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Increased demand for organized home help for elderly and disabled people and parallel budget cuts of social care require new efficient solutions to save home‐helpers’ time and ensure the current quality of provided services. A number of trials for renewing grocery purchasing process as a part of home help for the elderly and disabled have lately been initiated in Finland. In all but one of these trials electronic commerce (EC) services are included in the purchase process. In this article we compare these trials using the time efficiency of home‐helpers as a primary criterion. Using electronic order delivery gives even additional benefits, releasing the home‐helper from the need to visit the grocery store. The Full EC Model would be the best solution. However, it might not be feasible for most customers, who do not necessarily have the technology or ability to use it. Therefore, the intermediary based EC seems to be most suitable for this customer group.

The focus on reengineering in the early 1990s, and the more recent emphasis on process management and change management have increased both practitioners and researchers interest in the issues of measuring processes. The contradictory results of process change projects reported in the literature and our observations from research suggest conflicting requirements for measurement systems. In this article, we review process measurement schemes with particular emphasis on the measures of time, quality, costs and efficiency. With five case studies, we illustrate process structures and related measurements for both customized and standardized deliveries. A framework for setting objectives for different process types is proposed. The result is a normative scheme for different processes that suggests ways to set meaningful objectives for time, quality, costs and efficiency. Finally, conclusions and implications are presented.

There is a huge diversity among change initiatives, which range from streamlining single processes to corporate‐scale strategic restructuring. Accordingly, there is also similar diversity in the drivers and reasons for launching projects, as well as in results and tracers of projects. The reengineering literature has focused on operational improvement of a business process. More recently, the scope of process management has widened to examine the relation of strategic goals and the objectives of change projects. It seems to be that sometimes the drivers for starting a change project and tracers of the projects do not match. The results are often more limited in scope, than the objectives. Examines these relationships through 38 case studies. The results show that in all cases where the drives and tracers did not match, the shift was toward lower level results and tracers. Most apparently, this could be observed in projects aiming at changing business strategies, but with the result of updating information systems infrastructures. Develops a framework for analysing efficient matches of different types of drivers and tracers in development projects. The framework distinguishes between projects aiming at changing the business and those seeking to change processes. These can be further divided into classes according to objectives and results.

The objective of this paper is to understand the success factors of mobile operators.

Explores the business practices of leading carriers in Japan, South Korea, China, Europe and the USA.

The paper finds several common characteristics in the more successful markets including a handset design and quality of service that are aligned with the operators' service concepts, effective billing systems, reasonable prices, and targeted marketing strategies. While these internal factors can be easily copied by a mobile operator, it is found that there are additional, external factors such as the existing customer base and its preferences, government policy, technological constraints and value chain dynamics that can greatly affect the transferability of a mobile operator's business model to another market.

The findings present opportunities for further research including the possibility of developing a new theory into which factors are more difficult to transfer and why.

The practical implications of this paper are that operators who wish to pursue profitable business models need to take into account the factors of a successful business model and which ones are easily transferable in their respective markets and which ones are not.

The paper is unique in that we compare the business models of mobile operators across five different countries.

Teaching is seen as a morally significant endeavor, but there is a lack of clarity about the entire domain. While teachers usually do not develop a refined professional knowledge base or vocabulary of the moral work of teaching (Sanger, 2017) during pre- and in-service teacher education, there is a need to explore more in detail what kind of expertise is required and employed in the moral work of teaching, and how the components of that expertise are related to each other. The purpose of our theoretical chapter is not to present the “foreground,” that is the results of “what works” but instead to highlight the “background” of teaching profession. We note that the complexities of teaching can be structured through the relational viewpoints of ethical principles, moral judgments, and virtuous policies. From these three standpoints, which often appear separate and disconnected, we try out a constructive synthesis. Our framework denotes that teaching is a peculiar kind of relationship that brings with it special ethical guidelines, moral judgments, and constant considerations of how to realize human well-being in the real-world dilemmas of teaching.

This article analyzes the cognitive microfoundations, conflicting institutional logics and professional hybridization in a case characterized by conflict.

In 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.

The 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 accounting techniques. These negative emotions aggregated into incompatible professional-level institutional logics, which contributed to the lack of hybridization between such logics. The authors highlight the importance of the cognitive microfoundations, that is, the individual-level interpretations and emotional responses, in the analysis of conflicting institutional logics.

Managerial attention needs to be directed to accounting practices perceived as frustrating or threatening, a perception that can prevent the use of accounting techniques in the creation of professional hybrids. The Finnish basic health care context involves inconsistent political decision-making, multiple tasks, three institutional logics and individual interpretations and emotions in various decision-making situations.

This study develops microfoundational accounting research by illustrating how individual-level cognitive microfoundations such as dissatisfaction with budgeting, aggregate into professional-level institutional logics, and in our case, prevent professional hybridization in a basic health care setting characterized by conflict and three separate institutional logics.

Several scholars have recently highlighted the narrowness of accounting research regarding it as a threat to scholarly developments in the field. The aim of this study was to chart progress in management accounting research using a sample of doctoral dissertations published in Finland. In particular, the study examines the range and diversity of research strategic choices in Finnish dissertations over time, including the topics and methodological and theoretical approaches chosen. The authors also briefly compare findings over time and with other progress studies.

A longitudinal historical investigation was selected. All of the 80 management accounting doctoral dissertations published in Finnish business schools and departments during 1945-2015 were analysed.

The findings reveal that an expansion of doctoral education has led to an increasing diversity of research strategic choices in Finland. Different issues have been of interest at different times; so, it has been possible to cover a wide range of cost, management accounting and other topics and to use different methodological and theoretical approaches over time. Consequently, management accounting has become a rich and multifaceted field of scientific research.

While this analysis is limited to doctoral research in Finland, the results should be relevant in advancing the understanding of the development of management accounting research.

Overall, the findings support the view that there have been, and continue to be, many ways to conduct innovative research in the field of management accounting.

Dissertation research in this field has been extensive and vital enough to educate new generations of academics, guarantee continuity of the subject as an academic discipline and make management accounting a significant academic field of research.

The paper contributes to current research on management accounting change by an analysis of a sample of doctoral dissertations.