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Cost overruns remain a persistent problem in the construction industry. Although various cost management strategies have been implemented, innovative approaches are still required. Therefore, the authors attempted to introduce and test a new cost management strategy for the construction industry.

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is one such method whose effectiveness has been proven in different industries over many years. Therefore, the authors initially developed two different frameworks related to the integration of ZBB into a multinational construction contractor and the application process of ZBB for a construction project in this study. Then, the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed frameworks are tested via an actual field study in a mega construction project.

The results show savings of 0.81% of the total project budget and 4.74% of the focused cost items by following the ZBB framework compared to the traditionally estimated project budget. The feedback received from the employees in the construction company shows that ZBB could be efficiently implemented during ongoing construction projects.

The authors believe that implementing new cost management strategies such as ZBB will open doors to deal with the complex cost overrun issues and improve construction cost performances.

This manuscript is the first actual application of the ZBB cost management approach in the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how hierarchical accountability can be enacted and accounting control systems mobilized in a way that promotes a sense of felt responsibility.

The paper draws on interviews, shadowing and observations to explore the implementation of a strategy for “increasing accountability” in a Norwegian Oil Company. The case provided an opportunity to explore the dynamics of hierarchical accountability and felt responsibility, and in particular Roberts (2009) concept of “intelligent accountability”, in an empirical context.

The case study explores how the strategy of increasing accountability at OilCo was enacted around three operational issues; the control of costs, roles and relationships in the complex matrix structure, and the operation of the management system. It traces how the long history of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy in OilCo resulted both in an explicit recognition of the incompleteness of accounting numbers, and trust-based practices which avoided many of the dysfunctional individual and organizational effects typically associated with the exercise of hierarchical control.

The paper explores empirically how OilCo’s embrace of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy had created the conditions under which a more intelligent form of accountability could emerge. As a European case study, it calls into question the Anglo-American tradition of accounting research which suggests that externally imposed accountability within a hierarchy mitigates against employees’ felt responsibility.

This study aims to present the cost and revenue efficiency evaluation models in data envelopment analysis in the presence of fuzzy inputs, outputs and their prices that the prices are also fuzzy. This study applies the proposed approach in the energy sector of the oil industry.

This study proposes a value-based technology according to fuzzy input-cost and revenue-output data, and based on this technology, the authors propose an approach to calculate fuzzy cost and revenue efficiency based on a directional distance function approach. These papers incorporated a decision-maker’s (DM) a priori knowledge into the fuzzy cost (revenue) efficiency analysis.

This study shows that the proposed approach obtains the components of fuzzy numbers corresponding to fuzzy cost efficiency scores in the interval [0, 1] corresponding to each of the decision-making units (DMUs). The models presented in this paper satisfies the most important properties: translation invariance, translation invariance, handle with negative data. The proposed approach obtains the fuzzy efficient targets corresponding to each DMU.

In the proposed approach, by selecting the appropriate direction vector in the model, we can incorporate preference information of the DM in the process of evaluating fuzzy cost or revenue efficiency and this shows the efficiency of the method and the advantages of the proposed model in a fully fuzzy environment.

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

A qualitative case study was carried out at a multinational company using mainly interviews for the data collection that were analysed from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

This paper finds that the company deals with a series of paradoxes while managing the kaizen process. Efficiency and quality paradoxes are the basis for starting kaizen projects. Furthermore, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation, emerge in these processes, and paradoxes relate to how spontaneous ideas emerge in a deliberated context of cost-saving objectives. The supply chain finance team coordinates kaizen projects with the collaboration of plant managers, promoting the paradox of autonomy and control. In addition, as kaizen mobilises and enrols the actors, some trials of strength emerge, showing actors who oppose the kaizen network and create competing networks that mutually exist in the firm.

This study presents valuable insights for professionals to successfully implement kaizen methodologies that take advantage of developing a network for problem-solving in organizations.

This study highlights the supply chain finance team's role in enrolling the actors within a network built by practitioners engaged in kaizen projects. Usually, engineers, quality, or manufacturing teams lead kaizen projects, and only occasionally, accounting and financial teams participate, including multidisciplinary teams.

This study aims to evaluate the quality of the energy efficiency disclosures made by Australian cities. As cities are significant energy users, and energy use is a crucial source of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency initiatives can play an essential role in addressing climate change. Yet, little is understood about the energy efficiency disclosures being made.

The authors developed an original energy efficiency disclosure index to assess the reporting quality of the eight largest Australian cities. The websites of these cities were analysed for information on energy efficiency measures from December 2018 to June 2019. Annual reports, environmental reports, climate action plans and any other material related to energy plans were downloaded and then coded using the index.

While all cities provided energy efficiency information, little financial information was provided, limited forward-looking information was disclosed, key challenges were not disclosed, and each city provided energy efficiency disclosures differently. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that public accountability is limited.

An important implication is the need to standardise and improve cities’ energy efficiency reporting, especially concerning financial information. Cities, governments and the Carbon Disclosure Project (formerly the CDP) could achieve this, perhaps as part of the broader update of the CDP city-focused guidelines for greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting.

Although some studies on GHG reporting by cities have already been undertaken, including energy efficiency as part of their disclosure index, no study has focused on energy efficiency disclosures. The authors provide original insights concerning these practices. The study also provides an energy efficiency disclosure index that can be used in further research.

Australian agriculture is facing increasingly uncertain weather patterns which is impacting financial performance, exacerbated by worsening terms of trade and a decline in commodity prices. Increasing the resilience and adaptive capacity of the primary production sector is of key importance. Governments and farmer groups often depict technology adoption as the salvation of farming, frequently ignoring the importance of decision-making processes and soft information skills and needs. The purpose of this study is to explore farmer decision-making and resilience and, in doing so, address ongoing challenges with soft information, including the inaccessibility of accounting data and a lack of awareness of its formal role in strategic decisions.

Drawing on a strategic choice perspective, we explore the links between farmer characteristics, attitudes, technology orientation, decision-making and financial performance to investigate how accounting data and tools could better support growers’ adaptive capacity. Detailed on-farm interviews were conducted with 25 grape growers across the Riverland in South Australia, with information thematically and descriptively analysed.

Results show that farmers with low operating profit margins spend double the time making decisions and struggle with minimising variable costs, especially water costs. Lower profit growers were also less likely to perceive climate change as a threat and demonstrated lower resilience.

The results highlight the potential for accountants to make more use of data-driven technological advances and for this information to be used to enhance on-farm strategic decision-making and support innovative business models. Simply packaged biophysical and financial data could also support strategic decisions and adaptation of farmers struggling to make a profit.

The research problem in this study is how a client (as a project owner) should organise early stakeholder involvement and integration in the front-end phase of a project. This study aims to create normative managerial statements as propositions from the client's perspective and to combine them into a set of activities enabling efficient organisation in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project.

Action design research (ADR) was carried out in a large hospital construction project where the first author acted as an “involved researcher” and the other authors acted as “outside researchers”.

The authors created seven normative managerial propositions that were verified by the case project stakeholders and developed a managerial framework describing the client's essential stakeholder involvement and integration activities in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project based on these propositions. The authors have also depicted the subphases of the front-end phase: value definition phase in the client permanent organisation, value proposition phase in the client Programme Management Office (PMO) and finally development phase in the alliance organisation ending on the final investment decision.

The collaborative contract delivery model enables the early involvement and integration of stakeholders. It has been somewhat surprising to note the extent to which collaborative contracts change the client role in the project front-end. The results offer practical activities for how clients can manage front-end activities in collaborative contracts.

The case project offered a platform to analyse how the collaborative contract delivery model changes the emphasis of activities in the front-end of a project. One of the key benefits of collaborative contracts is that development, design and delivery occur partially in parallel, thereby enabling contributions from production to be included in the design and development. The benefit of having a real-life case under study provides the possibility to triangulate and analyse rich data, however limited by the qualitative case method.

This paper aims to identify and discuss insights from the business model field on the creation and delivery of value to customers that provide new thinking in relation to the strategic management accounting field.

The customer emphases exhibited in parts of the extant strategic management accounting literature are highlighted and amplified using insights from the business model literature, including those relating to value propositions, customer value creation and delivery and meeting customers’ value expectations.

The paper demonstrates that in addition to providing valuable insights for accounting to management, an extended strategic management accounting concept enables accounting and reporting to customers, now identified as major stakeholders, in the context of integrated reporting.

Through its customer resonances, the paper affirms strategic management accounting’s practical utility for organisations seeking a strong position in highly competitive marketplaces, via the addition of a focus on accounting to customers.

The paper’s use of insights from the business model literature further reinforces the view that strategic management accounting potentially constitutes a pivotal development within both managerial and financial accounting and reporting.

This paper aims to investigate the law and logic mechanism of management control matching pattern and company strategy aggressiveness under different strategies by textual analysis, based on the empirical data of Chinese A-share listed companies during the period from 2010 to 2018. Additional analyses further investigate the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty and R&D intensity on the relationship between management control matching type and strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method system with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical reference for the matching mode of dual control.

This paper uses the text analysis method. The main explanatory variables are analyzed using the computer SQL Server database software through the relevant text of the board of directors report in the company annual report. Other financial data came from the CSMAR database, excluding ST and PT and companies with missing data, and 16,902 samples were finally obtained. This paper conducted statistical analysis through Stata12.

This paper shows that the matching pattern between formal and informal control is divided into three types. They have different impacts on strategy aggressiveness. Specifically, consistent matching type II significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of offensive strategy. Consistent matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of defensive strategy. Complementary matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of analytical strategy. Additional analyses find that compared with non-high-tech companies, high-tech companies have more significant influence on the relationship between management control matching pattern and company strategic aggressiveness. And compared with other two “strategy-control” matching patterns, both environmental uncertainty and product innovation have more significant influence on the relationship between consistent matching II and offensive strategy aggressiveness.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper divides the formal and informal control matching patterns of management control into three categories for the first time. It examines the relationship between the formal and informal control matching of management accounting and the degree of strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion provides new empirical evidence to promote the effective implementation of development strategies for companies. It can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method systems with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical references for the matching mode of dual control.

This study aims to discover a practical and effective way to apply the quality cost concept in Strategic Cost Management (SCM) framework. The interaction of preventive, appraisal and failure (PAF) activities in a company's internal value chain will be the starting point of SCM implementation.

This study begins by establishing value chain and quality costs as the scope of conceptual analysis. Discussions on the interrelationships between activities, quality and costs were gathered to clarify conceptual and practical gaps in the scope of the study. The PAF quality cost model is applied to find viable, practical solutions. The costs of activities will serve as performance indicators.

The PAF quality cost model depicts opportunities to lower costs and increase profit in a business simultaneously; current poor quality costs are the benchmark. Identifying PAF activities and costs in the business value chain and linking it with others is crucial in evaluating SCM applications. These linkages will generate a Quality Cost Chain (QCC). The leading indicator of improvement is a higher ratio between new possible failure costs (FC) and the combination of prevention and appraisal costs (PAC) than the current value, followed by a lower total quality cost (TQC). The subsequent attention is a lower ratio between the appraisal cost (AC) and prevention cost (PC). Mathematically, for assessing the operability of new quality-related activities, ΔPAC_new < ΔFC_new, TQC_new < TQC_current, (FC/PC)_new>(FC/PC)_current and (AC/PC)_new<(AC/PC)_current are proposed as feasible conditional-quantitative improvement criteria.

This study only discusses the relationship between quality costs and activities related to quality management in the PAF quality cost model, not cost behavior. This limitation opens up opportunities for future research that intends to link QCC with cost behavior in the context of managerial accounting and Strategic Cost Management. The use of QCC in certain industrial areas is the next research opportunity. The variety of PAF activities this study addresses originates from a wide range of industrial sectors; QCC research by sector may produce unique industrial quality cost phenomena.

QCC will make it easier for managers to evaluate how strategically their departments or activities contribute to quality costs at the departmental or organizational level, as well as to effectively and efficiently improve quality cost performance.

The quality-related activity and quality cost issues are still rarely treated as subjects of research studies in the field of Strategic Cost Management. Even so, the discussion tends to be very broad, complex and difficult to apply. This study combines a simple diagrammatic and mathematical approach to simplify the discussion and, at the same time, manage the value of strategic quality management.