Interventionist Case Study Research Articles

Using drama to enrich a genre-based pedagogy for teaching academic writing across content areas

Drama has the potential to enrich and enliven established approaches to literacy learning, engaging students and expanding their possibilities for meaning-making. Drama-rich pedagogy is well-established as an effective tool in supporting language and literacy development. However, research to date has not explored the possibilities of using drama to enrich established genre-based approaches to teaching writing. This article reports on findings from an interventionist case study in an Australian primary school examining how a Year Three/Four teacher used drama-rich pedagogy to support students’ academic writing of a scientific explanation text. The findings indicate three key pedagogical benefits of employing drama to build conceptual understandings of the field of study and relevant academic language as part of a genre-based pedagogy for teaching writing. Firstly, drama experiences can make visible students’ prior knowledge of a topic, allowing teachers to identify, interrogate and transform students’ misconceptions through reflective dialogue on embodied experience. These embodied and interactive experiences also support the development of shared understandings of key concepts and language. Finally, drama experiences provide embodied and interactive contexts in which students can move from common sense to more abstract/technical understandings of the topic of study which they can apply in writing their own texts. In sharing these findings, this article aims to illustrate how drama can be used to develop the conceptual and linguistic understandings required by genre pedagogy in engaging, embodied ways that draw productively on the diverse resources that students bring to their learning.

Towards a digital twin of a service: a case of communicating cost and control implications of a new after-sales service with an animation

Purpose New service businesses carry opportunities for industrial companies. The different cost management and management control implications of those service businesses deserve attention, which is a widely under-researched area in management accounting and control literature. Digital twins could hold potential in unveiling and supporting those new service business opportunities, as a unique approach of this paper. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility and potential for creating a digital twin of a service, especially to unveil the management accounting and control implications of the digital twin in developing new service businesses. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates the potential of a digital twin in unveiling cost and control implications of new service businesses by examining the characteristics of a digital twin in the service business development context. The paper use an in-depth interventionist case study, where the designed animations illustrate the possibilities of a digital twin of a service. The animations showing the service process characteristics were first used as a communication tool and eventually those animations were actively used in customer cases for different purposes. This motivated the idea for examining the implications of such animations representing a digital twin of a service. Findings The paper provides empirical insights regarding the potential for developing and using a digital twin of a service for different cost management and management control purposes. The digital twin of a service may include all main details of a new service offering, simulating the functionality of a service, hence making the performance and the implications of the new service concept clear for all the stakeholders. The digital twin of the service enables defining the processes, setting targets and helps communication about the value generation. Thus, they represent a significant toolkit for the management accounting and control function of the manufacturers. Originality/value This paper is among the first attempts to understand the digital twin of the service. The paper is unique in providing financial and control implications of digital twins also in the context of service business development. The in-depth interventionist approach enabled an exceptional exploration process on the subject. The article paves the way toward further research on managing the digital twins of services in the future.

Reflecting on embodied experience through an expert lens: drama as a pedagogic tool for developing academic language proficiency in the middle-primary school

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a major study which examined how middle-primary teachers (of students aged 8-10) in Australia used drama-rich pedagogy in their literacy programs to support the development of academic language proficiency, a critical element of ongoing student progress in literacy beyond the early years. Despite its proven status as a powerful literacy teaching strategy, drama-rich pedagogy remains underused by teachers. Key findings from a qualitative collective interventionist case study conducted in three schools in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia demonstrate that embodied and role-based experiences can work both individually and in combination to create supportive contexts for academic language development.

Anchor practices that guide horizontal performance measurement: an interventionist case study of the financial aspect of new technology implementation in healthcare

AbstractWith the demand for elderly care increasing in many countries, digital technologies offer the potential for organising such care while also increasing value for money. However, public administrators need tools to make sense of their own complex environment and the possible impacts of new technologies. The current paper examines this issue by applying horizontal performance measurement, where practitioners can give financial value to issues that span across many functions and thus avoid sub-optimisation. We use an interventionist case study to illustrate a situation in which a Nordic city attempted to calculate the financial impact of introducing new digital technologies into elderly care. As our contribution to the literature on horizontal performance measurement, we show how economic (financial) and wellbeing anchors influence horizontal performance measurement in a healthcare digitalisation project. We also contribute to the development of our method theory, i.e., anchor practices, by providing evidence of the usage of multiple simultaneous anchors and make a methodological contribution by showing that interventionist researchers can support operationalising anchor practices.

The Three Positions for Interorganizational Interventionist Researcher: Navigating in the Supplier‑Customer Dyad

The paper identifies and examines different positions of an interventionist researcher, facilitating value co‑creation for new technology in customer‑supplier dyads. The paper answers two research questions: (1) "what kind of positions can an interventionist researcher assume in a supplier‑customer dyad?" and (2) "what should an interventionist researcher consider when choosing a suitable position for her research design?" The paper reflects upon a longitudinal interventionist case study (2017‑2020) focused on facilitating and evaluating the value created by new medicine‑dispensing robot technology in home‑care in Nordic countries. The researchers conducted interventionist research in 11 supplier‑customer dyads, with multiple, evolving positions of the researcher(s). As a result, as a contribution to the existing knowledge about the role of the interventionist researchers, the paper proposes three positions that the interventionist researcher can take in an interorganizational supplier‑customer dyad: an auditor, a lawyer or a mediator. The auditor investigates the interface between the supplier and the customer as an outsider. The lawyer position compromises this perceived neutrality (but not independence) for deeper access to empirical data regarding one of the organisations. Thus, the lawyer actively pursues the status of 'one of us' with either the supplier or the customer. The mediator expands the previous positions by trying to achieve a status of 'one of us' in both organisations trying to understand both sides of the same story supporting both the supplier's and customers' activities. Importantly, as an extension to the existing knowledge, the paper argues that not only can an interventionist researcher move between the etic and emic domains, but she can also move within the supplier‑customer dyad under examination. Thus, when conducting research within the customer‑supplier dyads (and within similarly complex contexts), the interventionist researcher needs to be aware of the existence of different positions and her actual position to the subject of interventionist study. Indeed, the interventionist researcher may choose her role, or the role may be a result of an evolutionary process. The role is 'given' by the people the interventionist researcher interacts with and, thus, not something the researcher can completely decide by herself. However, the interventionist researcher can pursue a specific role that fits her research agenda and design. In any case, the researcher needs to be honest and transparent regarding the actually taken position to avoid potential methodological pitfalls arising from complex, novel research settings.

Exploring the programmability of management accounting work for increasing automation: an interventionist case study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to better understand management accounting automation by exploring the programmability of management accounting work.Design/methodology/approachWe build upon the literature on digitalization in management accounting and draw upon the pragmatic constructivist methodology to understand how digitalization takes place at the individual actors' level in accounting practice. The paper uses a data set from an interventionist case study of a machinery manufacturer.FindingsWe examine an actual process of automating management accounting tasks. During this development process, surprisingly, calculation tasks remained more fit for humans than machines though, initially, they were thought to be programmable.Research limitations/implicationsAccording to our findings, practitioners may interpret experts' nonprogrammable work tasks as programmable and seek to automate them. Only identifying the factual possibilities for automating accounting-related work can lead to automation-improved efficiency. Our findings can be increasingly relevant for advanced analytics initiatives and applications within management accounting (e.g. robotic process automation, big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence).Practical implicationsPractitioners need to carefully analyze the entity they wish to automate and understand the factual possibilities of using and maintaining the planned automatic system throughout its life cycle.Originality/valueThe paper shows that when processes are assessed from a distance, the nonprogrammable management accounting tasks and expertise can become misinterpreted as programmable, and the goal of automating them has little chance of success. It also shows possibilities for human accountants to remain relevant in comparison to machines and paves the way for further studies on advanced decision technologies in management accounting.

CSR and management control integration. Evidence from an employee welfare plan implementation

Relatively little research has addressed questions on how companies integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and management control, and this study attempts to respond to recent calls for further investigation. Taking the perspective, advanced in the extant literature, that CSR can be regarded as a form of management control, the study has the objective to show how a socially responsible initiative, such as the implementation of an employee welfare plan undertaken by a SME, can address control issues. In particular, the company has designed the employee welfare plan as an incentive system. The study adopts an interventionist research (IVR) approach to accomplish with the research objective, and the results of the interventionist case study are interpreted based on the Merchant and Van der Stede object-of-control framework. In particular, results indicate that the implementation of the welfare plan has enabled the application of different types of control and provided incentive-related benefits, suggesting the potential impact of CSR as a management control device.

The role of strategy maps in business integration: an interventionist approach

This paper aims to describe how strategy maps contribute to cope with the resistances to strategic transformations, which characterise business integration processes. These maps are created, thanks to the involvement of the most influential organisational actors. The study follows an interventionist research approach, by means of which the researchers worked together with managers: the effort was to create strategy maps and cope with issues. The research site was provided by a company operating in the technological sector, experiencing change from a national dimension to a multinational group, as a result of a few acquisitions. The findings of the interventionist case study show how the persistence of identities, knowledge and practices may interfere with the achievement of effective integration. Further, the study suggests how strategy maps, while providing a visual representation of organisational actors' cognitive frames, are as well able to facilitate mutual understanding and to support strategic development.

Describing the process of creating an intellectual capital management framework: An interventionist case study

This article aims to address recent calls for a more practice‐based intellectual capital (IC) research by describing the process of creating an IC framework on a real firm. The ultimate goal is to understand how this process can improve IC identification, measurement, and management within the firm, eventually contributing to add an IC perspective to its management strategy. The article takes a Portuguese subsidiary of a multinational firm as a case study. A practice‐based, interventionist approach was adopted. By depicting the process of creating an IC framework, this research shows how IC can be gradually identified, recognized, and embraced by a company. The process also introduces a valuable, forward‐looking perspective of the company business and may induce change through the establishment of new organizational learning routines. The article contributes to IC literature by addressing recent calls for a more practice‐based, “performative” approach to IC research, thus strengthening its emerging “third stage.” It also bridges the gap between theory and practice by discussing how can the IC perspective be integrated in a company's day‐to‐day decisions and strategic challenges. The empirical insights provided can thus be useful to managers and IC researchers alike, particularly those interested in studying IC in practice.

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: A History of Barriers to Intellectual Capital Measurement

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the Intellectual Capital Accounting (ICA) literature by investigating the barriers to IC measurement and how they can (re)shape IC measurement projects. The paper presents an interventionist case study of a company which has been measuring its IC for several years. It focuses on some emblematic situations in which barriers arose during the design and implementation of IC indicators followed by a (re)moulding of the IC measurement project within the organization. The case analysis revealed two barriers: the heavy workload that the design and calculation process of IC indicators entails and the perceived limited reliability of those indicators. These barriers did not lead to a complete failure of the project, but acted as a “filter”, resulting in the discontinued use of those indicators that were not perceived as useful or reliable and in the adoption of those that the managers actually considered useful. While this hindered a complete implementation of the ICMS, it promoted a selection of IC indicators and a legitimation of those that subsequently became part of the management control system. While previous studies explore how barriers can hamper the design as well as the implementation of an ICMS, this paper sheds light on what happens to IC measurement projects when the magnitude of barriers is not so significant as to lead to the complete failure of the project. This offers a new and different view of the barriers related to the adoption of ICMSs. Rather than considering them as factors which can interrupt IC measurement, they could be seen as factors which can challenge the implementation of the ICMS, strengthening those IC indicators that are perceived as reliable and useful and eliminating or disregarding those that did not meet expectations.

Mock-ups as a tool for assessing customer value early in the development process

Purpose This paper aims to propose an approach to broaden the focus of a low-fidelity prototype (i.e. mock-up) to enable user experimentation in a real environment at the early stages of the product development process. The functionality approaching a real solution enables customers to experience the key functionality, and therefore, the perceived customer value of the new product idea before major investments in the development. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on an interventionist case study in a manufacturing company. The researchers were involved in the development of two new products and analysing the potential process and cost implications. Findings Mock-ups enable the preliminary measurement of cost and value implications of a new product at the early stages of the development process. This holds significant potential for advancing development practices and reducing the uncertainties present in such processes. Thus, the business case at the early stage of the development process can be argued with “user-experienced” cost information and, therefore, also “perceived” customer value. Practical implications The use of mock-ups to gain customer feedback is well aligned with the fail-fast mentality emphasised in the contemporary start-up scene, but this study also encourages developers/practitioners from mature industries to use mock-ups to assess perceived customer value. Originality/value The originality of the paper lies in broadening the focus of mock-ups to enable user experimentation in a real environment at the early stages of the development process.

RFM customer analysis for product-oriented services and service business development: an interventionist case study of two machinery manufacturers

This study examines how original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can segment their product-oriented services customers with the help of a recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis of service consumption. The study is an interventionist case study that uses two large OEMs as case companies, both seeking profitable growth in the area of services. The originality of the paper is threefold. First, the research extends the RFM analysis using four product-support-service-specific variables, and it outlines the similarities and differences between the industrial service and consumer business contexts when using the RFM analysis. Second, by applying and modifying the RFM model to better suit the product-support-service context, the study contributes to the literature on the governance of product-oriented services in manufacturing. Third, the paper contributes to the literature on management accounting supporting service business development, by introducing a method that can use installed base and customer information to measure, analyze and govern the business potential of an industrial machinery “fleet”. In all, the paper is particularly helpful for service management and accounting academics and practitioners who wish to understand product-oriented service governance in environments in which there is a vast installed base of products at the customers, with remarkable potential for extending service business.

How do companies decide? Emotional triggers and drivers of investment in natural gas and biogas vehicles

Management research recognizes that companies’ investment decisions are driven not only by objective techno-economic models but also by emotion. Alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) investments offer an appealing context in which to study this interaction in energy source decisions, as they are influenced by a diverse set of analytical and emotional elements ranging from fuel costs to environmental values. This study examines companies’ vehicle investment decision making in Finland and focuses on the interaction between objective facts and subjective feelings along with the process of choosing the vehicles’ energy source.This article is based on an interventionist case study. Switching path analysis technique (SPAT) was used to investigate companies’ switches from conventional fuels to natural gas or biogas. This article contributes to the discussion of AFV adoption by unveiling companies’ decision-making triggers, investment criteria and the use of information sources in the decision-making processes. The findings regarding the decision-making dynamics between these factors are transferable to other energy investments. However, the content of the triggers and drivers varies across contexts and may change over time, because vehicles as investment objects have different meanings for different organizational actors depending on their organizational role, investment use context, and personal preferences.

The potential of management accounting and control in global operations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the financial potential of new service businesses in the context of a global machinery manufacturer. The objective is to examine the supportive role of management accounting (MA) and control in service business development, which has not been empirically examined previously.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes advantage of an interventionist case study at a global machinery manufacturer and is empirically based on a comprehensive examination of the service business potential in the selected product category in different market areas. The researchers were actively involved in the accounting development activities underlying this paper.FindingsThe results suggest that the development of a global service business is necessary to build on market area characteristics. An analysis should combine financial information and equipment fleet information across product lines and organizational units.Research limitations/implicationsMA and control practices tend to require significant development to actually support the process of identifying and capturing the service business potentials. As the findings are limited to one case environment, further studies should address the longitudinal evolution of MA and control, and the choice and utilization of different performance measures, in similar contexts.Practical implicationsThe paper provides managerial insights on how to utilize MA information and proposes ideas for performance indicators.Originality/valueThe process examined in this paper responds to the need for tools and techniques supporting service business development. MA and control could provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of service business profitability potential and support in identifying and prioritizing the possible avenues of realizing such potential.

Boundary subjects and boundary objects in accounting fact construction and communication

Purpose This paper aims to elaborate the concepts of boundary subjects and boundary objects in constructing and communicating relevant accounting facts for managing product development (PD). Boundary subjects as reflective actors benefit effective accounting enactment, by building a shared understanding about different actors’ roles and information needs, and by helping to respond to these needs with new boundary objects. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a longitudinal interventionist case study of a machinery manufacturer. The focus of this case study was the production ramp-up phase at the end of a PD program. Different actors’ needs were first collected and elaborated by interventionist researchers (boundary subjects). Then accounting prototypes (boundary objects) provided new means of communication. Findings The findings show that dealing with boundaries is crucial in accounting development. The role of boundary subjects was fundamental in the process of choosing, constructing, elaborating and communicating accounting facts. During this process, accounting prototypes integrated new accounting facts, the boundary subjects mitigated the boundaries and the boundary objects focused and restricted communication about accounting facts. Research limitations/implications The paper tests the pragmatic constructivism approach by examining accounting enactment under uncertainty and ambiguity. The study refines pragmatic constructivism in terms of boundaries, boundary subjects as actors and boundary objects. Practical implications The intentional use of boundary subjects and objects as communication platform could push a more active inclusion of business controllers as active business partners. Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature on accounting development by highlighting the use of boundary subjects and boundary objects as fundamental mechanisms in constructing and communicating accounting facts.

HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS: INTEGRATING A TEACHING HOSPITAL INTO PRIMARY HEALTH CARE

ABSTRACT Qualitative, exploratory and interventionist case study at a teaching hospital of Paraná, with the objective of proposing a Tuberculosis Healthcare Management model focused on the hospital discharge, with a view to comprehensive care for patients with tuberculosis. Interviews were conducted with key informants (17 subjects), using the Theory of Nursing Praxis Intervention in Collective Health as the theoretical and methodological framework, with its three interdependent dimensions used as analytical categories. Weakness was revealed in the protocols for hospitalized patient care, insufficient integration between levels of care and the need for direct communication between the hospital and primary care nurses. In view of this result, a Healthcare Management Model, expressed as a flow of care with matrix support, nursing consultation and phone contact between nurses. The implementation of this model will lead to greater integration between the levels of care, permitting improvements in patient monitoring with greater probability of treatment compliance.

Accounting prototypes supporting product development: integrating different actors’ viewpoints

This article introduces accounting prototypes in supporting managers in product development (PD), and inquires how accounting prototypes can support managers in PD activities. Accounting prototypes are jointly and iteratively created, preliminary tools, e.g., spreadsheets or information systems under development. Besides serving as control mechanisms, accounting prototypes also provide support for managers by integrating knowledge relevant to PD managers taking part in projects from different actors’ viewpoints. However, previous literature offers insufficient understanding of how accounting prototypes could help PD managers. The paper is based on an interventionist case study of a machinery manufacturer’s PD management. The focus of the case study was on the design and early use of accounting prototypes that would, right after PD execution, support production ramp-up, which was previously not much supported by accounting information. The paper contributes to the literature by showing an empirical example of supporting PD with accounting prototypes, and unveils the mechanisms through which the viewpoints of different business functions may be iteratively integrated in a calculation, thus enabling a more comprehensive view on the business impacts of a PD project. However, it was found out that the process of establishing and enhancing knowledge integration in the PD context is a longitudinal and challenging task also with the help of accounting prototypes.

Battlefield around interventions: A reflective analysis of conducting interventionist research in management accounting

This paper sheds light on the relatively unexplored question of how interventionist research (IVR) is actually conducted in management accounting and what kind of tensions it involves. The central starting point of the paper is viewing good IVR as producing contributions that are not only practically relevant but also theoretically significant, implying that an interventionist researcher has to be effective in both the emic and etic domains. The paper has two layers: the underlying interventionist case study of one of the authors and the reflective analysis based on that, to which the research question and the paper's purpose relate. The underlying study was a longitudinal IVR project including extremely close collaboration with the case firm. It contributed to the cost accounting literature on component commonality, advancing it to the earlier uncharted engineering-to-order production context. Based on this underlying study, the reflective analysis focuses on the various ways in which a researcher's intervention functions as the central driver of an interventionist study. Specifically, it elaborates on the view that the process around interventions is a ‘battlefield’ of various competing agendas and interests, which an interventionist researcher should balance in order to start, proceed and eventually successfully complete the research project. The balancing acts form a dialogical series of negotiations, relating to both the theoretical and empirical domains. Theoretical contributions of IVR projects tend to emerge in these dynamic processes, in which the researcher feels high pressure to show competence in both domains. However, the battlefield around interventions, though challenging for all parties, is also a rich and inspiring field of opportunities for exchanging knowledge between researchers and practitioners. Hence, IVR projects offer a potential avenue for producing new knowledge, with the two parties collaborating in the spirit of engaged scholarship.

Understanding performance measurement dynamism: a case study

This paper elaborates on the notion of performance measurement (PM) dynamism. The paper’s argument is based on a literature review and an interventionist case study. The analysis of the structure of PM dynamism is deepened by using New Institutional Sociology theory as a tool. PM dynamism was found to occur at four different levels: in setting the role of performance measures for decision making in general, in the use of measures, in the selection of measures and within the components of single measures. PM dynamism allows, for instance, measures used only for specific and topical purposes (ad hoc), in contrast to the views presented in the extant literature, which reject measures that are not institutionalized. The use of up-to-date measures, a major implication of understanding PM dynamism more thoroughly, could lead to more efficient strategy implementation and enactment at different levels. The originality of the article consists of identifying the rationale and the levels of PM dynamism and of the consideration that the use of ad hoc measures may have a positive impact on managing performance.