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Article
Publication date: 22 June 2021

Ida Schrøder, Emilia Cederberg and Amalie M. Hauge

This paper investigates how different and sometimes conflicting approaches to performance evaluations are hybridized in the day-to-day activities of a disciplined hybrid…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper investigates how different and sometimes conflicting approaches to performance evaluations are hybridized in the day-to-day activities of a disciplined hybrid organization–i.e. a public child protection agency at the intersection between the market and the public sector.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a one-year ethnography of how employees achieve to qualify their work as “good work” in situations with several and sometimes conflicting ideals of what “good work” is. Fieldwork material was collected by following casework activities across organizational boundaries. By combining accounting literature on hybridization with literature on practices of valuation, the paper develops a novel theoretical framework which allows for analyses of the various practices of valuation, when and where they clash and how they persist over time in everyday work.

Findings

Throughout the study, four distinct registers of valuation were identified: feeling, theorizing, formalizing and costing. To denote the meticulous efforts of pursuing good work in all four registers of valuation, the authors propose the notion of sequencing. Sequencing is an ongoing process of moving conflicting registers away from each other and bringing them back together again. Correspondingly, at the operational level of a hybrid organization, temporary compartmentalization is a means of avoiding clashes, and in doing so, making it possible for different and sometimes conflicting ways of achieving good results to continuously hybridize and persist together.

Research limitations/implications

The single-case approach allows for analytical depth, but limits the findings to theoretical, rather than empirical, generalizability. The framework the authors propose, however, is well-suited for mobilization and potential elaboration in further empirical contexts.

Originality/value

The paper provides a novel theoretical framework as well as rich empirical material from the highly political field of child protection work, which has seldomly been studied within accounting research.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 35 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 28 August 2019

Ida Schrøder

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how accounts of costs and accounts of needs are shaped, connected and made durable in the day-to-day practices of welfare professionals.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how accounts of costs and accounts of needs are shaped, connected and made durable in the day-to-day practices of welfare professionals.

Design/methodology/approach

Throughout a year, the author traced the work of connecting costs and needs across and beyond the organizational boundaries of the accounting and child protection departments in a Danish local government. Over the course of the study, accountants realized that the budget was overspent and this, accordingly, gave insights into what was done to make accounts more durable.

Findings

This paper shows that multiple accountabilities are made possible through the ongoing and practical work of shaping, connecting and making accounts durable. This fragile process fails when connections between separate aspects of organizational work are not made visible.

Research limitations/implications

This paper attempts to convey the potentials of a symmetrical approach for organizational ethnography. In this way, it does not, for instance, address prevailing budget limits or regimes of cost control.

Originality/value

Insights into how accounts are shaped into meeting multiple and diverging demands for accountability are rare in both the fields of management accounting as a practice and research on social work practice.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 9 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 October 2024

Åsa Plesner

Through an in-depth case study, this paper aims to investigate how workplace struggles can meaningfully change management accounting practices.

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Abstract

Purpose

Through an in-depth case study, this paper aims to investigate how workplace struggles can meaningfully change management accounting practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This is an archival study drawing on 10 years of governmental documents, news media and a court case. The theoretical notions of framing and overflowing are used to investigate how a calculative change was introduced, problematized and reverted.

Findings

An initiative to increase care quality through the empowerment of care recipients led to a calculative change and to an intensification of work, which union representatives turned into a health and safety complaint. “Seizing” the overflow from the calculative change and “redirecting” it into the health and safety arena allowed the unions to draw support from the national work health and safety agency. In response, the organization rolled back the calculative change.

Originality/value

This paper introduces the notions of seizing and redirecting overflows. When combined with conduits of overflows, a part of Callon’s (1998) conceptual apparatus that previously has received little attention, these notions constitute a framework that helps identify conditions that make emancipatory uses of accounting and control outputs possible.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 21 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 11 October 2018

Bettina C.K. Binder

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the success of the 50 EURO STOXX companies as measured by the earnings before taxes (EBT) and the percentage…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the success of the 50 EURO STOXX companies as measured by the earnings before taxes (EBT) and the percentage of female members on their supervisory boards.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper relies on data extracted from the annual reports of the 50 EURO STOXX companies in 2015 and from financial websites.

Findings

The paper provides the existence of a weak correlation between companies’ performance as measured by EBT and the percentage of women on supervisory boards.

Research limitations/implications

This study has two main limitations: first, a single key performance indicator was used to measure firms’ success; and second, the study offers insights related only to the year 2015. The analysis could be extended over a larger time span while some other variables could be considered in a more holistic approach.

Practical implications

The paper raises awareness that there is much to be done with regard to the presence of women on boards, and readers, investors and business owners gain an insight on the business environment and women active on European corporate boards.

Originality/value

By concentrating on the companies of the EURO STOXX 50 Index, the study offers a good image of the European business environment.

Details

EuroMed Journal of Business, vol. 13 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1450-2194

Keywords

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