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The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the opinions of a number of editors of accounting journals on the value they attach to the practical relevance of management accounting research and the potential role of qualitative methods in conducting this type of research.

This paper collects together commentaries from these journal editors about the theme indicated above, together with an overview and reflections by the editors of this special issue.

The journal editors do not regard a lack of practical relevance in management accounting research as a key concern. Most of them see practice‐relevance and theoretical advancement as complementary, while the latter is given by far the most weight as the core of academic work. Furthermore, most journal editors have no clear preference for either qualitative or quantitative research in relation to the practical relevance issue. Neither do they seem to have strong opinions about the specific benefits of qualitative methods in practice‐relevant studies. In their commentaries, the editors of this special issue advocate a stronger connection between the needs of practitioners and the content of the research, more interventionist research in which practitioners and researchers work together, and a greater focus on communication between academics and practitioners about the practical implications of management accounting research. The special issue editors specifically emphasize the importance of this communication in relation to safeguarding the “support” of various groups in society for academic research.

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the practical relevance of management accounting research, and particularly to the role of qualitative methods in practice‐relevant studies.

By collecting and analyzing the opinions of editors of several prominent accounting journals on the practice‐relevance of the research in this field, a contribution is made to the ongoing debate about this issue.

The micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs) faced various challenges in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, making it challenging to remain competitive and survive in the market. This research develops a model for MSMEs to cope with the current pandemic's operational and supply chain disruptions and similar circumstances.

The exhaustive literature review helped in identifying the constructs, their items and five hypotheses are developed. The responses were collected from the experts working in MSMEs. Total 311 valid responses were received, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was used for testing and validating the proposed model.

Critical constructs identified for the study are-flexibility (FLE), collaboration (COL), risk management culture (RMC) and digitalization (DIG). The statistical analysis indicated that the four latent variables, flexibility, digitalization, risk management culture and collaboration, contribute significantly to the firm performance of MSMEs. Organizational resilience (ORS) mediates the effects of all the four latent variables on firm performance (FP) of MSMEs.

The current study's findings will be fruitful for the manufacturing MSMEs and other firms in developing countries. It will enable them to identify the practices that significantly help in achieving the firm performance.

The previous researches have not considered the effect of “organizational resilience” on the “firm performance” of MSMEs. This study attempts to fill this gap.

The focus is the interplay of cognitive capabilities (mathematical understanding and heuristic problem solving) and learning from feedback. Furthermore, the authors analyze the role of individual factors in designing appropriate feedback systems for complex decision-making situations. Based on a learning model the purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study analyzing the feedback effectiveness in a repeated complex production planning task. Referring to individual characteristics in terms of educational background and problem solving capabilities of the decision maker the authors compare different forms of feedback systems.

The authors performed four experiments bi-weekly based on a realistic production planning situation. Participants received – depending on the treatment – different types of feedback concerning the final outcomes of the production plans. For testing the hypotheses, the authors conducted ANCOVAs and additional post hoc tests for each subgroup to explore the effects of different types of feedback on the subgroups’ decision-making performance.

The authors show that feedback information is not always helpful, but due to acquired knowledge and problem solving capabilities can even be harmful. The authors also show that, depending on the decision maker’s individual characteristics and her past performance, the type of feedback is crucial for the learning process.

The study provides important information about feedback design taking individual characteristics of decision makers (educational background, work experience) into account. Applying the results of the study can increase decision-making performance and enhance learning of production planning tasks.

The findings extend previous literature reporting that the performance in complex decision-making tasks depends on educational background and on the ability to cope with the phenomena of cognitive load, working memory limitations and the capability to utilize relevant heuristics to prevent information overload. Some of our results, e.g., the negative impact of non-financial feedback of high-performing economists, contradict the general findings in the literature.