Institutional changes in university accounting education in post-revolutionary China: From political orientation to internationalization

Since the formation of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the broad field of accounting education in China has undergone many changes in the context of a dramatically changing sociopolitical environment. The institutional mechanisms in Chinese university accounting education are examined in this paper, principally through a re-reading of the historical experience since 1949. We utilize an institutional theory frame to examine how action in the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars have shaped accounting education from its heavily political orientation in the early years of the PRC to a more internationalized university accounting education system that has begun to take shape in contemporary China. We seek to contribute a contextualized understanding of contemporary China's accounting education, while adapting and extending the role of institutional theory in explaining education changes more broadly.     

Futures of privacy protection: A framework for creating scenarios of institutional change

The future of privacy is a topical issue in the context of debates on mass surveillance and the increasing prevalence of social media sites in everyday life. Previous scenario studies on privacy have focused on macro trends and on forecasting technological developments, and claims about causal influences have remained implicit. This article presents an alternative approach for constructing scenarios of privacy protection. The article focuses on privacy protection as a social institution and builds on the theory of gradual institutional change. The article presents a scenario framework which includes three stages: (1) outlining the dynamics of privacy protection, (2) tracing historical processes and constructing a causal narrative, and (3) creating event-based scenarios. The resulting scenarios are narratives of plausible chains of events which are based on the results of the previous stages. The key difference to typical scenario approaches is the focus on specific actors and types of event sequences in privacy protection. The argument is that by lowering the level of abstraction in this way, researchers and decision-makers can gain a more profound understanding of possible future challenges in privacy protection and of key leverage points in the institutional change process.     

Climate change reporting and multinational companies: Insights from institutional theory and international business

Multinational companies (MNCs) have an important impact on climate change, but knowledge on the greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting practices of MNCs is limited. A theoretical framework is developed to provide an explanation of GHG emissions reporting by MNCs. The framework combines institutional theory with the notion of MNC typology from International Business and explains how institutional pressure acting on each typology of MNC influences standardization of reporting practices and GHG emissions data quality. Propositions are developed and empirically investigated using a case study. Global MNCs are predicted to have better quality GHG emissions reporting compared to multi-domestic or transnational MNCs.     

Authoritarian state,global expansion and corporate social responsibility reporting: The narrative of a Chinese state-owned enterprise

This case study examines why stand-alone Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been initiated in a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). Chinese SOEs have been pioneering CSR reporting since the mid–2000?s and extant literature interprets its development as no more than a consequence of government interventions. However, there is a dearth of qualitative evidence illuminating the subtle interrelationships between the global, national and internal organisational dynamics mediating CSR reporting initiative of Chinese SOEs within the authoritarian state. To fill this gap, we provide a nuanced multi-level institutional analysis of the drivers underlying the initiation of CSR reporting within the case examined.     

Transformational change and the vacuum of performance measurement: How a story of success became a failure

Some local government organisations stand out in terms of their capability to adopt and use management accounting innovations and become a model for those struggling with issues such as performance measurement (PM). But what happens to the innovations if the organisation is forced into transformational change? This longitudinal case study is based on the theory that the use and impact of PM is influenced by (a) its contractibility and (b) how the performance management systems in place are configured and used. One conclusion is that transformational change can result in a vacuum of PM, even with a high degree of contractibility.     

The institutional determinants of IPO firm prospectus length in a developing context: A research note

This study focuses on the impact of institutional quality on the amount of disclosure in IPO firms listing prospectuses using the six well established World Bank Governance indices, namely corruption control, government effectiveness in promotion of private sector development, political stability and absence from terrorism, regulatory quality, rule of law and lastly democratic voice and accountability. Using a unique hand-collected sample of 165 IPO firms from across Africa from 2000 to 2011 I find evidence that enhanced rule of law and regulatory quality impact on the amount of disclosure by firms, reflected in length of IPO listings prospectuses. In addition I find evidence that founder-led entrepreneurial firms are more likely to disclose more alongside firms in extractive and technology industries that rely on local stock exchanges as a source of external finance. In contrast IPO firms that have significant long term foreign partners or are subsidiaries of foreign Multinational Enterprises are likely to disclose less than other types of firm underscoring their apathy to domestic investors and relative lack of dependence on indigenous stock markets as a viable source of external finance.     

Organizational change in an Australian university: Responses to a research assessment exercise

The objective of this paper is to explore the way internal organizational control processes are changed in response to external demands. It does this by investigating the organizational change undertaken by an Australian university in anticipation of, and in response to, an externally imposed research assessment exercise (RAE), specifically focusing on the university's internal research-related performance management system (PMS) and its impact on academics. It adopts a case study method, using data from publicly available documents, interviews with senior management, and a survey administered to academics. The data is interpreted and analyzed using Broadbent and Laughlin's organizational change model. The findings reveal that RAE was anticipated with the appointment of new senior leadership, a new vision, restructure of faculties and departments, and changes to the research PMS. The changes to both the university's mission (significant and longlasting, second order change) and its internal systems (less significant, first order change) are evident. In the context of the global proliferation of PMSs in the higher education sector, this paper contributes to the literature on PMSs, indicating its relevance to universities. Its empirics provide useful insights for university managers and regulators and, more broadly, the paper contributes to our understanding of organizational change.     

Institutional contradiction and management control innovation: A field study of total quality management practices in a privatized telecommunication company

The purpose of this paper is to theorise the changes surrounding the introduction of a management control innovation, total quality management (TQM) techniques, within Telecom Fiji Limited. Using institutional theory and drawing on empirical evidence from multiple sources including interviews, discussions and documents, the paper explicates the institutionalization of these TQM practices. The focus of the paper is the micro-processes and practice changes around TQM implementation, rather than the influence of the macro-level structures that are often linked with institutional theory. The change agents used Quality Action Teams and the National Quality Council to introduce new TQM routines. The present study extends the scope of institutional analysis by explaining how institutional contradictions impact to create and make space for institutional entrepreneurs, who in turn, modify existing routines or introduce new routines in fluid organizational environments which also exhibit evidence of resistance.     

Changes in accounting and financial information system in a Spanish electricity company: A new institutional theory analysis

This paper reports on the results of an intensive case study that investigated changes in the accounting and financial information system of a large Spanish electricity company (Sevillana). Sevillana was acquired by the Endesa Group upon the deregulation of the Spanish electricity sector (SES). Drawing on data from multiple sources including interviews, observations, discussions and documents, the paper aims to theorize the change in the accounting and financial information system. An integrated accounting and financial information system was imposed by the Endesa head office on Sevillana and other Endesa subsidiaries to support organizational changes designed in response to regulatory requirements. The institutional senvironment also interacted with market forces and intra-organizational power relations to either directly or indirectly influence the changes in the accounting and financial information system. Given the interplay between these forces, the paper draws on and extends the New Institutional Sociology (NIS) theory [DiMaggio, P.J., Powell, W.W., 1983. The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. Am. Sociol. Rev. 48, 147–160; Powell, W.W., DiMaggio, P.J., 1991. The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. The University of Chicago Press, pp. 183-203] to understand the dynamics of the change.     

The relations among competition, delegation, management accounting systems change and performance: A path model

This paper is concerned with an empirical investigation into the relations among competition, delegation, management accounting and control systems (MACS) change and organizational performance. It follows a standard contingency type path modeling to propose that intensity of competition causes firms to change their MACS and that this change enhances their performance. Delegation of authority is implicated in the model as competition encourages delegation, and this in turn causes the change in MACS, as well as enhancing performance directly. The results from a sample of Australian strategic business units indicate that (1) increased competition results in improved organizational performance indirectly through a greater number of changes in MACS, and (2) increased delegation of authority to lower level management leads to higher organizational performance. These results contribute to the management accounting change literature by providing empirical evidence that the relationship between competition and organizational performance is mediated by a decentralized organizational form and changes in MACS of the firm.     

Measuring our ignorance, one book at a time: New indicators of technological change, 1909-1949

New indicators of technological change in the US based on information drawn from the catalogue of the Library of Congress for the period 1909-1949 are developed and used to pinpoint the relationship, first, between technical change and economic activity, and, second, between fluctuations in innovative activity and the Great Depression. Although links between technological change, output and productivity are found, results suggest that the slowdown in technological progress in the early 1930s did not contribute significantly to the Great Depression. On the other hand, the remarkable acceleration in innovations after 1934 did play a role in the recovery.     

Changes in the Public Accounts Committee of a Less Developed Democratic Country: A Field Study

This paper complements prior studies on the public accounts committees (PACs) by considering the notions of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ of institutional theory in tandem in understanding the changes in structures and activities of the PAC of a less‐developed democratic country – Bangladesh. While prior studies examined ‘external’ institutional pressures on the development and operation of the PAC in various settings, the role of internal and external institutional agents in this context has not been their primary focus. Our empirical evidence from a qualitative field study indicates that over the past two decades, Bangladesh's PAC underwent significant changes to its internal governance structures and administrative processes. While these changes were indirectly driven by pressures from international donor agencies, PAC members and the national audit office played a key role as institutional agents in initiating and institutionalising the changes in PAC governance and operation.