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The purpose of this paper is to identify and characterise executives’ inside-out (firm-oriented) and outside-in (market-oriented) mental models. As these two orientations are vital for strategic decision-making, yet potentially contradictory, it is important to understand the role of inside-out and outside-in thinking in executives’ agendas.

Qualitative, semi-structured interviews of 15 senior executives were used to capture insights into executives’ mental models. Data analysis was conducted following the principles of abstraction, theory emerging from data and constant comparison.

Four archetypes of executive mental models are identified and characterised along two dimensions (inside-out or outside-in orientation and focus on rational or emotional aspects).

The study introduces a tentative framework for practitioners to identify and deploy the potential of the mental models that guide executive decision-making.

The study extends prior research on mental models by combining this approach with inside-out and outside-in orientations and customer value propositions. In addition, it introduces four archetypes that illustrate the distinct potential of different mental models.

The vision should ignite and facilitate strategic change as well as help a company to transform and reinvent itself in the face of competition. Too often executives use vision as a mere slogan without real relevance. The purpose of this study is to show how the vision guides strategic change.

A case study from a successful multi-format, multi-industry service business is used to illustrate the role of vision in strategic change management.

The article illustrates how the vision was used in practice in guiding the strategic transformation process of the case organization. The study presents four focal tasks of the vision and concludes with five practical guidelines for executives.

The article highlights the role of vision as an important tool for managing strategic change.

Despite the fact that customer orientation is increasingly used as a strategic guideline to ensure companies’ long-term success, it is too often left at conceptual level without any managerial or executive translation. To address this practical gap, the purpose of the paper is to build an executive perspective on customer orientation through the mechanism of customer value dimensions.

An intensive case study from a successful retail service business is used to illustrate how customer orientation is applied in actual strategic decision making at the executive level. The case business is a multi-sector service business that took a strategic turn toward customer orientation in the 2000s. As a result, the company has been able to increase their market share to become the market leader as well as stay ahead of the competition and increase customer loyalty.

The study provides a practical tool of disentangling customer orientation into four customer value dimensions and linking them with appropriate executive level strategic decision making.

The study helps executives uncover the inner meaning of customer orientation, move beyond traditional conceptualization of customer orientation, and adopt customer value orientation. This necessitates not only understanding customer value criteria, but also linking the diverse criteria to executive level strategic decision making.

The study concretizes and uncovers how customer orientation can be implemented by incorporating both economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic customer value dimensions into executive level strategic decision making.

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.