Purpose This study proposes a methodology for exploring and conceptualizing epistemic methods of accounting through language games. Language games reveal varying levels of sophistication in practical reasoning and communicative interaction, shaping how accounting knowledge and practices unfold in local contexts. By examining the language games of skilled accountants in practice, the study aims to generate detailed knowledge that addresses real-world accounting problems. Design/methodology/approach Pragmatic constructivism serves as the paradigmatic foundation for developing the POLGA method (Pragmatic constructivist Operationalization of Language Games in Accounting). POLGA provides a framework for researchers to apply the concept of language games in accounting research to explore and conceptualize how actors design, implement and use accounting practices through epistemic methods. The method is illustrated through examples drawn from two research projects. Findings This study shows how researchers can use POLGA to identify and theorize epistemic methods of accounting while capturing the technical and social nuances embedded in the practical reasoning through which accounting phenomena are enacted. The empirical illustrations demonstrate POLGA’s capacity to reveal multiple epistemic methods of accounting. Research limitations/implications POLGA offers a nuanced perspective on accounting by highlighting the central role of epistemic methods in effective practice. It provides a methodological reference for accounting researchers interested in going beneath the surface of observable practices to understand the forms of practical reasoning through which knowledge is produced, communicated, mobilized and translated into action. Its use requires access to rich empirical material and sensitivity to the situated nature of organizational practices. Developed in accounting, POLGA also suggests that its underlying approach can be extended beyond this field, opening the way to POLG(X) as a methodology for qualitative researchers studying how knowledge is produced and used across different fields of practice. Originality/value POLGA provides a comprehensive epistemological apparatus for exploring and conceptualizing accounting language games in the making, epistemic methods and their effects.
Purpose This paper aims to provide a longitudinal examination of New Zealand (NZ) universities’ use of annual reports, sustainability reports, strategy reports and vision statements to disclose information about vulnerable staff and students over the period 2017–2021. Design/methodology/approach This study’s sample included all NZ universities. A total of 62 reports/statements covering the period 2017–2021 were content analysed to see how NZ universities disclose information on their vulnerable staff and students. Findings This study’s findings reveal that NZ universities are selective in their disclosures, choose to prioritise some groups over others and fail to provide clear KPIs, targets, goals and strategies for promoting vulnerable groups’ participation, engagement and achievement. In addition to the general lack of disclosures on vulnerable groups by NZ universities, this study also observed a failure by NZ universities to increase their disclosures across time. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate both historical reports such as annual and sustainability reports and forward-looking strategic disclosures published by NZ universities on vulnerable staff and students. These findings have implications for universities, university staff, university students, student unions, staff unions, government and policymakers for assessing the NZ university sector’s accountability for and performance associated with reporting on vulnerable groups. Policymakers can use the present research to gauge the extent to which organisations are currently recognising their accountability towards individuals belonging to vulnerable groups, as embodied in the publicly available disclosures these organisations make. Such understanding will assist in the formulation of future policymaking, including the potential adoption of regulation. Finally, practitioners can use the present research to benchmark their own annual disclosure practices relating to vulnerable groups.
Purpose This study aims to demonstrate that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financial inclusion is a socially mediated process where the inclusive rhetoric of Islamic banking often diverges from the lived financing realities of SMEs in Pakistan. By foregrounding SME perspectives, the paper reveals how trust in religious authority (Shariah Boards) can override technical financial opacity, fundamentally shaping how firms interpret and respond to institutional structures. It moves beyond traditional eligibility models to show how SMEs actively navigate a complex field of Islamic banks, government policy schemes, tax authorities and Shariah boards to secure access to finance. Design/methodology/approach The research adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach grounded in strong structuration theory (SST) to analyse the recursive relationship between SME agency and institutional structures. Primary data was generated through 30 semi-structured interviews with SME owners, bank managers, regulators and Shariah board members. SST provides the necessary lens to connect micro-level firm experiences with macro-level institutional architectures, offering a theoretically informed account of how financial access is socially structured within the context of Islamic finance in Pakistan. Findings The findings reveal that access to Islamic finance is governed not only by formal eligibility criteria but also by SMEs’ subjective interpretations of trust, compliance risks and institutional credibility. The authors find that SMEs use selective visibility and strategic informality as survival strategies, gaining or losing agency as they navigate perceived institutional threats. These dynamics demonstrate that financial inclusion is not a straightforward policy outcome but a contested, socially structured process in which informal practices often emerge to bridge structural gaps. Originality/value This study advances critical accounting scholarship by theorising financial access as a socially situated interaction rather than a purely technical or transaction-based outcome. Applying SST to the empirical context of Pakistan offers fresh insights into the recursive relationship between institutional visibility, informality and religious engagement. The study contributes to global debates on governance, legitimacy and accountability by illustrating how moral and institutional trust influence financial inclusion, with critical implications for policymakers and regulators in emerging markets.
PurposeThis paper presents a discussion between a junior and a senior scholar. It aims to capture, in directly practical terms, some aspects of the challenging situation that any scholar tends to face these days in the current 'publish-or-perish regime'. The focus is on scholars' mindset options and their agentic possibilities, often ignored in the constant pressure to 'just get published'. It aims at offering encouragement and hints regarding how to keep carrying out the craft of a good scholarship in the spirit of epistemic self-respect.Design/methodology/approachExperience-based 'auto-fictional' dialogue between a junior and a senior scholar.FindingsThe authors emphasise the importance of adopting a mindset focused on pursuing a good scholarship - a systematic research approach to consistently uphold high standards of research integrity - thereby avoiding traps like easy shortcuts and "reverse-order instrumentalism". The authors suggest that all researchers possess at least some degree of agency. The authors propose that relying solely on the oscillating position of a 'conscious performer' is insufficient; a more robust, non-instrumentalist mindset is necessary.Originality/valueThis paper offers guidance and practical solutions to tackle the current complex conditions which the 'publish-or-perish regime' poses and stresses the pressing need to avoid instrumentalism. The dialogue pays attention to how to do so in journals' review processes, and which kind of agentic possibilities all researchers possess to carry out their research in the spirit of good scholarship, thereby avoiding instrumentalism.
PurposeResearch on management control for innovation has shifted from viewing control as primarily constraining to recognizing that control can also enable innovation. However, common ways of classifying control such as mechanisms, tools or types of use can understate what makes management control in innovation settings distinctive. This paper aims to propose a vocabulary to support richer explanations of how management control both constrains and enables innovation over time. Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the management control literature and the papers in this Special Issue, the authors develop a vocabulary that foregrounds six dimensions of management control that become especially salient in innovation contexts. These dimensions are Temporal, Reflexive, Adaptive, Performative, Pluralist and Strategic (TRAPPS). FindingsThe TRAPPS vocabulary highlights six dimensions of management control that become especially salient in innovation settings. While innovation unfolds across multiple time horizons and phases (Temporal), it also involves learning about and reconsidering the effects of control (Reflexive) and sometimes requires reconfiguration as innovation paths shift (Adaptive). It is further shaped by sociomaterial arrangements that make some possibilities visible and actionable while pushing others into the background (Performative). It is influenced by multiple stakeholders and competing evaluative criteria (Pluralist) and by priorities and resource commitments that set direction (Strategic). The TRAPPS vocabulary therefore helps to show how different papers in the Special Issue foreground different dimensions and, in turn, reveals openings for future research. Originality/valueThe TRAPPS vocabulary of six dimensions can be used independently or alongside more general management control frameworks. In doing so, these dimensions highlight questions that may be overlooked when controls are treated as stable tools or mechanisms and provide a vocabulary for understanding management control for innovation.
PurposeThis paper explores how Buddhist monasteries served as calculative spaces in early medieval China (220–589 CE), facilitating state governance over taxation, land and labor. By applying Callon and Muniesa’s (2005) and Callon and Law’s (2005) calculation framework, the study investigates how religious institutions, conventionally perceived as resistant to enumeration, were actively integrated into the state’s fiscal administration. The research aims to understand the dynamic through which monasteries were transformed from autonomous religious spaces into mechanisms of economic visibility and state control, thereby contributing a historical and religious dimension to calculative practice literature. Design/methodology/approachThe study uses qualitative historical analysis, drawing extensively on primary archival sources, including official dynastic records, legal codes and biographical texts from early medieval China. It systematically interprets these texts through Callon and Muniesa’s (2005) and Callon and Law’s (2005) three-step calculation model, comprising detachment, transformation and extraction. The authors integrate textual evidence with contemporary scholarship to reconstruct how Buddhist monasteries became embedded in fiscal governance practices. By contextualizing these practices within the broader socio-political landscape, the analysis highlights the monasteries’ role in enabling state oversight and resource appropriation through systematic enumeration and management of populations, land and wealth. FindingsThe study reveals monasteries as active agents in the state’s fiscal apparatus. Specifically, monasteries facilitated the detachment of populations from aristocratic control by providing visible and enumerated alternatives. Through state-appointed monastic bureaucracies, they enabled systematic transformation and manipulation of monastic assets within state-controlled calculative frameworks. Periodic persecution served as the state’s extraction mechanism, appropriating monastic resources for the central administration. These findings challenge conventional views of religious institutions as economically autonomous entities, illustrating instead their critical role as structured sites of economic visibility and state control within historical calculative practices. Originality/valueThis study makes a unique contribution by extending the concept of calculative spaces into historical and religious contexts, which remain underexplored in the accounting literature. Unlike prior research primarily focused on modern corporate and environmental calculative practices, this research demonstrates how Buddhist monasteries in early medieval China functioned as strategic instruments of state fiscal governance. It reveals religion’s paradoxical transformation into a calculative mechanism facilitating state oversight, taxation and resource extraction. By integrating religious studies, historical analysis and the sociology of calculation, the study broadens scholarly understanding of how accounting actively shapes power relations beyond conventional economic domains.
PurposeThis study aims to provide an empirically grounded, process-oriented characterization of how dialogic accounting (DA) is enacted over time. Based on a longitudinal multiple case study analysis, it examines the recurring phases and micro-processes through which different organizations operationalize DA for stakeholder engagement, while explicitly recognizing contextual variation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a qualitative research approach, using an abductive, longitudinal multiple case study methodology across 30 projects to illustrate how DA is enacted over time. Data were collected over a nine-year period, from mid-2015 to the first half of 2024, including different sources of information, such as interviews, surveys, direct observations and document analysis. This comprehensive data collection strategy ensures robustness and validity through triangulation.FindingsThe analysis reveals that the DA process is characterized by five distinct phases: stakeholder mapping, dialogic stakeholder engagement, new framework development, DA framework implementation and accessible communication. Each phase encompasses specific micro-processes, such as stakeholder identification and first engagement, recognition of conflictual views and definition of dialogic methods. The study highlights how these phases and their micro-processes interconnect to promote a collaborative and inclusive accounting environment.Originality/valueThe paper offers a holistic longitudinal multiple case study analysis of DA as a process. While prior literature has provided valuable insights into specific dialogic tools, arenas or phases, this study examines how these elements connect across time into five recurring phases and associated micro-processes. By integrating different phases into a unique process, the study provides valuable insights for academics and practitioners on implementing the DA framework, fostering inclusivity, transparency and mutual learning among stakeholders.
PurposeThis study aims to explore how culturally and politically embedded management controls influence innovation transitions of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in a developing economy. Design/methodology/approachThe study relies on the cultural political economy perspective of management controls. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with senior executives from three knowledge-based PPPs operating in telecommunications, power and energy and high-tech research industries in Sri Lanka. FindingsThe authors demonstrate how cultural political economy factors (e.g. semiotic and cultural; political and institutional; economic and structural) have influenced Western-led, formal management controls across various PPP models (e.g. labour, leadership, innovation, operational, market, neoliberal and bureaucratic controls), both enabling and obstructing the shift towards the state’s professed “knowledge-based economy” discourse. Management controls within telecommunications-based PPPs tend to be receptive to political interference, often supported by powerful, party-based trade unions and primarily focus on innovation to cater to the local market. In contrast to traditional norms, both energy- and high-tech PPPs leverage management controls to resist political interference, promoting a strong, market-oriented approach to knowledge-driven innovation. Practical implicationsPPPs with solid professional and managerial backgrounds are more likely to initiate innovation transitions through bottom-up approaches, whereas PPPs with considerable state and political influence tend to be predominantly driven by both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Nevertheless, evidence indicates a dialectical relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches in all PPPs. Originality/valueCultural political economy redefines the complex interplay among the state’s knowledge-based economy discourse, the innovation transition in PPPs, management controls and development priorities as a co-evolving, politically negotiated process rather than a linear policy implementation. The findings suggest that the success or failure of implementing a knowledge-based economy state project through PPPs depends not only on political policy priorities but also on the interaction of political power, professional leadership and management controls in practice.
PurposeDrawing upon Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the purpose of this paper is to explore when and why results control supports and thwarts the basic psychological needs of individuals to feel autonomous, competent and related, in such ways that they only partially internalise the control system and become introjectedly motivated.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a qualitative interview study of researchers at Swedish universities who were exposed to results control in the sense that there were clear performance targets that were systematically followed up and incentivised.FindingsThis study shows that introjected motivation could be understood as an effect of how results control supported and thwarted the basic psychological needs of researchers to feel competent, related and autonomous by means of a conditional logic. The authors find that researchers dealt with such a conditional logic through a coping strategy referred to as "willing compliance", which allowed them to satisfy some aspects of the needs. However, as the coping strategy at the same time meant that other aspects of their needs were frustrated, it led to feelings of inner pressure and tension, which is a hallmark of introjected motivation.Originality/valueThe findings not only contribute to existing management control literature, where the relationship between results control and introjected motivation has been an underexplored area, but also to the more general SDT literature. Specifically, it adds to the current understanding of how conditioning elements in the environment are experienced and handled by individuals and why this can result in them developing introjected motivation.
PurposeExtending prior research on control and innovation, this study aims to explore the role of control in fostering sustainable innovations (as innovations that support social, environmental and economic performance) within industrial, inter-organisational contexts, examining how different controls are enacted.Design/methodology/approachA multiple case study design is used to examine how controls are enacted in two multinational, private-listed industrial B2B organisations, headquartered in Scandinavia. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, Simons (1995) levers of control (LOC) framework is used to analyse control enactment in the industrial context. Following the firms over 10 years, the study elaborates on the key types of controls and their interactions in supporting different forms of sustainable innovation.FindingsThe study extends the LOC framework to industrial, inter-organisational contexts. It shows how beliefs, boundary and diagnostic controls align behaviours for sustainable innovations, leading to incremental rather than radical sustainable innovations. It also shows that diagnostic controls play a dual role in supporting compliance (exploitation) and facilitating learning (exploration). Meanwhile, interactive controls remain limited in fostering change. The study also highlights the emerging role of social innovation within sustainability control research as important.Originality/valueExtending the LOC framework to industrial, inter-organisational settings, this study offers new insights into how control systems shape sustainable innovation. It challenges traditional views on control by demonstrating that diagnostic controls not only enforce compliance but also foster learning, providing a more nuanced understanding of control dynamics for sustainability.
PurposeThis study aims to investigate how Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting is used by a hybrid municipally owned enterprise (MOE) in Italy to balance public and private expectations in complex institutional settings. It analyses the selection, framing and justification of reported SDGs to show how disclosures help manage governance tensions and a dual organisational identity. Rather than assessing performance, this study focuses on how reporting practices are mobilised to construct, communicate and reconcile hybrid priorities.Design/methodology/approachThis research adopts a qualitative single case study design, relying on semi-structured interviews with senior managers and document analyses of sustainability reports and financial statements from 2022 to 2023. The company was selected for its voluntary engagement in SDG reporting and exposure to hybrid tensions.FindingsResults show that SDG reporting in the company has evolved from symbolic, narrative-driven disclosures to more structured practices that align with strategic planning and resource allocation. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of reported SDGs increased; references to sub-targets became more explicit; and links between reporting, financial decisions and stakeholder expectations were strengthened. Reporting supported internal co-ordination, identity construction and the negotiation of key paradoxes. Examples of such paradoxes included autonomy versus control and public value versus efficiency.Practical implicationsThis study contributes to paradox theory by demonstrating how SDG reporting can serve as a sensemaking and governance tool in hybrid settings. It also extends the literature on public-sector sustainability reporting by showing how global frameworks can be adapted locally to manage complexity. Practically, this study highlights the value of embedding reporting in a company's strategic and operational processes to reinforce legitimacy and coherence.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies on SDG reporting by an Italian MOE. The findings offer novel insights into hybrid accountability and sustainability governance under voluntary disclosure regimes.
PurposeThis study aims to determine whether the feminization of the accounting profession in Romania, expressed through membership in the accounting association, has led to an adequate representation of women in key roles. We define key roles as holding leadership positions (e.g. president, director) within the professional association and being appropriately portrayed in the publication pertaining to the association.Design/methodology/approachTo provide statistics on women in leadership positions, this study analyzed data collected between 2016 and 2024. The authors also performed content analysis on pictures of women and men published in the professional magazine of the Romanian accounting association, CECCAR, during this period. These findings were then contrasted with statistics on women's membership within the association to outline the gender portrayal projected by CECCAR to the accounting labor market.FindingsThis found that representational practices within the accounting association continue to marginalize female accountants, despite their significant participation as members. However, a positive trend is underway, as the European gender legislation has the potential to improve the manner of representation of women within this profession.Research limitations/implicationsThis study aims to encourage the professional association and the broader society to promote gender equality, consistent with the contributions of women in the accounting profession.Social implicationsThis study illustrates how indirect forms of gender discrimination persist in the accounting profession, resulting in an inadequate public image of female accountants.Originality/valueThe inquiry, which includes a self-constructed framework based on nonverbal communication cues used in assessing pictures in the CECCAR magazine, contributes to the specialized literature on visual content analysis and gender in accounting.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how calculative practices perform eco-innovation, focusing on how calculative practices are reframed through the integration of their traces and how they actively shape the ongoing development of eco-innovation.Design/methodology/approachA two-year action case study was conducted at a Swedish global original equipment manufacturer that operates in the transportation industry. The action case study included observations, interviews and workshops during which researchers worked with practitioners to develop and reframe calculative practices that shaped the company's eco-innovation development.FindingsThe results indicate that calculative practices are reframed through the integration of traces of change in value creation introduced by eco-innovation, a process through which they extend their boundaries and actively enact eco-innovation. This reframing involves a shift from retrospective, cost-based assessment to prospective, value-based assessment and from traditional cost-plus pricing to customer-oriented target costing. The findings further illustrate an interplay between illocutionary and perlocutionary performativity, which produces an amplifying effect on eco-innovation.Social implicationsThe paper emphasizes the active and constitutive role of calculative practices in enacting environmental initiatives, showing how they can reorient organizational decision-making and value creation toward sustainability, thereby contributing to broader processes of sustainable change.Originality/valueThe paper advances the research on the performativity of calculative practices by showing how the dynamics of performativity trigger an amplifying effect. It further provides knowledge on calculative framing that enacts eco-innovation.
PurposeThis study aims to examine how climate change regulatory disturbances shape the settlement between accountants and potentially competing professionals engaged in managing climate risks. Using an Abbott-Actor-Network Theory lens, the authors theorise regulation as an actant boundary object that mediates professional boundaries.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyse 54 interviews (2012-2018) with senior managers responsible for emissions risk management from 15 large Australian high emitters across three policy eras (National Greenhouse Gas Energy Reporting Act 2007 (NGERAct) reporting, carbon pricing and the post carbon tax repeal/TCFD period) to trace problematisation, interessement, enrolment and provisional settlement at the workplace level.FindingsThe NGER Act standardised calculability and assurance of emissions data, enrolling accountants around controls and external reporting while engineers dominated technical measurement and target setting. The carbon tax re problematised climate issues in pecuniary terms, extending accountants' roles into valuation, cost modelling and month end routines alongside those of engineers. In the post-carbon tax period, climate risk was reframed in financial risk and stability terms. The outcome is a cooperative but asymmetric settlement: accountants secure practical jurisdiction over controls, valuation and disclosure, applied science professionals retain cognitive control over targets and scenarios.Practical implicationsFor professional bodies, claims of broad climate leadership require interdisciplinary upskilling (particularly focused on measurement, uncertainty and long horizon planning) and strategies that build cross professional networks for competencies beyond mere disclosure. For firms and regulators, standardised risk-oriented disclosure sustains collaboration, but does not by itself transfer technical cognition away from engineering or other applied sciences.Originality/valueThis study shows how regulation functions as a boundary object device that orchestrates collaboration and why it remains bounded, thereby qualifying prior explanations that emphasise reluctance or organisational barriers by specifying the material and epistemic constraints that calculative infrastructures embed.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse how the effective interaction between management control and innovative information technologies gives rise to effective accountability of performance in the public sector, with particular reference to a public health organization.Design/methodology/approachThis paper applied a retrospective longitudinal case study method for understanding how performance accountability is influenced by interaction between management control and innovative information technology. The research considered the Chronic Care system of the Local Health Authority (LHA) of Caserta (Italy).FindingsThe retrospective longitudinal case study highlights how the effective interaction between management control and innovative information technologies allows an effective accountability of performance in the LHA Caserta analysed, although such technological innovations derive from a package of management control systems that has been stratified over time.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this paper is that only one case study is analysed, albeit in depth, while it would be interesting to consider more public health organizations.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature confirming that, although management control flows are the result of a management control package that has been formed over time, it is possible to promote a profitable integration between management control and IT innovations for fostering an effective performance accountability.
PurposeThis study aims to conceptualise how management accountants involved in innovative practices can contribute to creativity and innovation through dialogical and supportive management accounting practices.Design/methodology/approachThe research draws on the paradigm of pragmatic constructivism. It is based on a longitudinal case study of a management accountant who works with a Danish art museum's artistic staff on implementing a creative exhibition project. The management accounting practices are investigated through observations and semi-structured interviews.FindingsThis paper provides conceptual developments of Socratic maieutics of management accounting that can support actors during the implementation of creative projects. In this case, the focus is on the dialogue between the management accountant and creative actors in innovative practices. The management accountant served as a midwife for the creative process. He did so by providing time and space for the curatorial team to develop new ideas that could solve financial problems without violating the artistic ambitions.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the understanding of how management accounting can support innovative practices without violating artistic values. In particular, the case study's findings demonstrate detailed insight into the management accountant's dialogical and reflective epistemic method. It also shows how such a method supports the creation of an art exhibition that remains within its financial boundaries with respect to the core artistic values. This practice is conceptualised as Socratic maieutics.
PurposeThis paper aims to enhance the understanding of how management controls influence the breadth and depth of the innovation scope at the front end of open innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe research objective is achieved through a case study of an open innovation project between Unilever and multiple strategic partners. In line with the research purpose, this study focuses on the front end of this open innovation project - approximately the first 18 months of the project.FindingsThis study finds that project participants relied heavily on belief and interactive controls, while boundary and diagnostic controls were almost excluded during the front end. This management control configuration had an asymmetrical effect on innovation scope during the front end of open innovation. Specifically, this study finds that it simultaneously retrenched the breadth of innovation while expanding its depth.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the management control literature by focusing on the role of management controls at the front end of open innovation, a context that has been largely overlooked in previous research. This allows to obtain findings that break with the dichotomous perspective on how management controls support creativity, knowledge exploration and ideation, for example, enabling versus hampering them. This study argues that the effects of controls at the front end of open innovation are more ambiguous in that they have asymmetrical effects on innovation: controls simultaneously retrench the breadth of innovation but also increase its depth.
Purpose Previous research on accounting standard setting has focused on changes, with little research into how and why accounting standards persist. This study, therefore, focuses on the 2022 decision of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to retain the existing impairment-only approach for its goodwill accounting standard. To understand the persistence of the standard, this study aims to investigate how the IASB addressed the same accounting issue in two different periods by examining changes in the interested parties’ arguments. It classifies and compares various arguments in the comment letters (CL) to consider the IASB’s legitimacy in terms of evidence-based policymaking. Design/methodology/approach This study classifies the interested parties’ arguments on goodwill accounting into several types. The classification enabled us to systematically compare the arguments in the two sets of CL submitted to the IASB’s official documents on goodwill accounting published in 2002 and 2020. In addition to categorizing arguments, this study conducted a text coding analysis for CL to supplement the results of categorization. Findings According to this study’s comparative analysis, the majority of CL were in favor of amortizing goodwill, and there was no conspicuous change in the overall proportion of various arguments in the two periods. Moreover, while conceptual arguments in the CL accounted for a larger proportion than those based on real economic effects, when focusing on the arguments relying on general accounting concepts, there was roughly an even split between arguments in favor of amortizing goodwill and those in favor of the impairment-only approach. These findings can be interpreted as one of the reasons why the IASB decided to retain the existing standards in 2022. Research limitations/implications This study’s comparative analysis through the detailed categorization of arguments in the CL provides a plausible interpretation of the IASB’s decision to retain the current standard for goodwill accounting, especially as those responsible for the accounting standard setting tend to place emphasis on the general conceptual arguments in their standard-setting process. The authors propose this viewpoint as a useful basis for theorizing the dynamics of accounting standards in the current trend of evidence-based standard setting. Originality/value This study focuses on the IASB’s accounting standard setting for goodwill over two periods, comparing stakeholder arguments to analyze the persistence of accounting standards. This study’s categorization of conceptual arguments as general and topic-specific is potentially valuable for future research into the politics of accounting standard setting.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how professional sport clubs value their players and the roles of accounting and accountants in the process. Additionally, it highlights the distinction between financialization and assetization. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on extensive qualitative data, notably 47 semi-structured interviews, professional baseball in North America was used as the empirical context. Findings Major League Baseball clubs have developed tools to evaluate and value players and their contracts. One of these tools, player asset value, is a financialized valuation that contribute to reconceive players as assets. Yet, assetization – the process of turning things into assets – entails more than financialization. It is mostly a mode of governance, conditioned by real actions. Moreover, clubs’ accounting executives are mostly estranged from the financialization–assetization process. Originality/value This paper contributes to the emerging literature on accounting in the sport business. It is an industry where different value conceptions interplay. Clubs’ success depends largely on players performing on the field, and financial decisions on players are crucial. How accounting is involved in this industry and what matters from an accounting perspective are themes mostly overlooked.
PurposeThis study aims to extend emerging prosocial perspectives on performance management (PM) and management control systems (MCS) by critically assessing Pfister et al.'s (2024) prosocial paradigm and proposing amendments.Design/methodology/approachThe essay conducts a conceptual analysis of the prosocial approach to PM and MCS in three stages. First, I reconstruct Pfister et al.'s (2024) prosocial paradigm. Second, I assess strengths and limitations of this paradigm. Third, I draw on John McDowell's concept of "second nature" to extend Pfister et al.'s (2024) prosocial paradigm to incorporate a fuller role for sui generis reasons and norms in organisations.FindingsI distinguish two dimensions of prosociality that PM and MCS can affect: (i) cooperation to achieve organisational goals and (ii) commitment to shared rational standards (in second nature). Pfister et al. (2024) convincingly show that cooperative PM and MCS can facilitate organisational goals. However, the inherent functionalism of their evolutionary approach occludes how PM and MCS also implicate wider collective rational standards that can conflict with organisational goals. I propose a dualistic approach to prosociality to explain how PM and MCS affect both dimensions and to enable a fuller critique of harms PM and MCS can cause.Practical implicationsThese refinements can inform PM and MCSs that are effective and just.Originality/valueWhere accounting research frames PM and MCS as coordinating self-interested actors, the emerging prosocial perspective integrates insights from disciplines that recognise a wider range of motives and group dynamics. I adapt Pfister et al.'s (2024) paradigmatic proposal to integrate how wider internally-validated reasons affect how subjects cooperate (or not) in organisations.
