VICKY ARNOLD, University of Central Florida - College of Business Administration, University of Melbourne - Department of Accounting and Business Information Systems
Email: varnold@bus.ucf.edu
TANYA BENFORD, University of Central Florida (UCF) - Dixon School of Accounting
Email: tanya.benford@bus.ucf.edu
CLARK HAMPTON, University of Waterloo
Email: champton@uwaterloo.ca
STEVE G. SUTTON, University of Melbourne, University of Central Florida - College of Business Administration
Email: SGSUTTON@UNIMELB.EDU.AU

Organisations’ competitiveness and success are no longer dependent solely on their own performance, but rather are dependent on the competitiveness of the supply chains in which they participate. Increasingly, these supply chains are globally distributed introducing the possibility of greater benefits, as well as greater risk. This study examines the countervailing impact of a global supply chain partner’s B2B e-commerce business risk and absorptive capacity on an organisation’s willingness to commit to and share information with that supply chain partner. We survey 207 organisations on their perceptions of specific offshore outsourcing and supply chain partners across dimensions of risk, absorptive capacity, commitment, and information sharing. The results support the theorized relationships indicating that a supply chain partner’s increased levels of perceived risk has a strong negative effect on an organisation’s commitment and information sharing; conjointly, increases in a supply chain partner’s absorptive capacity has a strong positive effect on commitment and information sharing. For both risk and absorptive capacity, commitment partially mediates the relationship with information sharing. Testing for systemic effects from geographical/cultural location on the relationship factors provides no evidence of a regional effect on measured items.

EMANUELE PADOVANI, University of Bologna - Department of Management
Email: emanuele.padovani@unibo.it
REBECCA LEVY ORELLI, University of Bologna - Department of Management
Email: rebecca.orelli@unibo.it
EPAMINONDAS KATSIKAS, Technological Educational Institute of Patras, Greece
Email: epaminondas.katsikas@durham.ac.uk

Purpose: This paper aims to understand the extent of adoption of accounting techniques in Italian and Greek municipalities, and the factors affecting the specific techniques used.

Design/methodology/approach: This study reports on a survey based on medium sized and large Italian and Greek municipalities. The survey was targeted at public municipalities accountants, who represent the users of accounting techniques. In this study a set of variables were considered, namely the specific techniques and procedures used in Italian municipalities, the accounting systems, and the ICT tools.

Findings: The results of this study highlight a limited diffusion and a very poor development of accounting practices in Greece and Italy, despite their different political choices in terms of accounting systems.

Research limitations/implications: The present study is a cross country comparison between Italian and Greek municipalities. Therefore any generalizing of the conclusions beyond this context should be undertaken with care. Nevertheless, it provides an interesting analysis of the accounting practices and the diffusion process enabling their adoption, which helps to understand accounting and management changes in local governments.

Originality/value: This paper answers a previous call in literature to the use of quantitative research methods in order to generalize findings from previous case studies. This study provides empirical evidence to support the scant literature on the management accounting practices in local governments, and the institutional and contextual factors affecting their use.

HENRI C. DEKKER, VU University Amsterdam - Department of Accounting
Email: hdekker@feweb.vu.nl
TOM GROOT, VU University Amsterdam - Amsterdam Research Center in Accounting
Email: tgroot@feweb.vu.nl
MARTIJN SCHOUTE, VU University Amsterdam - Department of Accounting
Email: m.schoute@feweb.vu.nl
EELKE WIERSMA, Free University of Amsterdam
Email: ewiersma@feweb.vu.nl

Value-based (VB) performance measures are argued to be more “complete� than traditional accounting measures since they hold managers accountable for the cost of capital used to generate returns. Prior studies have found, however, that the use of VB measures for managerial performance evaluation is less extensive than might be expected based on their presumed benefits. Important reasons for this may relate to differences across firms in their need to manage capital costs and also in managers’ opportunity to do so. Following this line of thought, we examine conditions that influence the importance of VB measures in the performance evaluation of middle-level managers. In particular, we examine firms’ need to hold managers accountable for capital costs in response to the strategic importance for the firm to use assets intensively, and managers’ opportunity to influence these costs, reflected by the scope of value chain activities under their influence and delegated authority for decision making. We find significant support for the influence of these factors in a sample of survey responses for 123 manufacturing firms.

LILI-ANNE KIHN, University of Tampere - School of Economics and Business Administration
Email: lilikihn@comcast.net

Purpose – This paper seeks to further our understanding of the rather fragmented research in the area of quantitative management accounting research. The purpose of this study is: (1) to provide a synthesis and an extended discussion of the literature from the performance outcome standpoint, and (2) to foster future research in this area by identifying promising recent developments in the assessment of performance outcomes and gaps in the literature.

Design/methodology/approach – A literature analysis was adopted based on empirical studies and literature reviews published in a wide range of journals.

Findings – The overall conclusion of this study is that future management accounting research can still make progress in the measurement of performance outcomes.

Research limitations/implications – Research published in English, and the period of the past decade was emphasized to examine recent frontiers of knowledge. The results imply that increasing and simultaneous analysis of various kinds of performance outcomes could be conducted in different settings. They include behavioral, market-based, accounting-based, non-financial, competitive strategic, social and environmental outcomes, competitiveness of systems and relative-to-peers assessments. If possible, development of performance outcomes could be investigated with longitudinal and panel, in addition to cross-sectional, research designs. Attempts could be made to analyze the nature of causality to advance both management accounting literature and social science research.

Practical implications – This study furthers understanding of behaviorally-, organizationally- and strategically-oriented management accounting research that has played a central role in assessing to what extent people are likely to succeed with their management accounting and control systems in various settings.

Originality/value – This paper presents a theoretical framework and several examples potentially useful for both academic scholars and practitioners.

KATARINA ÖSTERGREN, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) - Department of Accounting, Auditing and Law
Email: Katarina.Ostergren@nhh.no
INGER STENSAKER, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH)
Email: Inger.Stensaker@nhh.no

Budgets have long been the dominant instrument for management control. In recent years however, alternative approaches to management control such as the Balanced Scorecard have been launched. It has even been suggested that organisations should drop the budget and move “Beyond Budgeting�, (Hope and Fraser, 2000). New approaches to management control attempt to respond to the shortcomings of budgets, such as being time-consuming and focused on cost reduction rather than value creation. While the Balanced Scorecard and Beyond Budgeting appear to be more closely connected to firm strategy, we know little about how such alternative management control systems function in practice and potential challenges of these new systems. This study is a first step in that direction. We examine “Beyond Budgeting� in practice by focusing on how corporate level in a large multidivisional oil and energy company adopted this new approach to management control and how it was implemented in two business units. Specifically we investigate: (a) the rules of action that are developed in the absence of budgets; and (b) how the new management control system is expected to influence interaction patterns. Drawing on agency and resource dependency theory in our analysis, our findings indicate that the means of control that are exercised in the absence of budgets alter the relationship between corporate management and division management and new lines of dependency are created between divisions.