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This study locates one surprisingly powerful ally of neoliberalism enabling its proliferation in certain contexts, the discursive notion of the “long term” (LT). Earlier literature has shown that neoliberalism is concerned with investors' decision-making that has been claimed to be based on LT forecasts. This research explains this focus on the “long term.”

Share-based compensation (SBC) is investigated in one case company. The data consist of interviews with executives, board members, analysts and owners and also of archival data on the executives' performance measurement and compensation.

Much research equates “share-based compensation” with “long-term compensation,” and the present study terms this relation “the myth of long-term compensation.” It is demonstrated that multiple features of share-based plans, characteristics of the management in question and contextual factors of the company and its governance tie in with the time orientation of such compensation. Multiple contradictions and irregularities in the literature on SBC are analyzed, undermining the claim that SBC is invariably LT oriented. Relying on Barthes' work, the study illustrates how LT SBC is a myth contributing to the ideology of neoliberalism.

It is proposed that the terms “share-based compensation” and “long term” be distinguished from each other for analytical and practical purposes. SBC, and thus neoliberalism, can sometimes be linked to the short term.

“Long term” is illustrated as a significant instrument for deploying ideologies.

The temporality of performance measurement systems has been claimed to affect actors’ time orientation, such as that of listed company managers. The purpose of this paper is to explore this view.

The study uses constructivist data gathered from executives in one listed and one non-listed company.

The study shows that the research on performance measurement is based on a linear-quantitative view on time that assumes that humans orient towards the future from one point, the present; this view excludes other time-related constructs, particularly the past, and highlights a choice between the short term and the long term, idealising the long term. It is shown that the performance measurement of non-listed company executives is constructed through past-based, present-based and future-based rationalities: executives acknowledge the past as a basis for present and future performance, present actions as shaping future performance and future plans and performance targets as bases for present actions. Listed company executives’ performance measurement is constructed predominantly through the present-based time rationality.

“The orientation from the present” and the “short” and “long terms” could be enhanced with time rationalities.

The evaluation periods within performance measurement systems do not determine the time orientations of the actors subjected to those systems; time rationalities could be considered when designing such systems.

The paper provides a novel view on performance measurement and time.

Purpose – This research presents empirical evidence on which performance measures are perceived as short-term oriented and long-term oriented by company executives, and on whether any perceived performance measure-related time orientation affects the time orientation of these executives. In addition, the study explores which measures impact executive time orientation, regardless of how these measures are perceived.

Methodology/approach – A survey was used to collect the perceptions of chief financial officers (CFOs) in 109 companies listed in the Nasdaq OMX, the Nordic Stock Exchange. Performance measures include: stock price, earnings, returns, cash flow, success of development programs, EVA™, sales, and balanced scorecard, and the method employed was multiple regression.

Findings – First, the CFOs perceived returns, sales, EPS, and stock price to have long time orientation. Second, the use of returns, stock price, and success of development programs as major performance measures encourage the CFOs toward long-term behavior, whereas the use of cash flow encourages short-term behavior. Third, stock price, earnings, and EPS are measures whose perceived time orientation affects the time orientation of executives. It is most likely due to this influence, that they have received major attention in public debates on the short time orientation of executives at the expense of other, more “silent” measures that also impact executive time orientation. Contextual factors strongly affect the results.

Practical implications – The study assists in designing executive performance measurement systems that encourage desired time orientation.

Originality/value – This study contributes to the fields of performance measurement and time orientation by recognizing the multidimensionality of the construct of time orientation and by showing how performance measures and their perceived time orientation influence executive time orientation.

This paper seeks to elaborate on how subject positions promoting shareholder value are infused with an outcome focus.

The study employs Foucault's perspectives on government and the interrelations between objectivity and subjectivity in the analysis of in‐depth case data gathered in one shareholder value‐oriented‐listed company and one non‐listed company.

The outside financial market discipline that objectifies shareholder value‐oriented company executives makes them subjects in their own organisation, allowing them to redirect discipline onwards and thereby objectify their subordinates. The non‐listed company executives, due to the relatively closed governance structure of their company and the lack of outside ownership, are not subject to such continuous outside discipline; they lack the same access to the means to create tangible outcomes within their organisations. The subject positions promoting shareholder value are focused on outcomes, whereas the non‐listed company subject positions are focused on processes.

The subject positions of actors within different types of non‐listed companies and listed companies without a shareholder focus form a target for future studies.

The study contributes to the literatures on manager subject position formation and shareholder value. These contributions are achieved by uncovering a novel consequence of subject position formation and by revealing a mechanism by which outcome focus is tied with shareholder value.

One stream of research has claimed share price to be long‐term oriented, whereas, in contrast, another has found it to be short‐term oriented. Through in‐depth analysis, this study aims to reveal the grounds for each of these two claims by studying the time‐related constructs of two parties: executives of a company and outsider commentators of that company.

The study employs a social constructionist approach and incorporates the sociology of time in the analysis of case data focused on a publicly quoted company. Data drawn from outsider commentators provide additional focus.

The executives studied in the publicly‐quoted company construct share price as long‐term oriented through three processes: linguistic, practice‐oriented functional, and morality‐related functional. However, these executives construct time through a present‐based rationality, which means that effective and efficient present actions are assumed to form the basis for a successful future. Outsider commentators indicate two myopia‐related risks in this rationality: current, present day pressing issues are not deliberated upon in a wider framework of long‐term plans, and it is not possible to relinquish the present and focus only on the future, free from present concerns. The long‐term orientation of share price is constructed by executives as instrumental through processes that are tied to the present‐based rationality with its myopia‐related risks.

By showing the long and short time orientations of share price, the paper provides grounds for a subsequent analysis of the origins of these orientations within the minds of actors.

The study provides guidance on avoiding myopia when using share price‐related compensation systems.

The study contributes to the performance measurement and corporate governance literatures by analysing, for the first time, share price from the perspective of executives themselves. In addition, the views of outsider commentators are considered.

Facing the challenges posed by the pandemic of COVID-19, this paper aims to contribute to the resilience of businesses through the development of a real options approach (ROA) that provides alternatives and opportunities for a decision process under situations when future events and outcomes are unknown and not capable of being known from current information.

This paper involves a stochastic modelling process in generating a set of absolute option values, using available data and scenarios from the COVID-19 pandemic event. The modelling and simulations using ROA suggest how strategic portfolios resolve the growing problem during the endemic to all but in the most isolated societies.

This study finds the emergent correlation between circuit breakers and lockdowns, which have brought about a “distorted gravity” effect (inverse growth of global businesses and trades). However, “time-to-build” real options (i.e. deferral, expand, switch and compound exchange) start to function in the adaptive-transformative capabilities for growth opportunities of both government and corporate sectors. Significantly, some sectors grow faster than others while the compound exchange remains primarily challenging. Clearly, the government and corporate sectors are entangled, inevitably, the decoherence allows for the former to change uncertainty in the latter; therefore, government sector options change option values in the corporate sector.

The ROA by empirically focusing on both government and corporate sectors demonstrates under conditions of uncertainty how options in decision-making generate opportunities that hitherto have not been recognised and exercised upon by research in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, the ROA provides an insightful concatenation (capability–behaviour approach) that drives resilience.

The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the philosophical and practical compatibility of actor-network theory (ANT) and interventionist research (IVR) and search for explanations for their scant combined use. The scope of investigation is limited to accounting, management and organization studies (MOS), but the findings are believed to be applicable in other social sciences as well.

An analysis is conducted of accounting and MOS research in addition to interviewing eight accounting scholars who have applied IVR and/or ANT in their research.

A comparison of the philosophical and other features of ANT and IVR suggests that they should be relatively easily combinable in studies. Based on interview material, three types of barriers to combining ANT and IVR are identified: perceived epistemological incompatibility, fear of going native or losing neutrality and academic tribes. However, subsequent analysis indicates that none of these forms an insurmountable obstacle to the combination.

The combined application of ANT and IVR could benefit both IVR and ANT researchers in management accounting as it would enable them to conduct theoretically grounded studies on dynamic processes, such as the emergence and implementation of accounting innovations, to pose original research questions and to find new perspectives to accounting phenomena.

Employing ANT and IVR in combination could increase organizational interest in management accounting research.

The paper contributes to the discussion on the compatibility of different research approaches and highlights ways in which researchers could benefit from combining ANT and IVR.