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Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as competition laws and austerity policies.

We performed a field study from 2007 to 2015 in a regional hub in Finland and worked with data from document analysis, interviews and meeting observations. We have used embedded research design, where we apply methodological bracketing as well as composite sequence analysis for field research.

Accountability declined when irresistible external structures were the dominant influence on the unreflective actions of agents-in-focus. With time, however, the agents started acting critically by drawing on structures that could facilitate strategic actions to stabilise political accountability.

The field research and interpretation of the data were limited to the organisation analysed; however, the theoretical arguments allow for analytical generalisations.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible change in external structures.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible changes in external structures.

The study locates political accountability in the context of strong structuration theory and discusses how it is redefined by external structures.

This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

This study aims to acknowledge that most Indonesian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience slow growth. It highlighted that this sluggishness is because of some falsification of Indonesia’s ecological psychology. It focuses on investigating the situated cognition that probably supports this falsification, such as affordance, a community of practice, embodiment and the legitimacy of peripheral participation situated cognition and social intelligence theories.

This study obtained data from published newspapers between October 2016 and February 2019. The authors used the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis and the J48 C.45 algorithm. The authors analyzed the data using the emergence of news probability for both the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Indonesian society and the situated cognition concerning the improvement of the SMEs. The authors inferred ecological psychology from these published newspapers in Indonesia that the engaged actions were still suppressed, in comparison with being and doing.

This study contributes to the innovation and leadership policies of the SMEs’ managerial systems and the GoI. After this study identified the backward-looking practices, which the GoI and the people of Indonesia held, this study recommended some policies to help create a forward-looking orientation. The second one is also a policy for the GoI, which needs to reduce the discrepancy between the signified and the signifier, as recommended by the structuralist theory. The last one is suggested by the social learning theory; policies are needed that relate to developing the SMEs’ beliefs, attitudes and behavior. It means that the GoI should prepare the required social contexts, which are in motoric production and reinforcement. Explicitly, the authors argue that the GoI facilitates SMEs by emphasizing the internal learning process.

The authors present some possibilities for the limitations of this research. The authors took into account that this study assumes the SMEs are all the same, without industrial clustering. It considers that the need for social learning and social cognition by the unclustered industries is equal. Second, the authors acknowledge that Indonesia is an emerging country, and its economic structure has three levels of contributors; the companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, then the SMEs and the lowest level is the underground economy. Third, the authors did not distinguish the levels of success for the empowerment programs that are conducted by either the GoI or the local governments. This study recognizes that the authors did not measure success levels. It means that the authors only focused on the knowledge content.

From these pieces of evidence, this study constructed its strategies. The authors offer three kinds of policies. The first is the submission of special allocation funds from which the GoI and local governments develop their budgets for the SMEs’ social learning and social cognition. The second is the development of social learning and social cognition’s curricula for both the SMEs’ owners and executive officers. The third is the need for a national knowledge repository for all the Indonesian SMEs. This repository is used for the dissemination of knowledge.

This study raises argumental novelties with some of the critical reasoning. First, the authors argue that the sluggishness of the Indonesian SMEs is because of some fallacies in their social cognition. This social cognition is derived from the cultural knowledge that the GoI and people of Indonesia disclosed in the newspapers. This study shows the falsifications from the three main perspectives of the structuration, structuralist and social learning theories. Second, this study can elaborate on the causal factor for the sluggishness of Indonesia’s SMEs, which can be explained by philosophical science, especially its fallacies (Hundleby, 2010; Magnus and Callender, 2004). The authors expand the causal factors for each gap in every theory, which determined the SMEs’ sluggishness through the identification of inconsistencies in each dimension of their structuration, structuralism and social learning. This study focused on the fallacy of philosophical science that explains the misconceptions about the SMEs’ improvement because of faulty reasoning, which causes the wrong moves to be made in the future (Dorr, 2017; Pielke, 1999).

The purpose of this paper is to better understand how and why adoption and implementation of healthcare IT innovations occur. The authors examine two IT applications, computerised physician order entry (CPOE) and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) at the meso and micro levels, within the context of the National Programme for IT in the English National Health Service (NHS).

To analyse these multi-level dynamics, the authors blend Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory (DoIT) with Webster’s sociological critique of technological innovation in medicine and healthcare systems to illuminate a wider range of interacting factors. Qualitative data collected between 2004 and 2006 uses semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 72 stakeholders across four English NHS hospital trusts.

Overall, PACS was more successfully implemented (fully or partially in three out of four trusts) than CPOE (implemented in one trust only). Factors such as perceived benefit to users and attributes of the application – in particular speed, ease of use, reliability and flexibility and levels of readiness – were highly relevant but their influence was modulated through interaction with complex structural and relational issues.

Results reveal that combining contextual system level theories with DoIT increases understanding of real-life processes underpinning implementation of IT innovations within healthcare. They also highlight important drivers affecting success of implementation, including socio-political factors, the social body of practice and degree of “co-construction” between designers and end-users.

The originality of the study partly rests on its methodological innovativeness and its value on critical insights afforded into understanding complex IT implementation programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to expose the playout of power dynamics when a new business intelligence (BI) system is implemented in a central pharmacy department in a National Health Service (NHS) hospital. The authors aim to explore the assumptions, experiences and actions of organisational stakeholders and ascertain how different professional groups obtain influence, power and control during this process.

In this research the authors employ structuration theory (ST), to establish how and where domination is achieved. To achieve this, the authors investigate the production and reproduction of structure as part of a longitudinal assessment using interviews and questionnaires.

Constant renewal and evolution are crucial in the implementation of a BI system. During the process of implementation and change many stakeholders resent the change. Disempowering these users leads to new power structures led by BI analysts.

The findings from this paper can help strengthen implications of BI systems implementation and better understand the impact these systems have on wider stakeholders. With coherent communication and an engaged attitude new BI systems can be implemented without alienating the key user stakeholders.

This paper differs from other papers by advocating that new systems and processes alter individual power structures in organisations, disrupting internal dynamics and introducing new aspects of control and dominance.

The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope to enliven the debates of the past and future developments in terms of context, themes, theories, methods and impacts in the field of PSAR by the exchanges they include here.

This polyphonic paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach. It brings into conversation ideas, views and approaches of several scholars on the actual and future developments of PSAR in various contexts, and explores potential implications.

This paper has brought together scholars from a plurality of disciplines, research methods and geographical areas, showing at the same time several points of convergence on important future themes (such as accounting as a mean for public, accounting, hybridity and value pluralism) and enabling conditions (accounting capabilities, profession and digitalisation) for PSA scholarship and practice, and the richness of looking at them from a plurality of perspectives.

Exploring these past and future developments opens up the potential for interesting theoretical insights. A much greater theoretical and practical reconsideration of PSAR will be fostered by the exchanges included here.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the interdisciplinary research community interested in PSAR in various contexts. The discussion perspectives presented in this paper constitute not only a basis for further research in this relevant accounting area on the role, status and developments of PSAR but also creative potential for practitioners to be more reflective on their practices and also intended and united outcomes of such practices.

Looking at the limits of artificial intelligence (AI) and controlling based on complexity and system-theoretical deliberations, the authors aimed to derive a future outlook of the possible applications and provide insights into a future complementary of human–machine information processing. Derived from these examples, the authors propose a research agenda in five areas to further the field.

This article is conceptual in its nature, yet a theoretically informed semi-systematic literature review from various disciplines together with empirically validated future research questions provides the background of the overall narration.

AI is found to be severely limited in its application to controlling and is discussed from the perspectives of complexity and cybernetics. A total of three such limits, namely the Bremermann limit, the problems with a partial detectability and controllability of complex systems and the inherent biases in the complementarity of human and machine information processing, are presented as salient and representative examples. The authors then go on and carefully illustrate how a human–machine collaboration could look like depending on the specifics of the task and the environment. With this, the authors propose different angles on future research that could revolutionise the application of AI in accounting leadership.

Future research on the value promises of AI in controlling needs to take into account physical and computational effects and may embrace a complexity lens.

AI may have severe limits in its application for accounting and controlling because of the vast amount of information in complex systems.

The research agenda consists of five areas that are derived from the previous discussion. These areas are as follows: organisational transformation, human–machine collaboration, regulation, technological innovation and ethical considerations. For each of these areas, the research questions, potential theoretical underpinnings as well as methodological considerations are provided.

The paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the impact of IFRS adoption on the value relevance of accounting information in the emerging market of Saudi Arabia.

The sample consists of 98 non-financial listed firms operating in Saudi Arabia from 2014 to 2019, representing the years before and after IFRS adoption. The authors apply basic and extended price models to examine the value relevance of select accounting figures.

The authors findings provide evidence that accounting information is, generally, value relevant to the Saudi Arabian capital market. However, mixed results exist for particular accounting variables. Both earnings and cash flows are value-relevant in the period before and after IFRS adoption; equity is only relevant in the post-adoption period. Furthermore, IFRS adoption also increases the explanatory power of earnings. An increase in the value relevance of earnings and equity hurts the value relevance of cash flows. The effects are moderated by leverage and dividend policy.

The authors contribute to the ongoing discussion of the economic effects of IFRS adoption in emerging markets. The empirical findings show that initial concerns about IFRS adoption, as reflected by the negative coefficient within the regression analysis, are mitigated once the usefulness of the individual accounting variables published in financial statements is investigated.