Best Practice”. The second occurs when “Best Practice” is transferred back to where it is applied (education, research, certification and practice).

The risk of losing relevance has consequences for what one bases one's assumptions of the nature of projects upon. If the assumptions are based on standardized knowledge, without critically assessing its correctness, the likelihood of producing less relevant research is higher.

With the risk of losing relevance the authors argue that anyone involved in the areas of education, research, certification and practice needs to be cautious of how they perceive and work with the standards. There is a risk that the knowledge becomes even less relevant and students and practitioners are therefore less prepared for reality.

This paper is part of the literature critiquing the standardization of project management knowledge but it is distinct in terms of how the diffusion processes are perceived and utilized in a project setting.

The paper aims to address the recent debate over the “relevance lost” of business school research and points to the establishment of neoliberal economic policy during the past three decades as an example of social change that has not been thoroughly theorized in business school research.

The literature on neoliberalism is reviewed and, more specifically, its implications for the financialization of industry and the widespread use of financial theory in corporate governance. The paper outlines some of the consequences of neoliberalism, pointing out the connections between the growth of the finance industry and the 2008 financial crisis.

The paper demonstrates that the financialization of industry and the institutionalization of finance theory, as the guiding corporate governance model used in the new millennium, have led to a concentration of capital in the finance industry. As a consequence, other productive investments have been postponed. Despite such shifts in corporate governance and economic policy more broadly, neoliberalism is a relatively marginal topic of discussion in business school research.

The study stresses the need for broadening the scope of business school research and addressing more long-term institutional changes in economic policy and corporate governance.

The paper emphasizes the need, not only for promoting practitioner relevance in business school research, but also for enacting an ambitious research agenda of broader social relevance.

This paper has been produced as part of a research project that seeks to generate knowledge about the process of implementation of Activity Based Management (ABM). Implementation is identified as important by Robin Cooper, (Cooper, 1996) thus “the focus of research must broaden to include studies of the problems associated with implementing new cost management techniques”. The project is informed by the research literature addressing cooperation between practitioners and academics, (for example Kaplan, 1994; Scapens 1980, 1994; Spicer, 1992). Our aim in this paper is to meet the objective attributed to Ken Merchant (Drysdale, 1996) “it is the role of the researcher to go to managers and determine what their problems are, and to help managers articulate these”. It also takes account of the preceding research into activity based techniques, including recent work funded by CIMA (Friedman & Lyne, 1995; Innes and Mitchell, 1995). Friedman & Lyne found that the consequences of implementing these techniques were significant for management accountants, and had far reaching organisational consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution made by the balanced scorecard (BSC) in regaining the practice relevance of management accounting research.

Using discourse analysis, the paper investigates the speech genre in use in main BSC texts.

The authors' analysis reveals that the BSC is defined in a way that can provide management with a type of general overarching model. However, the model lacks realistic scholarly characteristics and instead it exhibits characteristics of a myth speech genre. This is especially so in the presentation of the central concern with cause‐effect statements in the BSC.

The authors' analysis, therefore, suggests that methodological issues relating to the usage of cause and effect statements must be solved if research, such as that carried out in the BSC development, is to become more relevant to practice. To overcome this problem and regain research relevance, the paper recommends a more scholarly speech genre, giving more attention to various usages of inferential statements and specifically a pragmatic constructivist perspective for analyzing construct causalities.

The paper advocates a scholarly methodological basis as a requirement for accounting innovation to enable it to solve practice problems in a way that improves practice and hence increases relevance of research.

Investigates the dimensions of accounting information prepared for use in managing non‐corporate pastoral entities in pre‐Federation Western Victoria and the local, time‐specific environmental factors which shaped these dimensions. Based on examinations of 23 sets of surviving business records prepared during 1836‐1900, provides evidence of the structure and usage of pastoral accounting information in an unregulated financial reporting environment. Draws conclusions about the likely impact of cultural, legal and political, professional, educational, economic and other factors as key explanatory variables. Also argues a case for lost relevance based on the evidence of accounting change in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.

Activity‐based costing (ABC) has received considerable attention in recent years. In fact, some have portrayed it as a cure‐all for all kinds of problems. Presents a father‐son debate on this issue (the father as the consultant and the son as the entrepreneur). Argues that ABC may not apply in many situations, and that common costs remain common, no matter how meticulously we attribute them to certain cost drivers for allocation purposes. Furthermore, if considerable facility and capacity costs remain unidentifiable with individual cost objects, the problem of not knowing the true product cost remains unresolved. The non‐accountant son wins most of the arguments in this real debate. Laments our getting on someone’s bandwagon too quickly in confirming or rejecting a concept or an approach to doing things. Aims to shed some light on this interesting issue.

In this study it is argued that positive agency theory is a relevant theoretical perspective in studies of the balanced scorecard in business management because agency theory addresses implementation and organizational control issues. If the balanced scorecard is to be applied also in public management, then positive agency theory should be complemented with political economy to incorporate possible implementation and organizational control issues related to political uncertainty, common agency and implementation ambiguity. It is argued that uncritical application of the balanced scorecard in public management could result in dysfunctions common in Soviet‐type, central planning. However, such dysfunctions could be reduced with certain modifications of the balanced scorecard in order to facilitate political competition to a relatively larger extent.

This paper aims to investigate how and why German cost accounting prevails and develops in German multinational organisations despite the various indications in the literature that it will converge towards an anglophone system over time. To analyse this, the authors draw on the ideas of professional practices (Jarzabkowski et al., 2016) and their path dependency (Schreyögg and Sydow, 2011) as a method theory.

The authors deploy an exploratory method using multiple case studies to determine similarities and differences between organisations concerning how cost accounting practices developed over time. They conducted interviews with cost accountants, group controllers and managers of German multinational organisations as well as experts from higher education institutions and consultancies.

This paper shows the path-dependent development of German cost accounting. It identifies self-reinforcing learning and complementary effects that seem to make it inefficient for organisations to deviate from the learned path as well as economic and normative pressures that affect the design of cost accounting systems.

By considering German cost accounting a path-dependent professional practice, this paper illustrates how and why the core of German cost accounting prevails, although organisations make adjustments within the existing structures to respond to the pressures they face. This paper hereby highlights the role of cost accountants in defining (and consequently bringing about or preventing changes to) the design of cost accounting systems.

The design and use of performance measurement systems has received considerable attention in recent years. Many organisations have redesigned their measurement systems to ensure that they reflect their current environment and strategies. However, increasingly the environment in which organisations compete is dynamic and rapidly changing, requiring constant modification of strategies and operations to reflect these changing circumstances. Despite this, few organisations appear to have systematic processes in place to ensure that their performance measurement systems continue to reflect their environment and strategies. This paper presents case study research that investigates what actions organisations can take to ensure that their measurement systems evolve over time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Johnson and Kaplan's claim that “external reporting influences managerial accounting information” in an emerging capital market, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The paper relies on a survey instrument and institutional theory analysis in order to: first, explore accountants' perceptions of the extent to which financial accounting conventions‐based information is utilized, instead of managerial accounting information, in internal decision making; and second, articulate respondents' perception to the UAE's wider social and institutional context expressed in terms of accounting regulars, accountancy profession and partnership with multinational companies.

In line with Johnson and Kaplan's claim and contrary to the studies of Hopper et al., Joseph et al. and Scapens et al., the paper's findings show evidence of financial reporting domination on managerial accounting information in the UAE. Locating such results in a UAE companies social and institutional context, the paper reveals that the activities of regulators and accountancy professionals pay more attention to financial reporting, an issue which contributes towards reinforcing respondents' general perceptions that management accounting is subservient to the demands of financial reporting requirements.

Although the paper's findings trigger the importance of the UAE's institutional context in reinforcing accountants' perceptions, the interaction between financial accounting requirements and managerial accounting information is an area that needs further in‐depth case‐study‐based investigation in emerging market economies.

The paper's findings highlight the type of information that UAE's managers utilize when making decisions. These findings are in the interest of business investors and the accountancy profession that aims at increasing practitioners' professional knowledge.

This is one of few papers that combine survey results and institutional theory analysis to explore whether financial accounting dominates managerial accounting information and, at the same time, provides an understanding of the underlying reasons behind that domination in an emerging market economy such as the UAE.