Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how actors subjected to public performance evaluations may “contest commensuration,” i.e. may seek to influence how such ratings and rankings will be construed among important stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study of...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model elaborating on the type of conditions that can inhibit (or at least temporarily hold back) “reactive conformance” in the wake of an increasing reliance on quantitative performance evaluations of academic research and...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how and why management accounting practices are linked to an organization's identity and identity discrepancies. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative field study of a one-year change project in a large manufacturing company is used as the basis for...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an emergent model showing the change potential inherent in the mirroring of time-space bound metrics and numbers in management accounting (MA) and other cognitive frames. Design/methodology/approach – An observation-based qualitative field...

Twenty five years ago, Giddens’ structuration theory (ST) was introduced into accounting research as a reaction to the history-less, apolitical and technical-efficiency focus of traditional functionalist research. A quarter of a century later, this growing stream of research consists of some...