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Management accounting practices are expected to adapt and evolve with changing information requirements. The purpose of this study is to determine factors that drive management accounting adaptability (MAA) in organisations using the agility lens.

This study identifies three factors that drive MAA through their support of agility. Specifically, the impact of top management team knowledge, team-based structures and information system flexibility on MAA is examined. The hypotheses are tested using data collected from an online survey of Australian and New Zealand companies.

The results support the proposed relations and explain a significant variance in MAA. Also, consistent with previous findings, a positive association between MAA and management accounting effectiveness was found.

This study illustrates the value of using the agility lens in the context of management accounting change, which is under-explored in the accounting literature relative to other disciplines such as production economics.

This study recommends management to refrain from behaviour that encourages and maintains the status quo. Influencing the factors identified in this study can encourage more innovation in management accounting and improve adaptability when changes to organisational contingencies occur.

This paper explores and adopts the concept of agility to complement dominant theories in the management accounting change literature. The concept of agility is unpacked and applied to review existing literature to explain how management accounting may become more adaptable and open to evolving. The resulting model identifies factors that support sense-making and responding as constituents of agility. This study also extends a recent study by Yigitbasioglu (2016) on the link between information technology and MAA by building a more powerful model in terms of scope and explanatory power to explain the ability of management accounting to change over time.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of accountants as advisors in professional services firms (PSFs), and it examines the impact of digital transformation on the work, knowledge and skills of accountants in their role as advisors in PSFs.

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews predominantly with partners in Australian PSFs, including the Big4 and directors of professional accounting bodies.

The findings show that accountants as advisors fill a critical role in PSFs as they represent substantial human capital for such firms. Accountants as advisors are a valuable strategic resource because of their unique capabilities in combining generic human capital with digital human capital and social capital resources. Some differences between the Big4 and non-Big4 were found in terms of services offered that were attributable to the respective industry foci and resource availability.

The findings have broader implications for both the accounting profession and the education sector in terms of providing a better, and more overt, understanding of what the future holds for the accounting profession and the relevant knowledge and skills required. Also, recruiters and managers at PSFs are likely to benefit from the findings.

Evidence from PSFs provides insights into an evolutionary path for the accounting profession, and the knowledge and skills accountants need to work in that increasingly competitive domain, due to digital transformation.

Drawing on institutional theory analytical perspectives of theorisation and translation, this study aims to explore the institutionalisation of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in Indonesia from a regulatory and filer perspective.

The Indonesian capital market offers a unique case of the integration of XBRL regulatory reporting between multiple regulators and a transfer from capital market regulation to state-level regulation. This study uses semi-structured interviews with key actors employed with Indonesian XBRL-regulatory bodies and listed companies (filers).

External pressures, monitoring issues and tensions in the implementation process were instrumental in the theorisation and translation of XBRL in Indonesia. Specifically, the findings show that choices made with respect to XBRL regulation and implementation created tensions between XBRL reporting fulfilling a monitoring purpose and serving stakeholders’ interests. The findings also indicate that the Indonesian approach to XBRL regulation and implementation had distinct characteristics compared to XBRL implementation in other jurisdictions.

This study emphasises the necessity for robust regulatory support and strict enforcement to navigate the complexities and tensions arising from a multi-regulatory approach. Additionally, it stresses the importance of firms’ readiness and expertise in XBRL as more sophisticated implementation strategies are considered.

Using the analytical lens of theorisation and translation, the study provides a deeper understanding of how a globally diffused accounting technology was institutionalised and legitimised in a developing country. Specifically, this study explains why a conversion approach to XBRL implementation was favoured and how XBRL implementation and reporting were managed and coordinated between different Indonesian regulators.

Multidisciplinary business process management (BPM) research can reap significant impact. We can particularly benefit from incorporating accounting concepts to address some of the key BPM challenges, such as value-creation and return on investment of BPM activities. However, research which addresses a relationship between BPM and accounting is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed synthesis of the current literature that has integrated accounting aspects with BPM. The authors profile and thematically describe existing research, and derive evidence-based directions to guide future research.

A multi-staged structured literature review approach to search for the two broad themes, accounting and BPM, supported by NVivo (to manage the papers and the coding and analysis processes) was designed and followed.

The paper confirms the dearth of work that ties the two disciplines, despite the synergetic multidisciplinary results that can be attained. Available literature is mostly from the management accounting perspective and relates to describing how performance management, in particular performance measurement, can be applicable to process improvement initiatives together with tools such as activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard. There is a lack of research that examines BPM in relation to any financial accounting perspectives (such as external reporting). Future research directions are proposed together with implications for practitioners with the findings of this structured literature review.

The paper provides a detailed synthesis of the existing literature on the nexus between accounting and BPM. It summarizes the implications for practitioners and provides directions for future research by identifying key gaps and opportunities with a sound contextual basis for extension and new work.

Effective literature reviews create strong foundations for future research and accumulate the otherwise scattered knowledge into a single place. This is the first structured literature review that provides a detailed synthesis of the research that ties together the accounting and BPM disciplines, providing a basis for future research directions together with implications for practitioners.

Understanding how organisations can institutionalise the outcomes of process improvement initiatives is limited. This paper explores how process changes resulting from improvement initiatives are adhered to, so that the changed processes become the new “norm” and people do not revert to old practices. This study proposes an institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives.

Firstly, a literature review identified Tolbert and Zucker’s (1996) institutionalisation framework as a suitable conceptual framework on which to base the enquiry. The second phase (the focus of this paper) applied the findings from two case studies to adapt this framework (its stages and related factors) to fit process improvement contexts.

The paper presents an empirically and theoretically supported novel institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives. The three stages of the institutionalisation process presented by Tolbert and Zucker (1996) have been respecified into four stages, explaining how process changes are institutionalised through “Planning”, “Implementation”, “Objectification” and “Sedimentation” (the original first stage, i.e. “Habitualisation” being divided into Planning and Implementation). Some newly identified Business Process Management (BPM) specific factors influencing the institutionalisation processes are also discussed and triangulated with the BPM literature.

The study contributes to the BPM literature by conceptualising and theorising the stages of institutionalisation of process improvement initiatives. In doing so, the study explicitly identifies and considers several key contextual factors that drive the stages of institutionalisation. Practitioners can use this to better manage process change and future researchers can use this framework to operationalise institutionalisation of process change.

This is the first research study that provides an empirically supported and clearly conceptualised understanding of the stages of institutionalising process improvement outcomes.

While many studies have predominantly looked at the benefits and risks of cloud computing, little is known whether and to what extent institutional forces play a role in cloud computing adoption. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of institutional factors in top management team’s (TMT’s) decision to adopt cloud computing services.

A model is developed and tested with data from an Australian survey using the partial least squares modeling technique.

The results suggest that mimetic and coercive pressures influence TMT’s beliefs in the benefits of cloud computing. The results also show that TMT’s beliefs drive TMT’s participation, which in turn affects the intention to increase the adoption of cloud computing solutions.

Future studies could incorporate the influences of local actors who might also press for innovation.

Given the influence of institutional forces and the plethora of cloud-based solutions on the market, it is recommended that TMTs exercise a high degree of caution when deciding for the types of applications to be outsourced as organizational requirements in terms of performance and security will differ.

The paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on cloud computing adoption and offers the institutional framework as an alternative lens with which to interpret cloud-based information technology outsourcing.

This study aims to explore the relation between the qualities of the information system (IS), management accounting adaptability (MAA) and its effectiveness.

This study involves the development and empirical testing of a model where the qualities of the IS and management accounting effectiveness (MAE) are mediated by MAA.

Information system flexibility (ISF) and shared knowledge had a significant and positive relation to MAA, which in turn had a positive and significant relation to MAE. There was also a moderation effect of ISF on the relation between IS integration and MAA.

IS integration in itself may not lead to management accounting stability, but it is the lack of flexibility of the system and lack of cooperation between the stakeholders that might lead to its stagnation.

Organizations are advised to implement solutions that are relatively flexible and modular, as well as encourage cooperation between stakeholders to fully leverage and improve the existing system.

The study extends the discourse on the interaction between management accounting and ISs by exploring the role of a number of factors that drive MAA.

The purpose of this paper is to explain variations in discretionary information shared between buyers and key suppliers. The paper also aims to examine how the extent of information shared affects buyers' performance in terms of resource usage, output, and flexibility.

The data for the paper comprise 221 Finnish and Swedish non‐service companies obtained through a mail survey. The hypothesized relationships were tested using partial least squares modelling with reflective and formative constructs.

The results of the study suggest that (environmental and demand) uncertainty and interdependency can to some degree explain the extent of information shared between a buyer and key supplier. Furthermore, information sharing improves buyers' performance with respect to resource usage, output, and flexibility.

A limitation to the paper relates to the data, which only included buyers. A better approach would have been to collect data from both, buyers and key suppliers.

Companies face a wide range of supply chain solutions that enable and encourage collaboration across organizations. This paper suggests a more selective and balanced approach toward adopting the solutions offered as the benefits are contingent on a number of factors such as uncertainty. Also, the risks of information sharing are far too high for a one size fits all approach.

The paper illustrates the applicability of transaction cost theory to the contemporary era of e‐commerce. With this finding, transaction cost economics can provide a valuable lens with which to view and interpret interorganizational information sharing, a topic that has received much attention in the recent years.