http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7824 2013-05-25T13:40:25Z 2013-05-25T13:40:25Z Lennon, Niels Joseph Jerne http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8640 2013-01-29T08:59:31Z 2013-01-24T00:00:00Z

Accounting Qualities in Practice Lennon, Niels Joseph Jerne There is a tendency in accounting theory, both external reporting and management accounting, to express a representational ideal. This to be understood in the sense that accounting information, independent on whether it is reported externally or used for control purposes internally, ought to represent something underlying, whether this is revenue, costs, performance or other things inscribed in the accounting information. In some cases the underlying is not an object, but a procedure which is developed with the purpose of standardising the calculations as to become comparable (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 1980a). In the beginning of the 1970’s in the accounting information literature, simultaneously with the foundation of the American Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), an academic discussion regarding which qualitative characteristics accounting information ought to have, emerges (e.g. Ijiri, 1975, Hines, 1988 og Ingram and Rayburn, 1989). This was caused by FASB’s work on a conceptual framework Standard of Financial Accounting Concepts (SFAC), which was meant as a guide to the standard setters in the development of new accounting standards/principles. A new notion, representational faithfulness, was introduced in SFAC no. 2. The discussion about representational faithfulness is equivocal and no unambiguous definition of what representational faithfulness actually is. This has occasioned a range of dialogues about the representativity of accounting information, the accounting setters’ roles and effects of disclosure of accounting information...

2013-01-24T00:00:00Z Berhausen, Nico Peter http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8588 2012-12-03T11:50:29Z 2012-12-03T00:00:00Z

Management Control, Innovation and Strategic Objectives Berhausen, Nico Peter Many studies have focused on the topic of product innovation. As a key element of how industrial organisations work, of how competition is shaped and how economic growth is realised, innovation provides an interesting research field, which will never be fully explored. Industrial organisations explore these grounds through strategic processes in which objectives should guide product development processes. Ideas, alternatives or decisions form these processes in which heterogeneous actors need to be aligned and coordinated towards the final product innovation. Heterogeneity is a key aspect here; different, new technologies, conflicting objectives, different opinions and different management practices for example, are part of this process. Although these elements have been studied extensively in extant research, I identify several gaps in the existing literature, which I in turn strive to fill with this thesis. First, a perspective of the interactions in innovation processes is needed with a focus on control mechanisms and the mobilisation of strategic objectives. Secondly, focusing on control, the way calculative boundaries are created and explored and how these may be overcome needs more development and empirical insights. Thirdly, the interaction of control mechanisms and the coordination of product development networks through these interactions lack empirical insights and build an interesting research ground. I do not provide a holistic framework or a contingent perspective of how organisations should manage innovation. Rather I discuss the many ways in which product development networks become convergent through the interaction of control mechanisms, which may act as a vehicle or translator of strategic objectives...

2012-12-03T00:00:00Z Frandsen, Thomas http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8420 2012-03-08T11:53:23Z 2012-03-08T00:00:00Z

Managing Modularity of Service Processes Architecture Frandsen, Thomas The world is increasingly turbulent with shorter and shorter technological life cycles and more and more frequent changes in customer demand. This situation implies that flexibility and agility are crucial for producers of products and services. Much effort has been directed toward understanding innovation and the ways in which management can increase the value of innovation efforts. As a consequence, suggestions emphasizing different aspects of innovation and creativity have been put forward. However, the value of architectural knowledge for innovation is increasingly recognized as crucial with modular architectures proposed as one way of increasing the rate of innovation by introducing flexibility and agility without sacrificing efficiency. Modularity is a way to design a system with the intent of reducing its complexity by decomposing the system and reducing interdependencies between the subsystems of the system through standardized interfaces. Systems designed in this way allow for greater flexibility through recombination; however, they retain efficiency by means of standardization and scale economies from the reuse of components. For this reason modular architectures present an interesting solution to the dilemma of whether to invest in innovation or in efficiency. The topic has received much attention in the face of demands from customers for increasingly heterogeneous products and services. However, an important aspect to keep in mind is that, while decomposition is a powerful way of reducing complexity, most real systems remain only nearly decomposable (Simon, 1962) or loosely coupled rather than uncoupled (Orton & Weick, 1990)....

2012-03-08T00:00:00Z Holm Andreasen, Peter http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8384 2012-01-04T09:06:46Z 2012-01-04T00:00:00Z

The Dynamics of Procurement Management Holm Andreasen, Peter “How can we understand the dynamics of procurement management?” An answer to this question has predominantly been explained by procurement management experiencing dissatisfaction with the status quo, where the procurement organisation was viewed from other entities in the company as an insignificant, reactive and an administrative part of the business. The potential, however, for the procurement organisation to be significant in the company was argued to be vast (Ammer 1989, Ellram & Carr 1994, Van Weele 2005). In order to change the situation of the procurement organisation, procurement management was informed that they should in gradual steps develop the procurement organisation towards more sophistication and significance (Reck & Long 1988) producing strategies that were aligned with the overall company strategy including the development of policies, procedures, systems, tools and processes (Cousins 2002, Cousins et al 2008). This process changed the perspective of the procurement organisation which among other things, allowed the procurement entity to contribute to the implementation of the concept of supply chain management (Freeman & Cavinato 1990). Ever since I first got familiar with the practices of procurement and its management, I have been puzzled by its complexity. At the same time, I have wondered about how the same space of complexity in the procurement management domain literature has explained the same practices by reductionism, smoothness and simplicity as just described.

2012-01-04T00:00:00Z