PROJECT OBJECTIVE AND IMPLEMENTATION
The project’s overarching objective has been to enhance our knowledge of the demand- and supply-side of management accounting innovations (MAIs), such as the balanced scorecard (BSC), activity-based costing (ABC), beyond budgeting (BB), and customer accounting systems (CAS). Regarding the demand-side, the project focuses on (i) factors that may explain why some organisations adopt and others reject MAIs and (ii) the relation between motivations for adoption and the use and design of MAIs. Regarding the supply-side, the project focuses on how actors on the supply-side, such as management consultancy firms, professional associations, media, and publishers, collaborate and use the interpretative viability of MAIs to adapt a globally diffusing MAI to local (Swedish) circumstances. The objective of the project has been achieved through subprojects in which various theories – new institutional theory, economic theories of competition, and contingency theory – and methods – interviews with adopters and supply-side actors of MAIs, telephone and web questionnaires targeting Swedish and international adopters of MAIs, and content analysis of MAIs in print media and books – have been used.

THE PROJECT'S THREE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH FRONT
1) We develop and test an adoption model which draws on two ideas about MAI adoption (our predictions and results are valid for other types of administrative innovations as well) – the notion of compatibility between organizational culture and the values and beliefs embedded in MAIs, and the perspective that early and late adopters might both be motivated to adopt based on expected economic and social gains and losses. We predict that a diffusing innovation that is compatible with a firm’s values and beliefs is adopted early in the diffusion process if it is perceived as delivering adequate gains while the innovation is rejected if it is not perceived as doing so, and that a diffusing innovation that is incompatible with a firm’s values and beliefs is adopted late in the diffusion process if it is perceived as reducing the likelihood of incurring losses while the innovation is rejected if it is perceived as not doing so. Our results generally support our predictions. The study provides a deeper understanding of why certain firms are early adopters and others are late adopters, why adoption motivations for early and late adopters differ, and why certain firms are non-adopters. These insights are important also because they add support to the literature questioning the validity of basic assumptions of the influential two-stage diffusion model of new-institutional theory, i.e., that early adopters seek economic benefits and late adopters act to increase their legitimacy. In particular, some in the literature argue that the dichotomy between early and late adoption is unable to account for the adoption of a diffusing innovation that occurs at different times for different firms in different circumstances. We believe our study provides a clear illustration of this problem with the two-stage model, and therefore adds to current explanations of organizational heterogeneity.

2) Mainstream management accounting research posits that firms deploy increasingly sophisticated management accounting systems (MASs) when competition intensifies. The effects of competition on MAS design has, however, been the subject of conflicting prescriptions, theories, and empirical evidence. Analytical and experimental accounting research rooted in economic theory questions the putatively unambiguous nature of the effects of competition on MAS design. This suggests instead that these effects may vary depending on both the type and level of competition faced. Our study draws on these ideas in the case of customer service competition and customer accounting systems (CA). We find that competition intensity can be positively or negatively associated with CA sophistication depending on the extent to which firms tailor their activities and offerings to meet individual customer. When customer service competition is high we find a positive relationship between competition intensity and CA sophistication, whereas when customer service competition is low this relationship is negative. Our results are important for at least three reasons. First, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence of a crossover interaction effect between competition intensity and competition type. Second, we provide a more nuanced understanding than previous work on competition to explain why certain firms implement sophisticated CA while others implement simpler CA, and why motivations for CA design choices differ across competitive contexts. Third, our results have implications for research because they suggest that the assumption in mainstream research that increasing competition intensity generally leads to the use of increasingly sophisticated MAS design needs to be qualified. This in turn suggests that relying on unidimensional conceptualizations of competition (typically in terms of competition intensity) is suboptimal.

3) There is strong empirical support that management accounting innovations (MAIs) do not appear, are not diffused, and do not become successful spontaneously or by popular demand, but instead depend on efforts undertaken by supply-side actors. The current study was originally motivated by the observation that the beyond budgeting (BB) concept appears to have had only limited success in the Swedish context. From a supply-side perspective, this is puzzling for at least two reasons. First, the BB concept was promoted globally by influential actors who were similar in stature to those who have promoted other globally successful MAIs. In particular, the BSC and ABC have been successful in Sweden. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the previous successes of this configuration of global actors would motivate the Swedish supply-side arena to notice and embrace BB. Second, the general idea of managing without budgets has developed a positive reputation in Sweden. This idea is linked primarily to the Svenska Handelsbanken success story and Jan Wallander’s excellent reputation as a business leader. As the bank is an essential case in BB rhetoric it is thought that favorable conditions exist for the successful introduction of the concept in Sweden, as BB proponents can ‘ride the wave’ of the bank’s and Wallander’s reputation. We interview key supply-side actors in the Swedish market to examine how the considerations, decision-making, actions, and interactions (and lack of) of supply-side actors have limited the success of the BB concept in Swedish business practice. Our results may be briefly summarized as follows: A weakly mobilized supply-side arena has produced heavily reduced, heterogeneous BB packages of design characteristics and rhetoric that have reached only a small portion of the target audience of potential adopters. Our results are important because they provide insights into micro-level activities and processes that affect the evolution and outcome of the diffusion process when a global MAI enters a local context, and extend our knowledge by providing a complementary picture and more nuanced understanding of assumptions and elements of the dominant model of the diffusion of management concepts, particularly the configuration of and collaboration within the supply-side arena, the use of the interpretative viability of management concepts, and the respective roles and importance of the supply-side actors involved. In contrast with those of most prior research in this area, our results suggest the presence of a more complex and less predetermined diffusion process.

NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS GENERATED THROUGH THE PROJECT
The project raises several new research questions and suggestions for further research related to the three substudies described above.

1) We found that a small group of incompatible firms adopted early in the diffusion process. This was not consistent with our predictions. A similar result was found in a study of Australian/New Zealand firms. These results suggest that the drivers of adoption in the early phases of the diffusion process may be more complex and therefore more difficult to understand than has previously been suggested. More work is needed to shed light on, for example, the motivations of early adopters and the innovation assessment process in the analysis of innovations in this critical phase of diffusion.

2) Given the importance of understanding demand for management accounting information for various purposes and how it relates to MASs, there is a need for more research describing the joint effects of competition intensity and competition type on the design of various types and purposes of MASs in distinct competitive contexts. An important part of this research agenda would involve disentangling competition types at more disaggregated levels and studying specific management accounting practices.

3) Our study of the supply-side of the diffusion process highlights several opportunities for future research. Collaborations between supply-side actors were not the main focus of this study, so future research could investigate this issue more fully with a design focusing, for example, on types of collaboration, the benefits and costs associated with collaboration, and the conditions that must be in place to achieve success through collaborations of various forms. We also need to know more about why (or why not), how, and under what conditions and configurations supply-side actors use interpretative viability to adapt a globally diffusing management concept to local circumstances.

DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS
The project's results have been published in a variety of scientific publications and presented at national and international conferences and workshops and seminars at universities. See the list of publications.