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This study aims to explore the formation of municipal risk management (RM) and the reasons for the differences of RM practices between the seven biggest cities in Finland.

The empirical data of this comparative qualitative case study comprises 33 interviews conducted with municipal managers. Supplementary material includes documentary material on municipal rules governing RM as well as annual reports and risk tools used in the municipalities.

This study found differences in cities with respect to when, how and why RM practices had evolved. The results indicate that differences in RM practices and development paths between cities are largely explained by the differences in the original reason to initiate RM, time span since its introduction, professional and educational backgrounds of risk managers, local risk events and accounting infrastructure such as RM tools developed in a city. These findings also suggest that even within the same municipality, different functions can be at different phases regarding RM.

This study reports on RM as a new form of accounting in the field of Finnish municipalities. This highlights how fairly uniform considerations at the field level lead to variation in the elaboration of RM practices at the municipal level. The study finds that different paths in the development of local RM involve iterative evolution between the phases of emergence, largely explained by contextual differences. This study contributes to understanding the emergence of new accounting forms in a municipal RM context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the complexity of the network governance setting affects accountability practices. The authors pay particular attention to the organizational characteristics that may enable a common understanding of multiple accountability relationships, or lead to problems in reconciling competing forms of accountability, thereby appearing as blame game-type behavior.

The authors conducted a case study with 31 semi-structured interviews in a Finnish health care organization (FHC) that offers basic public health care services. The organization represents a co-operative arrangement with the main city and three smaller municipalities. The FHC has faced difficulties in balancing budget constraints with the provision of statutory care to citizens. This case is analyzed with the help of theories relating to accountability, the blame game, and dialogue.

The authors found that in the FHC operating under austerity constraints, attempts to reconcile financial, professional, and democratic accountability were made but, instead of dialogue and consensus, the different stakeholder groups resorted to defensive tactics in order to protect their resources, position, or sense of professional obligation. The authors suggest that in a context of network governance, accompanied by an increasing emphasis on financial accountability, organizational practices are susceptible to conflicting accountabilities and behavior characterized in this paper as a blame game.

The study contributes to the empirical studies on accountability in the new public governance context by analyzing the complex accountability relations between stakeholder groups with different agendas. The authors suggest organizational characteristics that may exacerbate conflicts between different stakeholder groups and prevent constructive dialogue. Furthermore, the study analyzes the composition of democratic accountability within the studied organization.

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.