Search results

This paper aims to examine the design and use of scenarios in planning and management control processes.

The study is based on an exploratory case-study approach. Qualitative data have been collected between 2008 and 2011 from three energy companies operating in Italy.

The paper sheds light on three styles of designing and using scenarios. In the first (called “reactive”), scenarios provide a means for corporate actors to analyse past performance in the light of future expected performance. In the second (“proactive”), scenarios contribute to envision different future states of the world. In the third (“disciplined”), scenarios contribute to develop plausible, if not accurate, narratives about future outcomes.

The study is comparative and exploratory. Possible areas for further work based on in-depth studies of scenarios within planning and control processes are identified.

The comparative analysis of the case-study material has implications for the ways in which flexible forms of management control can be mobilised by managers as a resource of action. It is shown that choices around the design and use of scenarios can mitigate some concerns with traditional planning and management control processes focused on the achievement of a single set of targets, but also raise new ones.

The paper sheds light on a scenario-based approach – called “disciplined flexibility” – that avoids the restrictive nature of budgetary controls without losing the benefits of setting a plan and a target for the future. The paper outlines elements that may support the use of “disciplined flexibility”, but also its potential limitations.

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.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.

Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.

The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.

Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

Fin dal primo sorgere del Governo regionale autonomo in Sicilia si è guardato al problema del turismo come ad uno dei problemi fondamentali — se non addirittura a quello essenziale — della nostra economia isolana.

This chapter explores the ways in which a large-scale accounting system, known as Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting and Compliance, contributes to the construction and organization of a new market for recreational cannabis in the US state of Colorado. Mobilizing the theoretical lenses provided by the literature on market devices, on the one hand, and infrastructure, on the other hand, the authors identify and unpack a changing relationship between accounting and state control through which accounting and markets unfold. The authors describe this movement in terms of a distinction between knowing devices and thinking infrastructures. In the former, the authors show that regulators and other authorities perform the market by making it legible for the purpose of intervention, taxation and control. In the latter, thinking infrastructures, an ecology of interacting devices is made and remade by a variety of intermediaries, disclosing the boundaries and possibilities of the market, and constituting both opportunities for innovation and domination through “protocol.”

In this paper, we investigate the process by which social control agents define wrongdoing over time and the principles they employ in drawing the boundary between right and wrong. We empirically examine how Italian state actors sought over four decades to categorize behaviors in the so-called “gray area,” i.e., the conduct of individuals supportive of the mafia organization Cosa Nostra and its criminal aims, but not members of the organization. Based on an archival analysis of texts produced since the 1960s, we reconstruct how state actors started from a preliminary definition of wrongdoing, moved to stigmatize the behaviors in question on moral grounds, and ultimately criminalized them with legal sanctions. We conceptualize the main principles behind this evolving categorization as intentionality of conduct, freedom of choice, and scope of harm. The paper contributes to the debate on the factors and conditions shaping the definition of wrongdoing over time and the contribution that social control agents provide to this aim.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a qualitative analysis of change in order to understand which factors inhibit or, conversely, facilitate the enactment process of managers' performance appraisal and reward systems.

The problem is investigated empirically through a multiple case study approach. The change processes that result from the adoption of performance appraisal and reward systems in six Italian central government institutions are illustrated in detail.

The cases reveal differentiated patterns of organizational change and lead to a problematic overview. The desired technical and cultural organisational transformations are limited by an interplay of organisational and wider environment forces.

The findings are based on data from the Italian central government, and as such are not directly extendable elsewhere, although they may result to be of interest to other public sector organisations.

The paper offers a comprehensive view of organisational change processes, ranging from the initial decision to adopt a managerial instrument to the final use of this instrument. A theoretical framework combining two, apparently diverging approaches, neoinstitutionalism and organisational change management, is used to better understand the plural factors that influence the change processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of managerial innovations in the public sector, identifying the reasons why their uptake and use may fail.

The problem is investigated empirically through a case study approach. The change processes resulting from the adoption of two managerial innovations within the same Italian Central Government Institution are illustrated in detail.

Both cases represent a failure in the adoption and use of managerial innovations, attributable to a complex interplay of external and organisational forces. The empirical investigation points out the relevancy of individuals' actions and choices. The real explanation for the failure of both projects in fact seems to be key individuals' inability: first to “make sense” of what the innovation was about and second to communicate this “sense” throughout the organisation.

The findings are based on data from the Italian Central Government, and as such are not extendable elsewhere. However, the mechanisms of change examined here may be of wider interest to other public sector organisations.

The paper analyses a real‐world attempt to deploy managerial innovations in the public sector, and the resultant impact. A theoretical framework based on institutional theory and its recent advances is used to better understand the plural factors influencing the use of managerial innovations.