Governments in many countries are implementing performance reporting systems. Many advocates claim that performance reporting results in accountability and effectiveness. There is no theory to justify these claims and guide implementation. This paper presents five field studies of five performancereporting systems to begin building theory.Four locations are optimistic; one is not. Mere adoption of performance reporting is not effective. Broad involvement across all government levels is important. Communication and integration with strategic planning and agency management are essential. Two theoretical streams, accounting in organized anarchies and the constitutive role of accounting, are useful theoretical bases.Performance reporting is widely touted worldwide as a means to achieve increased public accountability by governments with claims that it leads to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Yet there has been little significant attempt to develop a comprehensive theory that justifies these claims and provides implementation guidance. There is especially a lack of theory drawn from empirical observations. One effective way to build theory is the field study. 1 Also, methodological approaches called the method of agreement and the method of differences have recently emerged in accounting-related

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Explores management control and accounting systems of three successfully competing companies to gain deeper insight and fill knowledge gaps. Results show that management control and accounting systems do exist which enhance successful competition. Common features are heavy influence of marketing strategy and activities, but with little interaction between the marketing and accounting functions and with substantial accounting‐type activity, notably activity based cost accounting, outside the accounting function. Traditional budgetary accounting controls are used only for operating costs; social and behavioural controls are used for revenues. Company executives believe these features contribute to effective competition strategy. Findings differ from conventional wisdom but provide implications for system design and continued research.

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Reporting of environmental information along with financial information has become an important research topic. Research to date has focused on the nature of the information reported by companies. This study extends prior research by examining the inclusion of environmental information by financial analysts in their research reports on companies in the chemical and in the oil and gas industries. Both companies and financial analysts are divided into subsets by geographic region, Europe and North America. Results show that only 35 per cent of financial analysts' reports have environmental information. Those reports that do have such information have more environmental information for North American companies than for European companies and analysts tend to report more information for companies in their regions. The chemical industry receives more attention, especially for downside information. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.