ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7253-2063
Current Organisations
Monash University
,
Stockholm School of Economics
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-08-2021
DOI: 10.1111/FAAM.12300
Abstract: Based on a case study of a large Swedish local government municipality, we explored the extent to which a cloud‐based enterprise resource planning (CERP) system enabled the role performance of public sector management accountants. Our findings suggest that the CERP system enabled central management accountants to mobilize their specific expertise because it eliminated manual work, increased transparency, and made them feel more comfortable with the numbers. However, the less flexible features of a CERP system provided by external vendors, such as limited customization, posed a challenge for the local management accountants serving the different needs of a erse range of managers and business units. Looking at the different attitudes that central and local management accountants developed toward the CERP system, we found that although both focal groups in our analysis belonged to the same occupation, they framed the role of technology differently. Although local management accountants framed it as a tool that should enable them to draw on their local expertise to produce tailor‐made information for their local units, central management accountants saw the CERP system as a tool that allowed them to consume prefabricated “high‐quality” information to assure efficient and risk‐free accounting processes throughout the entire organization. Given this, cloud technology constitutes a risk that accounting and control processes become unduly inflexible and cumbersome at the local level. Coping with an inflexible cloud‐based system may therefore add to the list of challenges that public sector management accountants experience when trying to be(come) business partners.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/FAAM.12179
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-12-2014
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 09-10-2017
DOI: 10.1108/QRAM-04-2017-0025
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore how actors take on and ascribe the role of accountor and constituent in the process of giving and demanding of reasons for organisational conduct. The on-going interactions in supervision meetings between the supplier of outsourced elderly care in Sweden and a local government administration were examined through a longitudinal study. The paper proposes the concept of role attribution to characterise a strategy for handling complexity in public sector accountability processes. This complements previous research, which has described three main strategies for handling competing accountability demands: decoupling, structural differentiation and compromising. Role attribution was found to involve the supplier and purchaser of public services pursuing a specific resolution to an accountability demand by positioning themselves as jointly aligned with certain prospective constituents in the environment. Thus, while inter-organisational relationships can be a source of complexity for accountors, as already documented in prior research, the findings of this paper show ways in which the dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles can serve as a resource. The two organisations moved back and forth between cooperating to handle accountability demands from actors in the environment and assuming different accountor and constituent roles within their relationship. The paper discusses the need to move beyond the taken-for-granted roles of accountor and constituent in analysing outsourced public service relationships. Specifically, the findings suggest that researchers interested in public sector accountability processes would benefit from designing their studies in ways that makes it possible to observe and theorise dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles. The studied supervision meetings served as an arena where on-going accountability issues played out and were mediated through role attribution. Seemingly, there are possibilities to complement formal role descriptions and contracts with systematic processes for addressing on-going operational accountability issues within and beyond in idual, formalised accountor–constituent relationships. From a societal perspective, it might be relevant to mandate more systematic procedural structures to support on-going accountability processes, for ex le, the creation and maintenance of interactive inter-organisational forums which can serve as a mechanism for systematic, yet situation-specific, handling of operational and strategic issues. At an organisational level, this paper shows a need that such forums merit on-going managerial attention and conscious staffing to secure both competence and stability. The authors find a dynamic and situation-specific attribution of accountor and constituent roles, in contrast to prior research’s routine consideration of these roles as being predetermined by existing relationships of hierarchy and influence.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2016
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 15-11-2019
DOI: 10.1108/AAAJ-02-2018-3364
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of “the” accounting entity, demonstrating how it is a contestable socio-political construction informed by a nexus of market, state and community actors. A case study method is utilised to follow debate relating to Swedish football clubs’ responsibility for the payment/non-payment of policing costs between 1999 and 2014. The case study uses documentary and interview data, focusing on one of the high-risk Stockholm clubs. The paper makes four main contributions: first, demonstrating how the accounting entity is a changeable and contestable construction second, outlining how distinctions informing contests about the accounting arena are materialised through accounting calculations and other devices third, showing the importance of community in a coordinated sense in mediating accounting practices and fourth, contributing to the literature on accounting and sport, highlighting the importance of state actors in this arena. This research draws on original empirical data providing unique insights into debates regarding the responsibility for the payment of police costs in the context of sports-related violence. The authors show the importance of characterising accounting for sporting organisations as a shifting and contestable nexus of market, state and community actors.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2010
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2011
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2022
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 14-09-2012
DOI: 10.1108/09513571211263202
Abstract: This paper aims to explore the effects of the increased influence of accounting on core values and practices within the services providing home care in Sweden – a public sector setting involving inter‐organisational cooperation. Case study data were obtained primarily through semi‐structured interviews with managers and front‐line staff involved in home care. When accountingisation is extended to include inter‐organisational cooperation, a form of heterogeneous accountingisation occurred in the home care services: an internal domain (with a low level of accountingisation) could be differentiated from an inter‐organisational domain (with a high level of accountingisation). When the accounting‐induced disturbances intensified, there was a redefinition of core values. In the internal domain, core values of pensioner‐oriented focus and flexibility during service delivery persisted. In contrast, in the inter‐organisational domain, core values had the legal boundaries of the organisation as their central foundation, standardisation was emphasised, and inter‐organisational work practices were defined as the other organisation's responsibility. The findings also extend the research on absorption groups by indicating the rise of a new type of absorption process. Absorption was not undertaken by a few in iduals, specialist work groups or satellite organisations, as described in the literature instead, all front‐line welfare professionals were involved in absorbing the accounting‐induced disturbances when performing their tasks. This case study research is context‐specific and the meaning and consequences of accountingisation may differ within the public sector because of the status and strength of professional groups concerned. To date, research on accountingisation has primarily employed an intra‐organisational perspective. This paper analyses accountingisation in an inter‐organisational setting.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2017
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 13-06-2019
DOI: 10.1108/QRAM-05-2018-0032
Abstract: This paper aims to analyse how a multinational organisation uses technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage tensions arising when integrating its international subsidiaries. Through interviews and company documentation, the authors analyse how a global German family business firm integrates its international subsidiaries into the corporate context. The findings suggest that technocratic and socio-ideological controls in combination help the firm manage three tensions – vertical vs lateral relations, standardisation vs differentiation of practices and centralisation vs decentralisation of decision-making – arising in the course of internationalisation. These results have important analytical implications for the understanding of how a high level of compliance to technocratic control initiatives is achieved. Prior work has, in the main, focussed on the resistance to technocratic controls without paying much attention to compliance. Specifically, the authors show how managers can use socio-ideological control to achieve a high level of compliance among employees when implementing technocratic controls. The results suggest that managers in multinational firms need to pay careful attention to the tensions that are created when they internationalise and to apply a combination of technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage these tensions. There is limited knowledge of how managers use socio-ideological control to enact a particular form of experience for their employees and to create a highly valued sense of purpose. The findings suggest that these controls, in combination with technocratic ones, serve important roles when organisations expand internationally.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-01-2015
No related grants have been discovered for Kalle Kraus.