ABSTRACT
This book is an example of the growing interest during the past decade in the implications that a range of inter-organisational issues have on accounting. This increased interest can be interpreted in two different ways:
Firstly, it can be explained as an attempt to provide a fresh insight into the theoretical analysis of management practice and, thereby, also of accounting. According to this explanation, the inter-organisational issues that have been raised recently have already been addressed in practice, but they have not been covered by the conceptual approaches on which accounting is based. Thus, the interest in the new issues has arisen from the development of new theoretical perspectives on the continuing practice of business. In later chapters, we will see how transaction cost economics (Chapter 10), the industrial-network approach (Chapter 11), actor-network theory (Chapter 12), and institutional theory (Chapter 13) have been used to identify issues that are complementary or alternative to the classical issues in accounting theory. According to this explanation, the trend in accounting is based on a recognition of existing problems that have now been identifi ed as the outcome of new theories about the functioning of fi rms. Within this explanation, it can be claimed that the newly identifi ed issues have a largely theoretical origin: There is no major change in the business world.
