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The research goal was to trace behavioural patterns of management accountants, comprising activities and courses of action, in order to enhance understanding of the management accounting profession.

Protoscripts were derived, using interview techniques and a research method called “interpretive interactionism”. These protoscripts depict observable, recurrent activities and patterns of interaction characteristic for a group of persons, and can be used in various types of situations.

The paper describes the procedure and outcome of the collection of behavioural protoscripts used by management accountants and controllers, as well as their possible ordering.

The findings enlarge understanding of the controller profession, but are limited solely to controller activities. The protoscripts collected are stereotypical, at least for the controllers interviewed. Of course, all human experience is interpretation and it should be acknowledged that interpretations are never complete.

The control mechanisms and instruments that emerge in an organisation are the result of several interrelated factors and processes. Of special interest here is the behaviour of management accountants and controllers in shaping, maintaining and exerting control. Behavioural protoscripts can show how management accountants give contents to their role and structure their daily work.

Scripted behaviour of management accountants has received little prior research attention, especially in combination with the research method of interpretive interactionism.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of network-based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services.

In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network-based social capital. The approach originates from the field of sociology and entails a personal network survey. The authors define four social capital variables according to tie strength and social distance between the respondent and his/her network member.

Social network ties are not homogeneous. The econometric results suggest that social capital with weaker ties in combination with socially distant ties can potentially improve households’ access to rural services.

The empirical survey focusses on a single province in Northern Vietnam. Thus, the main limitation of the micro-study is its regional focus. A more representative sample of the whole country would be desirable to backup the policy recommendation.

The results indicate that access to services in rural Vietnam it still too personalized and subjective. Thus, a thorough review of the access procedures and making them more objective would be better choice. This would also root out a potential alley for corruption and nepotism.