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Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of performance evolve with the managerial accounting practices.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The study explored the performance measures used at a bank focused on the development and sustainability initiatives in Africa. Thirty-two semistructured interviews were conducted with directors, managers, and analysts from nine different categories of job families.

Findings – Analysis shows that managers assimilate a comprehensive, multifaceted measurement system to understand the creation and delivery of sustainable value. The results show that the managerial accounting practices adapt to incorporate an integrated set of performance measures that afford sustainable value to the stakeholders. The findings provide rich insights into how the managers adapt their information assimilation practices to the changing demands of the different stakeholders and adopt practices which innovate measures of performance that are aligned to the strategic goals. Finally, the findings illustrate that the interplay between strategic performance and managerial accounting practices has the potential to improve or inhibit sustainable development.

Originality/Value – Little is known about how performance measures evolve, and how they interplay with the managerial accounting practices within organizations. This study reveals that the interplay of strategic performance measurement and managerial accounting can only be understood in the confluence of organizational change and sustainability. While acknowledging the need to embrace change and sustainability simultaneously, the study offers insights into the dynamics of change – the duality of emergent managerial accounting practices and the evolution of strategic performance measurement systems.

This research investigates the introduction of accounting practices into small family businesses, based on socioemotional wealth theory.

A multiple-case study was conducted gathering data through interviews and documents (proprietary and public). The sample included six businesses (five Mexican and one American) from different manufacturing and service industries.

It was found that, although owners control the implementation of accounting practices, others (including family employees, non-family employees and external experts) at times propose practices. The owner’s control can be relaxed, or even eliminated, as the result of proposals from some family employees. However, the degree of influence of family employees is not linked to the closeness of the family relationship, but rather to the owners’ perceived competence of the family employee, indicating an interaction between competence and experience on one side, and family ties on the other.

First, the owners chose which documentary data to provide and who was accessible for interviews, potentially biasing findings. Second, the degree of influence family employees can exert might change over time. Third, the study included a limited number of interviews, which can increase the risk of bias. Finally, all firms studied were still managed by the founder. It is possible that small family businesses that have undergone a succession process might incorporate accounting practices differently.

Organizations promoting the implementation of managerial accounting practices should be aware that, in addition to the owner, some family employees and external experts could influence business practices. Accountants already providing accounting services to small family business are also a good source for proposing managerial accounting practices

This study contributes to theory in four ways. First, it expands socioemotional theory to include the perceived competence of the family employee as a potential moderator in the decision-making process. Second, it categorizes the actors who can influence managerial accounting practices in small family businesses. Third, it further refines the role of these actors, based on their degree of influence. Fourth, it proposes a model that describes the introduction of managerial accounting practices in small family business.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Johnson and Kaplan's claim that “external reporting influences managerial accounting information” in an emerging capital market, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The paper relies on a survey instrument and institutional theory analysis in order to: first, explore accountants' perceptions of the extent to which financial accounting conventions‐based information is utilized, instead of managerial accounting information, in internal decision making; and second, articulate respondents' perception to the UAE's wider social and institutional context expressed in terms of accounting regulars, accountancy profession and partnership with multinational companies.

In line with Johnson and Kaplan's claim and contrary to the studies of Hopper et al., Joseph et al. and Scapens et al., the paper's findings show evidence of financial reporting domination on managerial accounting information in the UAE. Locating such results in a UAE companies social and institutional context, the paper reveals that the activities of regulators and accountancy professionals pay more attention to financial reporting, an issue which contributes towards reinforcing respondents' general perceptions that management accounting is subservient to the demands of financial reporting requirements.

Although the paper's findings trigger the importance of the UAE's institutional context in reinforcing accountants' perceptions, the interaction between financial accounting requirements and managerial accounting information is an area that needs further in‐depth case‐study‐based investigation in emerging market economies.

The paper's findings highlight the type of information that UAE's managers utilize when making decisions. These findings are in the interest of business investors and the accountancy profession that aims at increasing practitioners' professional knowledge.

This is one of few papers that combine survey results and institutional theory analysis to explore whether financial accounting dominates managerial accounting information and, at the same time, provides an understanding of the underlying reasons behind that domination in an emerging market economy such as the UAE.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an effort by management of a private higher education institution in Indonesia to replace its informal, relationship‐based performance system which relied on physical discourse – overseeing operational details that focus on physical accomplishment of tasks – and personal control by the school head, with a tight budgetary control system which relied on technical efficiency and rational discourse.

The paper is an ethnographic case study of a business school – a private higher education institution in Indonesia – known by its abbreviation as Perbanas Business School (PBS), from 1999 to 2001. The researcher is part of the case being studied, and thus is a “native” who completely participates in the change process.

The paper demonstrates how a control system change that violates existing cultural norms fails to impact day‐to‐day managerial practices or decision‐making processes. Specifically, in a business school setting, replacing an informal relationship‐based control system with a technical efficiency‐based accounting control system only produces chaotic managerial practices and degrades school services. The new system alienates staff and is not accepted or institutionalized. Instead, in daily managerial processes, management continue to rely on informal and personal relationships.

The paper contributes to the accounting literature by studying the process of instituting accounting change and organizational participants' resistance to that change.

Organizational culture, reflected in values, norms of behavior and everyday practices, cannot easily be controlled or changed by chief executive officers.

This study aims to explore how management accounting practices act as drivers of organizational change in situations of institutional complexity.

A case study was carried out in a small company with a strongly rooted social culture, which was acquired by a large conglomerate and underwent a process of strategic change as part of a new control logic. Based on this, the study analyzes the evolution of this change, with a particular focus on the efforts to construct the meaning of the performance through the inscription of objects from the cultural system to which it is attached and the “situated rationality” of the managers who are involved in its production.

The authors show how managers link their own concepts of performance to accounting practices. At the same time, the authors show how accounting practices unfold through representational gaps that their production generates.

This study acknowledges that bias may arise from reliance on retrospective views of past processes and events, gathered primarily through interviews, documentation and observations.

This study highlights that the way in which the performance concept is presented by accounting practices can have a constructive effect on the organization through the aspirations that its representations entail, thus having the potential to stimulate change in organizations.

This study contributes to the organizational literature by clarifying that accounting practices drive change by providing spaces for debates and questions that affect the way organizations understand and report their performance.

Purpose – In the last decades, Italian healthcare organisations have been subject to important normative changes, aimed at increasing their efficiency. As a response, performance measurement and evaluation (PME) systems have been introduced. The present study attempts to examine PME system changes as institutional processes. In studying such processes the healthcare literature acknowledges the presence of two logics: managerial and professional, as peculiar to healthcare settings, whose convergence or divergence can explain the success of any institutional process.

Design/methodology/approach – We adopt Busco et al.'s (2007) framework as an approach for unbundling PME system change into four relevant coordinates, namely: (1) the object (PME system), (2) the subjects (institutional forces), (3) the place and time of change (the managerial and professional logics) and (4) the how and why change happens (change as an institutional process). We conducted a longitudinal case study at a large teaching hospital in Southern Italy, directed to interpret PME system changes during the period from 1998 until 2009.

Findings – Our observation distinguishes episodes of successful institutional processes, where the introduced innovations are transformed into objectivated practices, from episodes of missed institutionalisation, where new procedures were rapidly abandoned.

Research and social implications – This theoretical framework can be useful for interpreting the PME system changes in different institutional contexts.

Originality – The Busco et al.'s framework allows us to understand PME system changes by integrating the perspectives from Neo-Institutional Sociology, representing healthcare organisational responses to external institutional pressures, and Old-Institutional Economics, conceptualising PME system changes as an institutionalisation process.

This study aims to investigate the adoption of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the new performance perspective in cities. It also aims to understand how accounting for SDGs begins in city administrations by following Power’s (2015) fourfold development schema composed of policy object formation, object elaboration, activity orchestration and practice stabilization.

Focusing on a network of cities coordinated by the Finnish local government association, we analyzed the six largest cities in Finland employing a holistic multiple case study strategy. Our data consisted of Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs), city strategies, budget plans, financial statements, as well as results of participant observations and semi-structured interviews with key individuals involved in accounting for SDGs.

We unveiled the SDG framework as an interpretive scheme through which cities glocalized sustainable development as a novel, simultaneously global and local, performance object. Integration of the new accounts in city management is necessary for these accounts to take life in steering the actions. By creating meaningful alignment and the ability to impact managerial practices, SDGs and VLRs have the potential to influence local actions. Our results indicate further institutionalization progress of sustainability as a performance object through SDG-focused work.

While prior research has focused mainly on general factors influencing the integration of the sustainability agenda, this study provides a novel perspective by capturing the process and demonstrating empirically how new accounts on SDGs are introduced and deployed in the strategic planning and management of local governments.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on performance management (PM) in former communist Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, to evaluate the state of knowledge in this area and suggest possible directions for future research.

An examination of the literature was undertaken to review the empirical studies treating on PM in ex-communist countries from CEE. A total of 96 journal articles, PhD thesis, and conference papers were identified, categorized, and analyzed according to research questions, methodology, and theoretical framework. Contributions are classified by countries, according to progress in transition process (post-transition/transition countries) and membership in the Soviet Union (Soviet/non-Soviet countries). The review examines publications in four languages (English, French, Romanian, and Russian).

The literature review identified various stages of development of PM research and practice in the different groups of CEE countries.

In post-transition CEE countries, PM research follows the trends settled up in the developed countries (quantitative studies examining the extent of usage of different PM tools, influence of contingent factors, relationship PM-strategy, and impact on company’s performance). Also, the findings illustrate the modernization of PM practices: increasing importance of nonfinancial indicators and integrated performance management systems (PMS), although financial indicators are prevailing.

On the contrary, in transition countries PM research and practices are at an early stage, the reviewed literature highlights some specific issues related to transition context: the dynamic aspect of PM, change management, importance of informal systems, cultural aspects, and business traditions.

Because of the large number of CEE countries and the diversity of their national languages, many studies conducted in native languages have not been addressed in this literature review, which is essentially based on publications in English and French. Only for three CEE countries (Russia, Romania, and Moldova) publications in national language were considered.

This literature review may be useful for practitioners, providing insights on the extent of diffusion and usage of different PM tools and identifying difficulties and pitfalls to avoid in their implementation.

The chapter represents one of the first contributions to the knowledge about PM research and practice in former communist CEE countries. The adopted framework for reviewing and classifying the literature allows identifying the differences in PM research and practices between post-transition/transition and Soviet/non-Soviet countries.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the variety of the actors involved in a performance measurement system (PMS) innovation are spread out in time and space. Healthcare contests are examined, where such an innovation is influenced by present and past systems and practices (spread out in time), and by managerial and health-professional actors (spread out in space).

Drawing on Callon’s actor network theory, the authors describe PMS innovations as processes of translation, and distinguish between incremental and radical innovations. The theoretical arguments are used to explain the evidence drawn from a longitudinal case study carried out in an Italian public teaching hospital, referring to the period from 1998 up to 2003.

The conceptual framework shows how the translation moments lead to a recognition of the different actants involved in a PMS innovation, how their interests are interrelated and mobilized. Moreover, it shows how the interaction among the actants involved in the process is related to the type of PMS innovation, i.e. radical vs incremental. The case evidence offers detailed insights into the phenomenon, testing the explanatory power of the framework, and highlights how the failure of one of the translation moments can compromise the success of a PMS innovation.

This study differs from the extant accounting literature on PMS innovations as it highlights how the introduction of a new PMS can be affected by some elements of the previous systems “package,” which are relevant for the mobilization of the actants through the new project.

This article reflects on the lack of focus on history characterizing the strategic management field. Reasons and consequences of such a peculiar situation need to be pointed out in order to develop a better history-grounded research approach inside the field.

In terms of (the missing) history of thought, a fear of history seems to characterize the field, for a more aware historical understanding of strategic management and practices is likely to question not only notions and concepts, but the very perception of the field as a practically oriented discipline. A lack of historical reflection is usually preferred, wherein strategic management seems to come out of the blue, ignoring its inner evolution over time, and the relationships with previous bodies of knowledge in the business realm, such as for instance administrative sciences and accounting.

In terms of the history of practice the situation is – if possible – even worse, with an obscure understanding of contexts and features of managerial practices in the past. Archival research is called for here, drawing on two research projects on pre-industrial revolution context (the Spanish Royal Tobacco Factory in the XVIII century, and the Venice Arsenal in the turn of the XVI century), in order to examine how prior management practices can influence and inform our present understanding of the discipline of strategic management. A less simplistic view of managing practices in the past emerges, which challenges the commonly held cycle of innovation and discontinuity perpetually alleged in the strategic management field to legitimize its own existence as a research area.

While strategic management tools show a potential contribution to historical understanding in this archival research, a more historically aware understanding of the evolution of the field is thus intended as a way to falsify strategic management theory.