Accounting, microfoundations, hybridization and longitudinal conflict in a Finnish health care organization

PurposeThis article analyzes the cognitive microfoundations, conflicting institutional logics and professional hybridization in a case characterized by conflict.Design/methodology/approachIn contrast to the majority of earlier studies focusing on special health care, the study was conducted in a Finnish basic health care organization. The empirical data include 36 interviews, accounting reports, budgets, newspaper articles and meeting notes collected 2013–2018.FindingsThe use of accounting techniques in this case did not offer professionals sufficient support under conditions of conflict. The authors suggest that this perceived lack of support intensified the negative emotions toward accoun…

Blame game or dialogue? Financial, professional and democratic accountabilities in a complex health care setting

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the complexity of the network governance setting affects accountability practices. The authors pay particular attention to the organizational characteristics that may enable a common understanding of multiple accountability relationships, or lead to problems in reconciling competing forms of accountability, thereby appearing as blame game-type behavior. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a case study with 31 semi-structured interviews in a Finnish health care organization (FHC) that offers basic public health care services. The organization represents a co-operative arrangement with the main city and three smaller munic…

The role of standard software packages in mediating management accounting knowledge

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse how cost accounting knowledge is mediated in a large multinational organisation employing a company‐wide enterprise resource planning system and off‐the‐shelf activity based costing software to create a uniform profitability management system within the organisation.Design/methodology/approachThe case analysis is informed by the theoretical notions of dis‐and re‐embedding of expert knowledge, expert systems and standards.FindingsThe results indicate that standardised cost accounting software packages may be useful not only because of their superior data processing properties and technical efficiency, but also because of their usability in overcoming resista…

Struggling for the New Role for Business Controller

The recent discussion on changes in the controller's role has mainly focused on the national and organizational level culture aspects of that professional role. While earlier studies have demonstrated how the role changes have been stimulated by corporate culture, IT systems, new accounting technologies and interprofessional competition, we contend that such changes cannot be achieved without active individuals in organizations. Our study is informed by the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, concentrating on changes in institutions, such as professional roles, which are achieved by an active agency. Thus we concentrate on the individual level by tracing how the role of a single cont…

Enhanced Customer Cooperation : Experiences with cooperative compliance in Finland

This report examines the experiences with a collaborative compliance project – Enhanced Customer Cooperation (ECC) – introduced by the Finnish Tax Administration. The ECC was introduced by the Large Taxpayers’ Unit of the Finnish Tax Administration at the beginning of 2013, and it ran as a pilot until the end of 2015. Since the start of 2016, the ECC has been a part of the permanent operations of the Large Taxpayers’ Unit. Based on the interviews with tax officers, corporations participating in the ECC and tax lawyers and tax consultants, the ECC is bringing about a cultural change in the administrative practices and ways of communicating between tax authorities and taxpayers. In general, t…

Hei, me mennään kunnan tilitehtaaseen! : taloushallinnon työn uudelleenorganisoinnin vaikutukset työntekijöiden kokemana

Tämän tutkimuksen kohteena on kuntien taloushallinnon työn uudelleenorganisointi. Erityi­senä teemana tarkastelussa on, kuinka lasken­tatoimen työntekijät tämän muutoksen kokevat ja millaisia vaikutuksia tällä on organisaation sisäiseen työnjakoon? Aihe on erittäin ajankoh­tainen ja koskee tässä tarkasteltavan kunta-alan lisäksi yhtä lailla myös valtion laitoksia ja yri­tyksiä. Suomessa monet kunnat ovat lähivuo­sina keskittäneet tai parhaillaan keskittämässä taloushallinnon työtehtäviä. Samaa kehitystä on tapahtunut monissa suurissa yrityksissä ja mm. yliopistosektorilla on olemassa vastaavia suun­nitelmia. This case study examines the reorganization of accounting work into Shared Service …

Hyvinvoinnin teoriat hyvinvoinnin edistämisessä ja poliittisessa päätöksenteossa

Well-being in theory, practice and political decision-making. The concept of well-being is vitally important from many perspectives. We all care about well-being at the personal level. The concept is very much used in politics, welfare services and in social policy. Indisputably, one of the very basic tasks of public administration is to promote the well-being of the citizens. However, there is a lot of conceptual confusion in both political and academic discussions on well-being. For instance, there is no consensus on how should it be understood theoretically or measured in practice. In this article, an interdisciplinary group of researchers brings clarity to urgent theoretical and concept…

ERP in action — Challenges and benefits for management control in SME context

ERP systems have fundamentally re-shaped the way business data is collected, stored, disseminated and used throughout the world. However, the existing research in accounting has provided only relatively few empirical findings on the implications for management control when companies implement ERP systems as the technological platform. Especially scarce are the findings concerning the production phase, after implementation, when the information processes, related work practices and the new information contents can be seen as established. In this paper we explored and theorized the benefits, challenges and problems for management control when an ERP system is in use, four years after the impl…

Kultahippuja laskentatoimen takamailta : professori Aila Virtanen 60 vuotta

Menevätkö laskelmat oikein? : eettinen osaaminen laskentatoimessa

Dynamics of Creating a New Role for Business Controllers

This paper explores management accountants’ role change in a multinational corporation. The theoretical framework of this interpretative study draws on institutional entrepreneurship that highlights the importance of agency and enables the theorization of institutional changes. According to our findings, projects on new cost accounting techniques and modern information technology (ERP) serve as critical momenta in the early stages of institutional entrepreneurship that drive changes in institutionalized professional roles. The aspiring controller must creatively combine multiple resources and interests in order to attract other actors for collective action. This paper contributes to account…

Institutional Logics, ICT and Stability of Management Accounting

The purpose of this paper is to study the institutional logics of how and why two case units in the Finnish Defence Forces have reacted differently to external pressures originating from the State Audit Office to change their management accounting systems. The situation is made complex due to the fact that in military organisations, accountants’ tasks have traditionally consisted of bookkeeping and financial reporting, while management accounting tasks especially (e.g. planning and control) have been performed predominantly by military personnel, who can be called hybrid accountants. The data for this study consists of project memos and interviews with people involved in designing and imple…

A virtual integration—The management control system in a multinational enterprise

Abstract This paper draws on actor-network-theory, especially Law and Hassard [Law, J., Hassard, J. (Eds.), 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. Blackwell, Malden, MA] and Latour [Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to the Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford] to investigate how a division-wide management control system was created in a multinational enterprise. The empirical findings were gathered from different actors involved in the implementation of enterprise's ABC and ERP projects. Our study focuses on the ontological politics [Mol, A.-M., 1999. Ontological politics. A word and some questions. In: Law, J., Hassard, J. (Eds.), Actor Network Theo…

Nordic Experiences of Co-Operative Compliance Programmes : Comparisons and Recommendations

For the last decade a major trend within tax administrations has been to shift from a roughly one size fits all approach—where close to all taxpayers experience a deterrence approach—to a more responsive and collaborative approach as in co-operative compliance programmes. Such programmes build on the idea that the participating corporations disclose relevant information including their tax risks and are transparent to the tax administrations and in return will tax administrations provide real-time predictability and clarity concerning taxation issues of relevance for the corporation. In brief, co-operative compliance builds on the slogan: “…certainty in exchange for transparency” (OECD 2016…

Kontrollikuutio : riskipainotettu kustannusvaikuttavuuden analyysi- ja johtamismalli kunnallisessa perusterveydenhuollossa

There have been calls for cost-effective public services and the integration of management control and risk management systems. Municipalities currently need to consider aging populations and diminishing financial resources. But municipal services may also include other risks, such as reputational and political risks, along with changes in legislation as well as unexpected changes in operating circumstances. Risks and how they are managed affect both the costs and the effectiveness of municipal services. However, cost-effectiveness and risks are not clear-cut concepts, especially in the public health services. Therefore, in order to better understand risks in public sector management contro…

Exploring management control system typologies : an organisation-level view

PurposeManagement controls are the processes and mechanisms managers use to influence the behaviour of individuals and groups towards the organisation’s objectives and goals. Discrete management controls and management control system (MCS) frameworks have been extensively researched, but there is little research on organisation-level MCS types. This study aims to identify organisation-level MCS types.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on the MCS type literature, the competing values framework and the upper echelons theory to form organisation effectiveness and top management team constructs to characterise firms. Cluster analysis was used to group a sample of 318 firm-years into MC…