To Örebro University

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the norms that underlie and condition the decisions made by preparers of financial reports.

Design/methodology/approach: This interview-based study illustrates how financial report preparers engage in behaviors linked to the perception of recognition and measurement of internally generated intangible assets by important stakeholders. All of the companies included in the study adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards when creating their consolidated financial statements. The participants selected for the study are involved in accounting decisions related to research and developmentin accordance with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38.

Findings: The authors identify the normative assumptions underlying the recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles, which are based on concerns of consistency, credibility and reasonableness. The authors find that the normative basis for legitimacy in financial accounting is primarily related to cognitive legitimacy and is not of a moral or pragmatic nature.

Originality/value: The study reveals that recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles in financial accounting relate to legitimacy. The authors identify specific norms that form the basis of this legitimacy, namely, consistency, credibility and reasonableness. These identified norms serve as constraints, mitigating the risk of judgment misuse within the IAS 38 framework for earnings management.

The purpose of the chapter is to describe and analyse the changes of a master’s programme in organisation and leadership in a Norwegian university college before, during and after the pandemic. Already established as a programme with modules and in-callings once a month, enabling half-time distance studies, it underwent changes during the pandemic and found a partly new and more flexible shape after the pandemic had ended. The process is described as a change process which led to permanent new opportunities from a pedagogical and academic perspective. Measures taken to deal with the challenges are analysed and presented as innovative ways of developing the programme as a whole, for example opening up for permanent pedagogical solutions such as increased student responsibility for interaction.

I dag hållbarhetsredovisar så gott som alla större företag och även många medelstora och mindre. Men vad innebär hållbarhetsredovisning, vilka krav finns och vilka regler måste företagen följa?

Den här boken hjälper dig att förstå bakgrunden till hållbarhetsredovisning, vilka regler och standarder som finns, hur man upprättar en hållbarhetsredovisning och vilken funktion den fyller. Denna fjärde upplaga är grundligt omarbetad och behandlar bland annat EU:s direktiv CSRD och de nya standarderna ESRS liksom utvecklingen av GRI Standards.

Purpose: Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.

Findings: The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.

Practical implications: Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.

Social implications: This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.

Originality/value: This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.

There is a vague relationship between corporate sustainability performance and reporting. In this contribution, this is discussed in terms of a ‘performance-reporting gap’. The gap is described and analyzed as problematic from an information use and relevance perspective and from an internal sustainability control perspective. An overarching consequence of the gap is that the quality and usability of information in sustainability reports depend on how companies treat the gap. In addition, the gap reflects underdeveloped processes of sustainability control in companies. It is suggested that the gap could be narrowed through clearer accountability structures and controllable sustainability processes within firms, more sophisticated materiality analyses and relevant strategic planning and pursuit of reporting processes.

The role of the Sustainability Manager (SM) is expanding. Whether SMs are turning into a new profession is under debate. Pointing to the need for a distinct professional logic to qualify as a profession, we identify what is contained within a professional logic of SMs. Through analyzing ambiguities present in the role of the SMs, we show that there is no specific distinct professional logic of SMs, but rather a meta-construct building on market, bureaucratic, and sustainability logics. In addition, we point to the complex configurations of and relationships between these underlying logics. The complexities also explain why the SMs differ from traditional professions and why it is problematic to talk about a ‘SM profession’. Rather, SMs are ‘organizational professionals’. The article builds on 21 interviews with SMs working for Swedish companies.

Public organizations are replete with projects of different kinds. Projects within public organizations may be used instrumentally as part of an agenda of change. However, such an agenda is not necessarily clear from the outset, as both projects and the base organization may change during lifetime of the projects. For that reason, it is necessary to understand the role of projects in organizational change, not only through looking at the projects as such, but also how they relate to each other and the overall idea of organizational change. The purpose of this article is to explain organizational change by means of parallel project establishment and management. This article sheds light on and analyses a project context of a Norwegian administrative county, where projects became instrumental to changing the organization. However, while traditional approaches often assume that projects are means used to change organizations, we argue that organizational change is ambiguous since projects are re-constructed during the course of time. Ongoing change also pertains to the base organization itself, which is reflected in the projects. Reasons for this multiple and partly parallel nature of change are found in both central and local priorities that emerge underway.

The recent discussion on mediatisation prompts questions about how it arises and how social spheres are marked by it. In this article, we use business as an example of a social sphere to show that the production of normativity by and through the media is a central aspect of mediatisation. The empirical case of the article is the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Six specific techniques were used by the media to construct the case as an instance of corporate misbehaviour that met public recognition. The techniques are instrumental in forming the predicament of a modern mediatised business sphere, it is argued.