We develop a model of auditor‐client accounting negotiation, using the elements of negotiation examined in the behavioral negotiation literature, elaborated to include accounting contextual features indicated in the accounting literature and suggested by interviews with senior practitioners. We use a questionnaire structured according to the model to describe the elements, contextual features and associations between the two groups in a sample of real negotiations chosen by 93 experienced audit partners. The paper demonstrates important aspects of the sampled accounting negotiations and makes suggestions for further empirical and model development research.

We examine group response systems (GRS) as an educational tool. We use an experimental approach and student survey data to assess vendors' claims that GRS improve student engagement and feedback, and thus improve learning. A key part of our design involves controlling for effects of moving to a more interactive pedagogy that have been found to affect learning. For a management accounting course, we find only limited GRS learning effects, as proxied by exam performance. Contrary to our expectations, we find a decline in engagement, as proxied by student oral participation, when GRS are used. We also find little evidence that GRS lead to greater student satisfaction with the course. We do find support for student satisfaction with GRS, from which we infer that implementation problems are not driving our results. In summary, we find little support for vendor claims, when controlling for changes in pedagogy.

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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a large and important part of developed economies. However, little is known about the extent to which SMEs use contemporary management accounting (MA) techniques such as costing systems, budgets, responsibility center reporting, and analysis for decision making. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted in-depth field interviews at 22 SMEs to: (1) determine the extent to which common MA techniques and tools are being used by SMEs; and (2) explore the underlying reasons why specific MA techniques are not being used. We find that of the 19 common MA techniques covered in our interviews, a very small number are moderately or highly used by our respondent companies. Moreover, we find that manufacturing companies in our study are more likely to use a broader set of techniques such as costing systems, operating budgets, and variance analysis and that smaller, early-stage SMEs are the lightest users of MA tools overall. We identify three main factors affecting the adoption and use of MA techniques: (1) the perceived decision-usefulness of the technique; (2) the complexity of the SMEs' operating environment; and (3) the age of the SME. We discuss the contributions of our study and its potential implications for MA educators, developers of professional education programs, designers of SME control systems, and textbook authors.

Coordination is a perennial problem for public services — most especially the human and social services. British policy towards community care and de-hospitalisation is examined as a case study of governmental attempts to improve inter-organisation relations. Three questions are addressed: do the theoretical approaches within the public policy literatures offer policy makers a coherent guide to action; have successive government policies been influenced by these theoretical approaches; has British empirical research on joint planning offered additional insights of help to policy makers? The need to link theories of trust — and the micro dynamics of inter-organisational relations — to the public policy tradition is emphasized, as is the need for a reflexive governmental concern for problems of implementation and governance.