Separation – integration – and now …? - An historical perspective on the relationship between German management accounting and financial accounting

German accounting has traditionally followed a dual ledger approach with strictly separated internal cost accounting, as the basis for management information, and external financial accounting focusing on creditor protection and based on the commercial law. However, the increased adoption of integrated accounting system implies a significant change in the relationship between financial and management accounting systems. We use Hegelian dialectic to trace the historical development of German accounting from separated systems towards antithetical propositions of full integration, and the emergence of partial integration as the synthesis of this transformation process. For this reason, our paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature on the relationship between financial and management accounting in Germany. On this basis, we elaborate how financial accounting in Germany has been shaped by its economic context and legislation, and how financial accounting – accompanied by institutional pressures – in turn influenced management accounting. We argue that the changing relationship between management and financial accounting in the German context illustrates how current accounting practice is shaped not only by its environment, but also by its historical path. Based on this reasoning, we discuss several avenues for future research

Wait-and-see-ism as partial adoption of management practices: The rise and stall of integrated reporting

Integrated reporting (IR) has widely been promoted as the next evolutionary step in corporate disclosure which would soon replace traditional reporting practices. Embedded in a zeitgeist that favors sustainability, this outlook would suggest high IR adoption rates among reporting organizations. Our analysis of IR in Germany from 2008 to 2019 shows, however, that organizations approached IR with a wait-and-see mentality. This approach cannot be described adequately by the existing conceptualizations of (partial) practice adoption. We therefore develop the notion of wait-and-see-ism, defined as the deliberate and potentially long-lasting postponement of a decision to adopt a practice while its further development is monitored silently. We see limited, though continuous, efforts to prepare for the prospect of adopting the practice of IR quickly at a later stage. Wait-and-see-ism expands on prior work on partial adoption by emphasizing its temporal dimension. This adds an important yet undertheorized option that organizations can employ to respond to ambiguous institutional demands, thus explaining the stalling of promising management practices

Chief editors in aquatic science and communication are more likely to oversee editorial boards from their own regions

We examined editorial board composition for aquatic science (AS, n = 217) and communication (CM, n = 308) journals indexed in Scimago's database in 2017 to explore geographic diversity, relationship between location of editors and their board members, and geographical relationship between editors and scientific output. We found that most journals in both fields are published in Europe (AS 50%, CM 62.3%) yet editors in AS (n = 6,194) are based mostly in Europe (35.7%) whereas editors in CM (n = 13,687) are based mostly in Northern America (47.8%). Chief editors are inclined to choose board members from their own geographical region, and this is commonplace regardless of geographic region. Scientific output is greatest in Europe (28.6% AS, 30.4% CM) followed by Northern America. In general, the number of editors per region aligns with each region's scientific output, although we found editorial underrepresentation for East Asia (AS) and South Asia and Europe (CM). Per country, relationships are idiosyncratic for each field and nation with notable editorial surpluses (when paired to scientific output) in the United States and the United Kingdom (both fields) and editorial deficits in China and India (both fields)