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Extant research already emphasises that complementarities and substitution involving incentive pay and other elements of an organisation's management control system play an important role in terms of explaining the effectiveness of incentive systems. Despite this awareness calls continue for more research addressing the need to better understand how interdependencies arise among management control system elements and how they affect organisational effectiveness. Based on an indepth case study on the implementation of a new incentive system in a manufacturing firm, we seek to provide more research and insight into how incentive pay features in complementary and substitutional relationships in an individual organisational setting. Greater insight can help illustrate how complementary and substitutional relationships unfold in even more complex ways than current research indicates, as well as how the effectiveness of the incentive system in the individual organisational setting is determined by these relationships.

Purpose -The methodological debate relating to accounting research using actor-network theory (ANT) has primarily focused on how ANT generates performative studies that significantly differ from ostensive studies. These discussions have in many ways (and for good reasons) distanced performative from ostensive research. Recently, however, several scholars have emphasized the interdependencies between ostensive and performative aspects when it comes to knowledge development, thereby underlining the need to coordinate ostensive and performative studies and bring them closer together. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the methodological opportunities and limitations for ANT researchers who seek to move closer to ostensive research. Design/methodology/approach -The basis for exploring the opportunities and threats stemming from integration at the methodological level is a comparison of performative and ostensive case study methodologies as they have been presented in research. Robert K. Yin's case study methodology is chosen to represent an ostensive view whereas performative case study methodology is represented by the methodological reflections of Bruno Latour, John Law, and Michel Callon. Findings -The paper illustrates how the process is a balancing act. On the one hand, it requires performative researchers to relate more closely to aspects decisive for ostensive researchers; yet, on the other, they need to preserve the distinctiveness of the performative approach. Originality/value -This paper exemplifies these issues with reference to management accounting research and contributes by clarifying the methodological implications of moving performative research closer to ostensive research.

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Organizational practices weave in and out of different networks. In this paper, we argue and illustrate that the existence and importance of networks in organizations vary according to particular management concerns. Some networks are typically dormant and are called forth only in situations of `crisis'; they may be invisible to organizational participants in conditions of normality. Via organizational concerns, such as hierarchy and control, productivity and profitability, in some episodes some networks (which we call managerial technologies) are made important to condition other networks that operate in continuous time (we call them business technologies). The paper's empirical domain is a small high-tech producer in Denmark. The paper discusses the linkages between actor networks, attempts to discuss how each makes claims to `competitiveness' and assesses how they mobilize each other in situations where one network is impacting on other networks to condition and change them. This reflects the intricate effects of different networks all having a spokesperson and a materiality that claim privileged access to `competitiveness' and its translation into organizational decision-making.