innovation diffusion; continuous accounting; accounting software; management fashion; market intermediaries; resellers; comptabilité continue; diffusion des innovations; logiciel de gestion; fiduciaire; revendeurs; vente de logiciels; mode managériale; innovation technologique; technological innovation
Abstract :
[en] Increasingly, management techniques and trends in accounting are incorporated into software. Continuous accounting, understood as the automated processing of firms’ accounting records to deliver real-time financial information, can be seen as a contemporary illustration of a shared belief that newly developed software stand at the forefront of progress in accounting. While such technologies are usually pictured as promising, the dynamics underlying their diffusion among accounting firms have drawn limited scholarly interest so far. Consequently, this paper sets out to explore how management fashions diffuse when they are embedded into software from the outset and sold on intermediated markets where resellers shape the interactions between fashion setters and fashion users. While extant literature on management fashions has mostly investigated cases where innovators actively promote new management concepts and ideas towards fashion users, the paper unveils the crucial role played by market intermediaries in the selection, processing, and dissemination of innovations sold as software. A revised framework of management fashion setting in intermediated markets is developed, which simultaneously contributes to the literature on management accounting innovations embedded into software and to the management fashion theory by highlighting how market intermediaries strive to maintain control over the diffusion of innovations.
Research center :
LENTIC - Laboratoire d'Études sur les Nouvelles Formes de Travail, l'Innovation et le Changement - ULiège
Disciplines :
General management, entrepreneurship & organizational theory Accounting & auditing Management information systems
Author, co-author :
Jemine, Grégory ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège Research > HEC Liège Research: Changing workplace and strategic HRM
Puyou, François-Régis; emlyon Business School
Dubois, Christophe ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences sociales > Sociologie des processus de gouvernance et de digitalisation des organisations et des marchés
Language :
English
Title :
The diffusion of management fashions as software in an intermediated market: The case of continuous accounting
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