A practice-based approach to collective decision-makingin pricing
Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management
ISSN: 1176-6093
Article publication date: 10 May 2019
Issue publication date: 24 May 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze price decision-making through a practice-based approach. The paper investigates the micro-level practices used to arrive at sales price decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, a qualitative study approach is used to develop findings abductively. The data are gathered through an in-depth case study at two firms: semi-structured interviews, meeting observations, shadowing and pricing documents.
Findings
This paper finds that pricing is a collective decision-making process involving multiple actors across the organization. The case firms work on solving information, coordination and control problems to arrive at sales prices by enacting interlinked practices. Pricing is therefore neither a structure nor a single decision but a process consisting of multiple micro-level practices that enable firms to make pricing decisions.
Originality/value
This paper develops a practice-based approach to pricing that conceptualize the micro-level practices used to to make pricing decisions in the face of information, coordination and control problems. The paper is interdisciplinary and adds to the accounting literature and the market literature, which have tended to study pricing as a decision made by one decision maker, and not as an organizational process where multiple actors share, evaluate, interpret and coordinate information and decisions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank reviewers and participants of Nordic Working Life Conference and IMP Asia Conference for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper. The authors would also like to thank Industriens Fond for a grant that facilitated the data collection and DAN Communication for co-funding an industrial PhD for the second author. Finally, they would like to thank the firms granting access and spending time on the project.
Citation
Thrane, S., Jarmatz, M., Fetahi Laursen, M. and Kornmaaler, K. (2019), "A practice-based approach to collective decision-makingin pricing", Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 117-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-03-2018-0019
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited