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PurposeThis paper explores the impact of contemporary calculative practices, termed “accountingisation”, on Australian accounting academics' values. Also, it seeks to understand the rationale underlying the development of various university performance measurement systems (PMSs), and their implementation and evaluation.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach uses accounting academics' responses to an online survey and also semi-structured interviews with senior research-related leaders in a group of Australian universities. This is supplemented by document analysis. A narrative story-telling approach explores and presents the combined data observations, over the period 2010–2018, of two characters: a “typical” accounting academic and a “typical” vice-chancellor.FindingsThe study contributes to the literature on PMSs in understanding “accountingisation”, the rationale behind the development, implementation and evaluation of performance metrics by senior management and its impact on accounting academics. It juxtaposes and unpacks the complexities and nuances of PMSs and provides empirical evidence by highlighting the perceptions of both the Australian accounting academics and senior university management. The findings demonstrate a level of discontent among accounting academics in reconciling the expectations of increased “accountingisation” within university PMSs. These are juxtaposed against the views of senior university leaders who are influential in determining PMSs.Originality/valueThis paper is novel in considering the implications of “accountingisation” in a contemporary setting, focusing on accounting academics, values and individual PMSs within business schools.

Purpose -This aim of this study is to explore the relationship between management control systems (MCSs) and the formulation of strategy in not-for-profit (NFP) organisations. Design/methodology/approach -The paper views the relationship between MCS and strategy through the contrasting lenses of new-institutional and contingency theory, using data collected from semi-structured interviews of CEOs and senior executives in 32 Australian NFPs. Findings -Strategy is formulated predominantly by intended means, through structured strategic planning processes. Emergent strategy is typically a rare means by which strategy is developed, and is in fact often actively discouraged in the NFPs investigated. Contrary to expectations, control is predominantly exercised through informal means, rather than by formally designed systems. Originality/value -With strategy and control being central concerns for most NFPs, this sector provides a unique vehicle for exploring the "robustness" of prior MCS strategy empirical findings. Investigating the MCS strategy relationship within a highly complex NFP context is thus an "acid test" of existing understanding of the MCS-strategy nexus. As one of the few studies to investigate the relationship between control and strategy as it may apply in this context, this study refines and further develops extant management control theory.

The relationship between management control systems (MCS) and strategy has received considerable attention in the management control literature. Contingency-based approaches, however, have traditionally dominated this research, with limited attention devoted specifically to how MCS and strategy may combine in organisations operating within highly institutionalised environments. Adopting an institutional perspective, the current study is based on interviews with CEOs and senior executives in 32 Australian Not-for-Profit organisations. Our findings indicate a tendency for these organisations to decouple informal control from MCS, producing a 'business as usual' mentality via the pervasive informal approach to control, supplanting contingency-based predictions relating to MCS-strategy relations.

This study offers foundational insights into the ways in which perceptions of different interview media-principally, face-to-face, telephone and videoconferencing channels of communication-may influence researcher choices and practices. Informed by the reflections of 23 senior accounting researchers, our evidence identifies a duality of practices in the usage of different interviewing media, influenced primarily through the role played by experience, which informs perceptions upon which practices are based. We discuss this duality of practices in terms of information richness theory and channel expansion theory and offer further insights into the factors that influence and shape researchers' perceptions of the contextual suitability of particular media available to interview-based accounting research.

The investigation of management control has been a continuing theme in management accounting research over the past four decades. Although studies in this area collectively constitute a considerable body of knowledge, the vast majority of research attention has been directed to the design or use associated with formal management control systems (MCS). However, although often recognized as fundamentally inherent within organizational control environments, few studies have explicitly investigated informal control, despite its pervasiveness and the effects repeatedly attributed to it in the overall organizational control package. Predicated on the view that this knowledge gap may be largely explainable by the difficulties associated with conceptualizing and, therefore, operationalizing informal control, the purpose of this study is to advance the use of social network theory as a means to provide a deeper understanding about how informal control operates within organizations, and as an aid in developing more fully specified control models. JEL Classifications: M41.

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