Torkel Strömsten

This paper examines how accounting and control practices constitute and distribute agency and responsibility for sustainability in global supply chains. Drawing on a field study in the fashion industry, we describe the sustainability control practices used by a major buyer firm vis- à- vis its suppliers and trace their evolution from a "compliance-based" to a more "collaborative" regime. We find that these controls did not simply guide, monitor, or assess supplier firms; they responsibilized them in a more fundamental sense, namely by virtue of scripting the suppliers' actorhood. We show how such scripting evolved in ways that enabled the buyer to progressively distance itself from certain sustainability and control problems, as emergent controls produced the legitimate supplier as an actor who can, and should, address sustainability in an increasingly autonomous and entrepreneurial manner. A key argument that we therefore develop is that sustainability control practices operate as technologies of actorhood that not only address sustainability problems but also redistribute locales of moral authority and responsibility in interorganizational settings-not only among actors but also into the invisible hand of the market. We further show how such constitution of organizational actorhood relies on, and triggers, processes of subjectivation at the individual level, as members come to embody their organization's imagined actorhood.

Relying on two embedded case studies of product development within IKEA's industrial network, this paper examines the role of Target Costing as an accounting tool that has the capacity to frame development efforts into either exploitative or explorative projects. Such a framing affects, in turn, the configuration of the relevant network of resources and mediates the behavior of the actors involved via specific types of controls. We contribute to the IMP-inspired literature on innovation and product development as we add nuances to how the concepts of exploitative and explorative innovation paths play out on a network level, especially in relation to the resource dimension. In addition, the notion of the mediating role of accounting adds to how we can understand control and its consequences in an interorganizational network context. Our data consists of several sources, about 70 interviews with individuals working at IKEA and its partners. We also had access to internal company material such as costing calculations. Our study has practical implications as it can help managers identify which types of control to use and how these can be matched with different innovations strategies on a network level.
•Target Costing can frame development efforts into either exploitative or explorative projects.•Accounting also mediates between an actor and other actors and resources in the network.•Accounting's framing and mediation affects the configurations and combinations of resources.•We identify which forms of control correspond to exploitative and explorative efforts.

Contemporary forms of “marketized” sustainable finance rely on the production, dissemination, and consumption of financialized ESG risk information. In this paper, we scrutinize this “risk transparency premise” in context of the TCFD's climate risk reporting framework. Adopting the lens of institutional theory and a mixed methods approach, we pursue two interrelated aims. First, we examine to which extent the climate risk disclosures of TCFD “supporters” from the European financial sector adhere to the information requirements spelled out in the TCFD framework. Second, we seek to uncover the organization level impediments that underlie substantive implementation of the TCFD framework and, in turn, the production and dissemination of the required climate risk information. Based on our findings, we argue that TCFD/climate risk reporting is prone to become a ‘ceremonial’ practice and that, at least as of now, the ‘institutional myth’ of risk transparency might rather serve to safeguard the ideals of the market as opposed to facilitate transformative change towards a more environmentally sustainable economy. Our findings complement research that has problematized contemporary forms of marketized sustainable finance as well as literature on climate risk reporting and TCFD more specifically.

This study traces the financialization of the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson from 1990 to 2000. Previous research has explained financialization in terms of the influence of actors (e.g., fund managers and financial analysts) and accounting technologies (e.g., increased use of stock options and financially oriented incentive systems) associated with what Hopwood (1983) labelled the vertical axis of organizational action. Our case, however, shows that the horizontal axis of organizational action (Ericsson's inter-firm relationship with the lead firm Vodafone) played a pivotal role. This horizontal axis is theorized by drawing on accounting literature relating to inter-firm relations and more general literature concerning two types of supplier adaptations in global value chains: first, the design and exchange of products; and second, production processes and organizational structure. Horizontal pressure from Vodafone compelled Ericsson to adapt its product design and development processes, which in turn created conditions for vertical pressures to accrete. We found that actors (an Ericsson supply chain manager and Vodafone's purchasing director) and accounting technologies (a global price list) informing the horizontal axis of organizational action played vital roles in supplier adaptations. Such actors and accounting technologies are viewed as ‘purely operational’ in prior work, but our findings suggest they initiated and sustained a financialization process with far-reaching and long-lasting effects within Ericsson. Indeed, both actors and accounting technologies which, at first glance, may seem to have little connection to financialization processes, played a central role through the constitution of a horizontal axis of organizational action. © 2021 The Author(s)

This study examines the influence of cultural regions on the interdependence between delegation of authority and other management control (MC) practices. In particular, we assess whether one of the central contentions of agency theory, that incentive contracting and delegation are jointly determined, holds in different cultural regions. Drawing on prior literature, we hypothesise that the MC practices that operate as a complement to delegation vary depending on societal values and preferences, and that MC practices other than incentive contracting will complement delegation in firms in non-Anglo cultural regions. Using data collected from 584 strategic business units across three Western cultural regions (Anglo, Germanic, Nordic), our results show that the interdependence between delegation and incentive contracting is confined to Anglo firms. In the Nordic and Germanic regions, we find that strategic and action planning participation operate as a complement to delegation, while delegation is also complemented by manager selection in Nordic firms. Overall, our study demonstrates that cultural values and preferences significantly influence MC interdependence, and suggests that caution needs to be taken in making cross-cultural generalisations about the complementarity of MC practices. 

Digitalization has considerably transformed the finance functions of large multinational corporations. As researchers of the Stockholm School of Economics, the authors have been witnessing this transformation for several years and received insights into how companies expect digitalization to affect the finance function in the future.The last couple of decades have shown tremendous change with regards to the roles of the finance function and the way different tasks are organized. For instance, transactional accounting was first centralized and later outsourced, often to low cost countries. Also, the controller function was divided into a statutory dimension and a more business-oriented controller function. We have been following the development of the finance function for several decades as teachers, as researchers and as program directors of an executive education program for senior business and financial controllers in large Nordic multinational corporations. We understand that one of the major challenges the finance function is currently facing is the digital transformation, which many companies embrace as a do-or-die mantra. As a new set of skills is needed and new professions such as that of the data scientist emerge, the profession of the controller is increasingly questioned and challenged. The main question we examine is how the finance function, given its fundamental responsibilities, which we believe cannot change, will maneuver into new domains and into the unknown.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and social and economic responses are amplifying social inequalities and hampering strategic, long-term investments into sustainability by firms and governments. Researchers affiliated with Misum (Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets) discuss how the global response to the pandemic has slowed progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. The article emphasizes that low-income groups are most affected by the economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis, that the pandemic is reducing the ability and willingness of firms to make strategic investments, and that companies and governments need to deploy resources that ensure a sustainable recovery from the crisis.

Successful innovation is a true challenge and especially when today's companies are intertwined in close inter-organisational relationships and networks with e.g. customers and suppliers. Research has indicated that accounting can play important roles in such innovation processes, but there is little in-depth systematic knowledge about this issue. ã Accounting, Innovation and Inter-Organisational Relationships gathers leading researchers from all around the world to argue for the importance of more systematic knowledge about accounting, innovation and inter-organisational relationships. ã Accounting, Innovation and Inter-Organisational Relationships thus becomes an important source for researchers and practitioners interested in accounting and inter-organisational relationships as well as the related disciplines of management, marketing, innovation and strategy.