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This paper aims to examine the role of technological capability in the relationship between corporate governance and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance.

Using panel data comprising 1,357 European SMEs from 2014 to 2020, this paper examines how technological capability acts as a mediator and moderator within the governance-performance nexus.

The results show a positive and significant link between corporate governance mechanisms and SME performance, as well as between technological capability and SME performance. In addition, this paper show that technological capability plays a crucial role in moderating and mediating the governance-performance relationship. Specifically, technological capability accentuates the positive effects of board size, the presence of outside directors and concentrated ownership on SME performance. Conversely, it attenuates the positive impacts of CEO duality and board gender diversity on SME performance. These results highlight corporate governance mechanisms and technological capability’s crucial role in significantly influencing SME performance.

The results suggest that SMEs should prioritize not only the implementation of effective corporate governance mechanisms but also the strategic utilization of technological innovations to boost performance. European policymakers are encouraged to enact supportive policies on technological innovation to strengthen the governance-performance dynamic.

This study contributes to the governance-performance literature by offering new insights into the critical role of technological capability, which has been previously explored in partial and fragmented ways.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting in the enactment of the Napoleonic imperial project in Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples in the early nineteenth century.

The study adopts the Foucauldian theoretical framework of governmentality and a comparative approach to highlight similarities and differences between the two regions.

The presence of different cultural understandings and structures of power meant that in Tuscany accounting mirrored and reinforced the existing power structure, whereas in the Kingdom of Naples accounting practices were constitutive of power relations and acted as a compensatory mechanism. In the Kingdom of Naples, where local elites had been traditionally involved in ruling municipalities, control of accounting information and the use of resources “re-adjusted” the balance of power in favour of the French whilst letting local population believe that Napoleon was respectful of local customs.

The ability of accounting technologies to act as compensatory mechanisms within governmentality systems paves the way to further investigations about the relationships between accounting and other governmentality technologies as well as the adjustment mechanisms leading to accounting resilience in different contexts.

By identifying accounting as an adaptive instrument supporting less obvious practices of domination the study helps unmask a hidden mechanism underlying attempts to know, govern and control populations which still characterises modern forms of imperialism.

The comparative perspective leads to a new specification of the multifaceted roles that accounting plays in different cultural and political contexts in the achievement of the same set of imperial goals and enhances understanding of the translation of politics, rhetoric and power into a set of administrative tasks and calculative practices.