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Qualification is the competence that is required for tasks related to wage work. Competence is all the forms of knowledge possessed by the staff as well as their personal abilities. When qualification is related to competence, possible competence deficiencies become apparent. This can be done in our model for controlling the improvement of competence. The first step in the process of describing competence deficiency is to operationalize the concept of qualification. This is achieved by means of social tests, which can be considered as relevant data. Empirical data are used to develop social tests relating to qualification for two staff categories, Front staff and Departmental managers. Finally, we take a further step and suggest how the empirical content of the concept can be used in a model for controlling the improvement of competence.

The present paper aims to explore what type of information is useful for managers and employees in understanding the company and the requirements for particular jobs within the company.

A longitudinal study was undertaken in a Swedish company. A number of narratives were collected with the help of asking for stories in the context of an interview, critical‐incident technique and recording of spontaneous storytelling.

The finding in present paper is that narrative accounting is a new way of looking at management accounting. Narrative accounting consists of visualisations and narratives emanating from within an organisation.

The present paper explores an area were few studies have been conducted.

The usefulness of present paper is that practitioners may understand that there is a need for complements to traditional accounting in the context competence creation.

The research shows that narrative accounting is a new way of looking at management accounting.

The aim of this paper is to suggest a new competence‐based framework for describing and analysing the initiation of the transition of goods‐dominant companies to service providers. The paper seeks to illustrate the relevance of the new framework in an empirical study of a knowledge‐intensive mechanical engineering company.

A single‐case study of the world's leading maker of tool steel forms the empirical basis for the paper. A study based on a qualitative research methodology, involving inductive inquiry and a field study over six years focusing on “narratives from the field” was conducted.

New competencies are needed to initiate the transition from products to service and to manage service‐based offerings. The findings are summarised in two categories. The first, “customer value socialisation”, refers to the sharing of experiences and knowledge among employees. The second, “customer value management”, refers to management's ability to encourage employees to create value‐in‐use for the customers.

The study contributes to the literature by: focusing on issues related to competence (rather than organisational structures and strategy); identifying “customer value socialisation” and “customer value management” as the important dimensions for engendering competence in employees; and introducing the concepts of “unfreezing”, “movement”, and “refreezing,” into the management of the necessary cultural change that must accompany the transition.

This paper aims to discuss the gendered dimensions of management control. Gender mainstreaming is a worldwide strategy for gender equality. The question raised in this paper is how a management control system functions under the pressure of mainstreaming gender into a core business.

The evidence stems from a case study at two Swedish Governmental public transport administrations. Interviews, observations of meetings and close reading of documents furnish this paper with data over a five-year period regarding the management control of the policy goal of a gender-equal transport system. The practice of management control for gender mainstreaming is studied by adopting sociological institutional theory and a gender perspective.

The management control system proves to hamper gender equality. In a technocratic core business, the control system fails to support gender mainstreaming. In this paper, the control of a gender-equal transport system results in a quantitative perspective on women and men instead of a qualitative gender perspective on the transport system.

This paper has practical implications both for accountants being involved in management control for gender mainstreaming and for all persons involved in promoting gender mainstreaming.

The paper contributes to the scarce literature from research with a gender perspective on management control systems. Being exposed to gender mainstreaming, the gender perspective discloses dysfunctional dimensions within the management control system.

This paper provides a brief account of the work of the PEI since its inauguration. Furthermore, a number of current issues are discussed such as the way the scope of the subject has been extended to broader issues including intellectual capital and the balanced score card. A final conclusion is drawn that while much has been achieved by the PEI and others, there are still many central measurement issues to be resolved in the future.

As an answer for the limited growth potentials of diversification and internationalization, services became increasingly important for industrial firms in recent years. Based on existing and established business concepts, companies explore new segments in their traditional value chains beyond traditional market penetration strategies: they pursue service transition strategies to open up new sources for growth, even in markets that do not promise great expansion potential. Our paper addresses the issue of economies of scope of service transition. In this context, we first explore the question, to what extent the insights about product diversification strategies from physical goods sectors can be transferred to the service sector. Using competence-based considerations on diversification we focus on dynamic economies of scope, whose central idea is exploration and development of new resources rather than the static exploitation of existing ones. Furthermore, we integrate the largely neglected issue of how the phenomenon of service diversification depends on the industry's life cycle stage. In a small empirical study of the German mechanical engineering industry we demonstrate that diversification steps into services require a shift in the resource and competence base of firms. Using a dynamic perspective, we construct a conceptual framework for analyzing and explaining the advantages of service transition strategies. The developed model describes a service diversification trajectory and points out that the establishment of a profitable service business requires the exploration and development of competences and adequate organizational structures.

This study examines the accuracy of individual perceptions (self‐estimates) of acquired competence. A concept of relative competence is introduced to account for variation in rater elevation and differences in importance (significance) of specific competencies. The results indicate that the self‐estimates of job‐specific competencies are well executed. Because the distortion in elevation and stereotype accuracy is largely associated with general constructs, the findings suggest that we should focus on modeling competencies to the job. The results also show that even without a correction for interrater differences or a correction for the importance of different competencies, the competency model carries value‐relevant information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the municipality in the place marketing context and to describe how municipalities work on making their place good to live in. The study rests on abductive reasoning whereby service-based logic forms the study and offers a theoretical framework for how to approach the phenomena.

A qualitative study in the form of 20 semi-structured interviews with leading elected officials and civil servants is used to let us understand how two typical municipalities in southern Sweden work on making their municipality a good place for their residents to live in. Content analysis is used to analyze the data.

The study reveals how municipalities work on creating opportunities for interactions between themselves and their residents, as well as offers insight into what value propositions the municipalities believe they offer their residents. The current study shows that the geographical location and the natural environment, basic and essential services, accommodations, urban quality, recreation and leisure and ambience constitute important dimensions in the place offering.

Service-based logic is used as a backdrop to facilitate the analysis in this study, which emphasizes value propositions offered by the municipality and interactions between the municipality and its residents, which increase our understanding of how municipalities work on making their place good to live in. The service-based logic help shed new light on the place marketing context and allows us to understand the context in a new way.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in management accounting change processes and outcomes.

The paper draws on an ethnographic study in a Southern European company and mobilizes leader–follower relations as a method theory to analyse the observations.

The findings show how a leadership dispute between two top managers can be amplified during the management accounting change process and percolate throughout an organization. The authors identify five contested areas where the role of accounting amplifies the leadership dispute by unfolding its reach to other organizational actors. The leadership dispute can shape and reinforce a fragmented organization, with some organizational members creating convergent leader–follower relations while others divert and fragment with an increased turnover. This amplification can lead to unexpected outcomes of the change process in terms of how and by whom accounting is performed.

The authors propose the study of leadership and followership as an important but, to date, largely neglected theme in management accounting research.

In contrast to the prior management accounting literature, the paper departs from a leadership-centric and role-based approach and employs a co-constructionist and relational approach to leadership and followership to analyse management accounting change. In addition, it applies and extends Alvesson's (2019a) theory on “divergent relationalities” between the presumed leaders and followers. In doing so, the paper also adds to the leadership field by theorizing and integrating the situation of a leadership dispute in this novel theoretical framework.