Purpose – This paper sets out to introduce the special issue on management controls and new organisational forms. It summarises and reflects on themes and findings raised in the papers in the issue. Design/methodology/approach – The findings reported in the paper are based on desk research...

Purpose – Inter‐firm relationships are increasingly being adopted as competitive tools. However, the challenges created by these relationships for the design and use of management control systems (MCS) have been well documented. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain the background to the special issue and to provide an introduction to the articles on case studies included in the issue. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a review of developments in both the qualitative tradition and case studies...

Purpose: The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) possesses an inherent duality, as it has been described as a carrier of institutions (i.e. the BSC is a “management ideology” or “mode of thinking”) and a flexibly interpretive boundary object at the same time. This study examines how this inherent...

Purpose – The paper seeks to examine the evolution of regulatory accounting within the context of the Brazilian electricity sector reforms. The paper traces the process of the reforms and the development of the regulatory accounting system. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on...

Purpose – The purposes of this paper are to provide first a detailed description of the use of interfirm cooperation by a large sample of Dutch firms of different sizes and from different industries, and second, to examine the governance role of financial managers in the management of...

Purpose – Business networks have to coordinate each of their partners' goals and expectations, as a lack of partner compatibility and goal incongruence could lead to conflict and opportunistic behavior. These potential problems highlight the relevance of partner selection as a means of...

Purpose – The paper seeks to explore the extent of involvement of management accounting in strategic inter‐organizational decisions and control in the context of offshoring of services. Design/methodology/approach – For the present study, a multiple case study field research design was...

Purpose – The literature on managing inter‐organisational relationships typically suggests managing these relationships based on the formalised exchange of information across the organisational boundary with due respect to trust build‐up through successive interactions. The purpose of this...