This study aims to examine whether managerial optimism and profit-based incentives affect cost behavior asymmetry, especially cost stickiness. Differ from previous literature on cost stickiness, the researchers use an experimental 2 × 2 between-within subjects factorial design. This design allows us to use data related to cost management specifically, not just in general term as in studies using archival data from public financial statements. Our study results reaffirm cost stickiness literature. This study focuses on experiments among accounting students who are not knowledgeable about cost behavior asymmetry. Even though our 71 student participants know only the symmetric cost behavior theory, when presented with a scenario related to sales prospects and information on profit-based incentives, the results of this study show otherwise. When participants are more optimistic and profit-based incentives have been achieved, the level of cost stickiness is also higher.

This study examines how working capital management packages (WCMPs) can lead to higher financial performance. This is done by exploring the formation, importance, and systematic interdependencies within and between WCMPs. The data set consists of 589 U.S. listed manufacturing firms that are being studied during the fiscal period 2012–2019. WCMPs are studied from both a package and a system approach. This is done by combining fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis and panel data regression. In all, 11 effective WCMPs are found to be associated with high financial performance. Six of them constitute unique and empirically important packages and are also identified as systems. The findings can have consequences for managers and practitioners, as the study creates an explicit link between a firm’s working capital management and financial performance.

Recent developments in digital technology have revitalized interest in the relationship between technology and management accounting. Yet, few empirical in-depth studies have assessed how digital technologies influence the roles of management accountants. This paper builds on the concept of jurisdiction to illuminate the relationship between management accountants, expert knowledge and digital technology. The study identifies and describes competition over jurisdiction between management accountants and other groups of employees. The study describes a shift for divisional management accountants towards narrower roles in their tasks and expectations, while business-oriented roles at group level are found to entail expanding tasks and expectations. In doing so, management accountants are divided into two divergent categories facing different expectations: divisional and group level management accountants. Through a case study in the technology-oriented finance sector, the paper contributes to the debate on the roles of management accountants in a number of ways. First, it describes how digital technology can contribute to narrower and more specialized roles. Second, it describes how digital technology can contribute to competition between professions. Third, it elucidates how digital technology contributes to changes in the behaviour of decision makers, and in their expectations toward, and the involvement of, management accountants. Fourth, it details how the changes contributed by digital technology in the roles of management accountants can act as mediators in the identity-work of management accountants. Finally, it empirically describes the relationships between digital technology and management accountants’ roles.

Despite the growing interest in research on the topic of internal control, there is confusion about the concept in both theory and practice. This study addresses this lack of clarity by systematically structuring the literature that uses the concept by investigating what we know from previous studies about the practice of internal control and how it is institutionalized. To examine the existing literature in this field, the paper utilizes the theoretical lens of ‘institutional work’. The review finds that the understanding of internal control is currently divided: one part of the literature understands the concept as internal control over financial reporting, while the other part has a more global and strategic understanding of the term. Internal control is institutionalized by different organizational actors at the micro level in an attempt to implement internal control systems that are not a simple act of compliance but present an added value for the organization. At the same time, it is noteworthy that not all categories of institutional work could be identified in the internal control literature, indicating that the actors are largely limited by their institutional embeddedness. The paper also presents an aggregated understanding of the term internal control, which can therefore significantly supplement the efforts of practitioners and regulators to implement internal control procedures that add value for the corporate governance of organizations.

The ending year 2020 was heavily driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. Also institutions of higher education were challenged to adjust teaching and research to the consequences of the pandemic. Teaching had to be converted from in-class offers to online productions challenging the didactical and technical capabilities of professors and lecturers. Research had to consider the hygenic limitations in contacting respondents and participants for example in field studies or on-site experiments. I know some colleagues who actually stopped collecting data.

It has been argued that companies face the challenge of being innovative while at the same time having to standardize and control organizational processes. While management control research has mostly focused on how control supports innovation, the present study aims to improve our understanding of how controls can support the co-existence of process and management innovations with standardization. The paper adopts a single-case study method and analyses the use of a management control system in the context of a business process outsourcing company which faces the simultaneous need for process and management innovation and standardization. The study examines the relationships between different levers of control and their nature to explain how levers of control can create consistent and countervailing reinforcement that supports the co-existence of innovation and standardization. Moreover, we provide an insight into how certain controls, specifically diagnostic and interactive lean controls, combine the levers of control, so creating countervailing reinforcement. We show that the identified reinforcement enables the coexistence of different innovations and standardization at various organizational levels. Thus, the current study contributes to the stream of research on how management controls work collectively, acknowledging their impact on innovation and the concurrent need for standardization.