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...

Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published following peer-review in Accounting, organizations and society, published by and copyright Pergamon.

Using institutional theory to interpret the role of management accounting in organizational change, the paper reports on a longitudinal empirical study of the implementation of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system in the Clearing Department of a UK-based multinational bank. Since the ABC...

Pro-active supply chain practices in manufacturing have been affected by general features of institutionalized reflexivity whereby production activities are disembedded by firms whose actions have been enabled by abstract systems such as accounting and quality management. A new consciousness of...

Reports on the uncovering of a small‐firm reality where the self‐gratifying behaviour of the owner/manager threatens the survival of the organization. Takes a “middle‐range thinking” approach to mould ethnographic data, and demonstrates and develops, via a case study, models of change...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore a number of issues pertaining to the conceptualisation, operationalisation, feasibility and effectiveness of workplace partnership arrangements in a non‐unionised setting. Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the most common...