Digital Tools for Accounting and Analytical Support of Enterprises: Innovation and Management Aspect

Introduction. The modern global economy requires the digitalization of all spheres of enterprise activity, including accounting and analytical processes. This creates new synergistic effects on all related production, management, and business processes and new opportunities and business directions. The analytical process begins to include new information resources, which gives an impetus to the systematic development of support for decision-making by the management of enterprises, increasing the level of relevance of management decisions, and providing opportunities for operational restructuring of market tactics and strategies. Aim and tasks. The study aims to introduce digital tools for analytical accounting support for Ukrainian enterprises based on innovative management aspects and develop a mathematical model for using digital resources to optimize the architecture of enterprise information systems. Results. A mathematical model of the use of digital resources was developed to optimize the architecture of the company's information systems. The process of introducing digital tools for accounting and analytical support of enterprises in Ukraine was also studied and compared with the practice of their implementation under the conditions of “Economy 4.0” in developed countries. The advantages of introducing digital tools for accounting and analytical support were determined and obstacles to this process are named. It is indicated that the main guarantee of the effectiveness of the use of digital tools in view of the innovation-management aspect of their implementation is adaptability to internal and external influences, technological innovations, changes in tasks, goals, and even the sphere of economic activity of the enterprise. It is noted that this largely depends on the architecture of the information systems. According to estimates, the annual “cumulative effect” growth rate from introducing IT technologies in accounting and analytical processes may exceed 19%. Conclusions. The developed mathematical model makes it possible to propose a new approach to the transformation of the system of digital accounting tools and analytical support instead of the traditional eclectic approach, which ensures effective auxiliary functionality or implements new functionality of the entire information management system, the elements of which are digital accounting tools. Factors that prevent the implementation of digital tools, which will increase the competitiveness of Ukrainian enterprises, are indicated

Accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies: taking multiple perspectives seriously

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to synthesize work in the emerging field of how accounting and accountability can be reoriented to better promote pluralistic democracy which recognizes and addresses differentials in power, beliefs and desires of constituencies. An agenda for future research and engagement is outlined, drawing on this and insights fromother papers in this special issue of the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) aimed at taking multiple perspectives seriously. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews and synthesizes the central themes associated with accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies, especially with respect to the research studies in this AAAJ special issue, and it identifies possibilities for future research and engagement. Findings – Three central themes are identified: the challenges of achieving critical, pluralistic engagement in and through mainstream institutions; the possibilities of taking multiple perspectives seriously through decentred understandings of governance and democracy; and the value of an agonistic ethos of engagement in accounting. The articles in this issue contribute to these themes, albeit differently, and in combination with the extant social science literature reviewed here, open up pathways for future research and engagement. Practical implications – This work seeks to encourage the development of pluralistic accounting and accountability systems drawing on conceptual and practice-based resources across disciplines and by considering the standpoints of diverse interested constituencies, including academics, policymakers, business leaders and social movements. Originality/value – How accounting can reflect and enact pluralistic democracy, not least to involve civil society, and how problems related to power differentials and seemingly incompatible aims can be addressed has been largely neglected. This issue provides empirical, practical and theoretical material to advance further work in the area. Paper type Research pape

Identifying Research Fields within Business and Management: A Journal Cross-Citation Analysis

A discipline such as business and management (B&M) is very broad and has many fields within it, ranging from fairly scientific ones such as management science or economics to softer ones such as information systems. There are at least three reasons why it is important to identify these sub-fields accurately. Firstly, to give insight into the structure of the subject area and identify perhaps unrecognised commonalities; second for the purpose of normalizing citation data as it is well known that citation rates vary significantly between different disciplines. And thirdly, because journal rankings and lists tend to split their classifications into different subjects – for example, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) list, which is a standard in the UK, has 22 different fields. Unfortunately, at the moment these are created in an ad hoc manner with no underlying rigour. The purpose of this paper is to identify possible sub-fields in B&M rigorously based on actual citation patterns. We have examined 450 journals in B&M which are included in the ISI Web of Science (WoS) and analysed the cross-citation rates between them enabling us to generate sets of coherent and consistent sub-fields that minimise the extent to which journals appear in several categories. Implications and limitations of the analysis are discussed

Location Advantages, Governance Quality, Stock Market Development and Firm Characteristics as Antecedents of African M&As

This study explores firm- and country-specific antecedents of African M&As. We use one of the largest datasets to-date consisting of 1,490 unique African firms (11,183 firm-year observations) from 1996 to 2012. Our results suggest that improvements in time-varying country-level factors, including location advantages (market size, human capital and efficiency opportunities), national governance quality, and stock market development are associated with an increase in the volume of M&A activity. Consistent with the resource-curse paradox, high resource endowments are not associated with increased levels of M&A. In support of the management inefficiency but contrary to the traditional firm size hypotheses, African targets are generally characterised by declining stock returns and accounting profitability but are more likely to be larger firms; suggesting the presence of information asymmetry concerns in their selection. Notwithstanding, we find evidence of heterogeneity across countries with inconsistent support for established target prediction hypotheses. A model which combines firm- and country- specific factors better explains observed variations in African M&A activity

Thoughts from the IAAER’s 12th World Congress of Accounting Educators and Researchers

No abstract available

Keeping the Eclectic Paradigm Simple: A Brief Commentary and Implications for Ownership Advantages

The eclectic paradigm as developed by Dunning evolved over time, responding to changes in the way international business has been conducted as well as to link it with other related academic disciplines. I argue that if the paradigm continues to try and be a 'big tent' and a de facto theory of the firm that internalises every MNE-related phenomena, it will be in danger of becoming a tautology without a 'gatekeeper'. Continual expansion to address new lacunae begins to have decreasing returns, either because the gatekeeper cannot expect to have the specialised knowledge to meet each market need equally well, or because the growing number of extensions makes the final product unwieldy. I propose a return to a basic eclectic paradigm ('EP-lite') consisting essentially of the OLI framework. This can then be complemented by other frameworks, theories and concepts as needed, rather than the continuous expansion to internalise their use. In a similar vein, increasing the number of sub-categories of ownership advantages does not in itself provide greater clarity. Besides, the 'correct' definition of what constitute O advantages is relative to the purpose for which it is being used.Eclectic paradigm, ownership advantages, industrial development

The customer is always right? Assessing the value of Patron Driven Acquisition at the University of Huddersfield

This article discusses a small scale Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) study at the University of Huddersfield. The authors briefly describe the background to PDA at Huddersfield before discussing data from the 2014 PDA pilot with the e-book supplier EBL. The pilot produced two sets of data, usage reports using COUNTER statistics and a short questionnaire designed by the library. These results led to a major alteration to the collection management and development policy where PDA is now embedded into the library bookfund

Research on the strategy of multinational enterprises: Key approaches and new avenues

Over decades, research on multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) strategies has been anchored in internalization theory. Strongly grounded in transaction cost economics to explain foreign market entry, it hardly explains how MNEs can build and sustain a competitive advantage. Thus, this paper aims at understanding how the nature of strategic thinking has influenced the research in the field of MNEs’ strategy. A content analysis of 1116 papers was conducted. The intellectual structure and dynamics of research to date are provided, without losing sight of the key foundations of strategy and strategic management. The links between human capital and knowledge are the factors on which to underpin the explanation of the MNEs’ strategies and support the coevolving theory. This theory is a promising avenue of research under the umbrella of RBV and KBV approaches. The context-dependency of strategy implies that different contexts require different approaches. Accordingly, we provide insights for future research by combining main schools of strategy though

International venturing emerging paradigms - a study of the Indian IT industry

Cross border mergers and acquisitions is the fastest means of making an international presence for a business firm. It is a mode of outward FDI which has so far been explained best in terms of Dunning’s OLI framework. The emergence of outbound FDI from the developing world however, has looked at alternate frameworks emphasizing outward orientation, leverage through building linkages and achieving organizational efficiency through integration. The study seeks to explain outbound M&A in the Indian IT industry during 2000-2006, in the changing global competitive scenario .Cross-border mergers and acquisitions; Indian IT, motives; strategy

Managerial satisfaction with subsidiary performance; the influence of the parent MNE's capabilities and the subsidiary's environment

Multinational enterprise performance is one of the most researched topics in the strategic management literature over the last thirty years. Despite the proliferation of studies, the dispute over the relation between firms’ international investment activities and corporate performance has not yet reached a consensus. This paper’s contribution is threefold. First, we focus on entry by West European multinational enterprises into Central and East European countries. Second, we develop a multi-theory argument, combining insights from transaction cost, new institutional, behavioral, resource-based and international strategy theories. Third, we estimate the determinants of managerial satisfaction with subsidiary performance with questionnaire data for a sample of 198 subsidiaries.