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Building on the notes prepared for a roundtable organized by qualitative research in accounting & management (QRAM) about the paper titled “Accounting for tacit coordination: The passing of accounts and the broader case for accounting theory” (Vollmer, 2019), this paper aims to extend our understanding of “tacit coordination towards the passing of accounts” and its implications for research on accounting as a social practice.

Building on a selective review of previous studies of accounting “in action” and one illustrative vignette, this paper teases out specific aspects of Vollmer’s argument, which is much broader and ambitious in nature. The aim is to go deeper on one issue – “tacit coordination towards the passing of accounts” and the role of (accounting) practitioners as “stewards of silence” – to encourage further work that unpacks the dynamics and tensions that occur when practitioners seek to tacitly coordinate towards the passing of accounts.

This paper shows how our understanding of the relationship between “tacit coordination” and the “passing of accounts” can be enriched by examining how (accounting) practitioners deal with pressures towards explication. To this end, this paper develops three propositions, which focus on how organizational status, organizational complexity and temporal dynamics may affect the extent to which (accounting) practitioners are able to tacitly coordinate towards the passing of accounts.

The three propositions presented in this paper can be used in future studies to further explore the dynamics of tacit coordination towards the passing of accounts and therefore contribute to a more fine-grained illustration of some of the ideas presented in the paper by Vollmer (2019).

This paper sketches the contours of an approach that has the potential to make some of the ambitious ideas presented in Vollmer’s paper more actionable in future studies.

Complexity, turbulence, and unpredictability have driven the emergence of a new firm's model, namely the extended enterprise (EE). The EE is an emerging business framework, addressing the current challenges related to innovation and competition in complex scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to provide a clear and unambiguous description of the EE, and how it differentiates from the network firm. Moreover the paper discusses also how the EE is evolving and what are the key strategies enabling the EE to attain his goals.

The paper reviews different literature, such as supply‐chain, manufacturing, marketing, innovation, and management with the aim to provide a clear definition of the EE.

This article identifies the key characteristics of the EE, such as opening the innovation process to external innovators, acquiring and redistributing knowledge with different stakeholders, network coevolution, trust, and technologies. Increasingly, it discusses the importance of fostering tacit and explicit knowledge sharing and of aligning values to achieve the goals of the EE.

There are very few papers discussing the characteristics of the EE and they are all outdated. This is one of the first papers that attempts also to identify the governance mechanisms that managers can adopt to achieve the goals of the EE.

The purpose of this paper is primarily methodological. This paper aims to complement the novel sociological argument of Hendrik Vollmer’s paper on tacit coordination of accounting practices with a more familiar theory of accounting practice nexuses that has been stimulating an emerging stream of accounting research. The intention is to suggest some ways in which Vollmer’s ideas can be given traction, especially in field studies of accounting.

This study uses Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory to explore some of the ways in which elements of tacit coordination might be researched in accounting field studies.

Tacit coordination can be understood as a background practice that could operate as a dispersed practice in Schatzki’s sense. A practice theory perspective on tacit coordination is suggestive of a number of ways of studying the meaningful cultural contexts as part of which accounting operates. It emphasises, in particular, the active nature of silent, tacit coordination; attending to general knowledge practical know-how, rules and teleoaffectivity as four determinants of practices as specified by Schatzki; and the materiality of coordination.

It has implications for field research insofar as it heightens the researcher’s awareness of tacit coordination as a potentially important set of practices and suggests a number of approaches for studying them. The main suggestions address some of the ways in which tacit coordination can be identified in field research.

This study reflects on the dispersed or integrated nature of tacit coordination practices in accounting.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to study the relationship between reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) and headquarters’ innovation, examining potential moderators of such relationship, and to analyze the role of headquarters’ absorptive capacity (AC) and the coordination mechanisms they adopt as antecedents of RKT.

Quantitative data were collected from 104 Spanish multinational companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

Findings provide the evidence of a positive relationship between RKT and headquarters’ innovation. This relationship is higher when the knowledge transferred from subsidiaries to parent units is of a more tacit nature, and also when the organizational distance between them is larger. The results also show that the parent unit’s AC and the use of mechanisms for coordinating company units can facilitate RKT.

MNCs that wish to be more innovative should be aware that it is worth the effort of fostering RKT, especially when knowledge is more tacit and comes from subsidiaries with different organizational practices and culture because these two variables increase the positive relationship that it was found between effective RKT and the development of innovation in the headquarters. Additionally, results show that in order to facilitate RKT, the improvement of headquarters’ AC and the use of mechanisms of coordination between them and its subsidiaries can be useful.

Up to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examines the link between RKT and headquarters innovation, and one of the few that focuses on headquarters characteristics as determinants of RKT. Thus, the findings contribute to the literature that highlights the benefits of RKT for MNC’s competitiveness, and that seeks to know how to promote RKT.

The dispute over the benefit of diversity on the transactive memory system (TMS) has attracted the attention with the development of global collaboration. This paper aims to discover how knowledge heterogeneity (KH), categorized as explicit and tacit KH, affects TMS and to test the mediation effect of innovation climate (IC).

Data from a 6-month field study of 207 research and development (R&D) members and 7 expertize observers were analyzed by partial least squares structure equation model. Robustness check and Barron and Kenny mediation test were used to evaluate the model and confirm the mediation effect.

Tacit KH of R&D team negatively influences the development of TMS. Furthermore, IC partially mediates tacit KHs’ negative influence on the development of TMS.

These results distinguish the different influence of explicit and tacit KH on TMS and explore the mediating role of IC that has been confirmed affecting the development of TMS.

These results could motivate practitioners to address more attention to tacit KH, IC and the development of TMS in the R&D team members composition.

This study contributes not only to elucidate the different influence of explicit and tacit KH on TMS but also to the appropriate members composition of R&D team by considering the relationships among KH, IC, TMS and innovation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature by examining the generation of collective tacit knowledge (CTK) in organizations through social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of playful micro-practice carried out by employees.

This paper builds upon socially distributed cognition (SDC) and transactive memory systems (TMS) to analyze SLAs’ contribution to CTK creation in the workplace. These theories provide conceptual underpinnings for comprehending how workers self-organize shared activities to store, retrieve and use each other’s tacit knowledge within the collective. An example is provided to illustrate SLAs’ manifestation in an agile-based software development firm.

SLAs may facilitate collective members’ knowing and learning whereby different solutions are sought and potential tactics to cope with work issues are attuned to changing conditions by the collective members at work. Four moderating factors, namely physical proximity, psychological safety, richness of communication pathways and intensity of interactions, are identified and propositions to conceptualize their role in CTK generation through SLAs are formulated.

SLA players’ efforts to solve dysfunctionalities at work are not merely prompted by interdependencies among work-related tasks but also driven by high levels of social embeddedness and interaction among employees. Managers should become more supportive of collective playful activities in their organizations by building a propitious corporate climate for the mobilization of CTK in the workplace. Understanding SLAs as a soft group device where CTK resides, transits, is enacted and continuously metamorphosed represents an important complement to hard devices offered by information systems.

Relying on the notion of SLAs as a means to cope with work concerns, the authors integrate insights from organizational play, knowledge management, SDC and TMS literatures to advance the authors’ understanding of CTK creation through collective playful undertakings at work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual reflection based on the author’s personal research experience, reading of the literature and contact with the academic education of emerging scholars.

In this reflection on the paper “Accounting for tacit coordination: The passing of accounts and the broader case for accounting theory” (Vollmer, 2019), the author argues that the silences of the qualitative empirical management accounting research process may preclude research from understanding the silences of accounting practitioners and shape the trajectory of the discipline as a whole.

The author presents a slightly exaggerated depiction of the qualitative empirical management accounting research process. From this, the author infers what impedes empirically studying unorthodox phenomena such as the silences of accounting practitioners.

The author offers a critical perspective on the author’s own research process, using accounting silences as way of reflecting on the potential and limitations of empirical research. Finally, the author makes tentative suggestions for opening up the standard research process.

This chapter argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The chapter presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value for firms and discusses how intra-firm geographic mobility can create value for individual workers. The chapter concludes by presenting a future research agenda for intra-firm geographic mobility in light of emerging phenomena such as global collaborative patenting by multinationals, temporary colocation of knowledge workers, and nonstandard work.

Plus Factors have long played an important role in inferring a price agreement from the totality of the evidence. In response to changes in the case law, economists have proposed two alternative paths for the future of price fixing analysis. This paper evaluates the suggested approaches and recommends retaining the enhanced Plus Factor methodology.

By carefully defining the Plus Factor concept, three key components of the analysis emerge: (1) information on communications associated with the alleged agreement, (2) economic considerations affecting market competition, and (3) characteristics that serve to differentiate explicit from tacit collusion.

Developments rationalizing the Plus Factor concept show promise, as the methodology is not more closely related to economic theory. On the other hand, replacement of the Plus Factor methodology with one focused on market performance seems problematic. By abandoning the Plus Factor concept, the economist loses a key institutional constraint on over-aggressive enforcement.

Until advocates can address the difficulties associated with using performance evidence to identify price fixing, the standard Plus Factor concept appears more appropriate. Thus, antitrust analysts should continue to use the Plus Factor methodology to infer agreements in price fixing investigations, as long as the economic rationalization of the specific Plus Factor is clearly presented.

The paper synthesizes a number of recent contributions to the price fixing literature and addresses key issues of interest to the enforcement community. By providing a critique of the proposed policy shift to use performance evidence to infer price fixing liability, the study serves to justify continued application of the Plus Factor methodology.

This paper synthesizes the extant geographically distributed work literature, focusing on how geographic distribution affects coordination and communication, knowledge sharing, work design, and social identity. Geographically distributed audit arrangements, such as group audits and offshoring, are becoming increasingly prevalent in audit practice. However, little empirically is known about how working across cities, countries, and continents affects auditors, the audit process, or audit quality. To this end, the synthesis seeks to stimulate research investigating the implications of geographically distributed work arrangements in auditing, by surveying the extant literature within the management and social psychology disciplines and developing eighteen research questions for future audit research to consider. The synthesis reveals that geographically distributed audit work is likely to be very different from work performed in more traditional arrangements and therefore cannot be treated by audit researchers, practitioners, or standard setters as replications of domestic processes abroad. As a result, the synthesis focuses on building a greater understanding of the changes in day-to-day auditing, the consequences of such changes, and interventions that may moderate the challenges encountered in geographically distributed audit arrangements.