• HOSTED BY AARHUS BSS
• SUPPORTED BY CIMA
• LOCAL HOSTS
• KEYNOTE SPEAKERS MSAR-CONFERENCE 2024
• BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
• CALL FOR PAPERS
• IMPORTANT DATES
• LOCATION - TIMING - JOINING INSTRUCTIONS
• PROGRAMME
• DISCLAIMER
• PRACTICALITIES
• DOWNLOAD ACCEPTED PAPERS

Aarhus BSS is one of the five faculties at Aarhus University and one of the largest schools of business and social sciences in Europe.
The acronym BSS is short for Business and Social Sciences.

The school is home to six academic departments, all internationally recognised for their quality of educational and research activities, as well as a large number of internationally recognised research centres. Gathering all business and social science disciplines under the same strategic framework has created a dynamic and visionary organisation, which is flexible and changes in line with the society's needs for qualified graduates with the right skillsets.

Aarhus BSS holds the distinguished AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS accreditations, and is thereby a triple crown business school.

The research-based degree programmes offered by the school include highly recognised programmes within disciplines such as economics, finance, accounting, logistics, human resource management,
organisation, marketing, management information systems, innovation, entrepreneurship, business communication, law, psychology, public administration and political science.

Morten Jakobsen
Aarhus University, Department of Management, Denmark

Organising committee

Cristiana Parisi is Associate Professor in Management Control at the Department of Accounting at Copenhagen Business School. Her expertise lies in the field of performance management. Her research explores the implementation of management control technologies within organizations and the conditions and consequences that arise from such implementations.

Cristiana Parisi's work is both interdisciplinary and quantitative and qualitative in nature, allowing her to delve into various aspects of management practices. Her research encompasses three broad areas of interest. Firstly, she examines the antecedents and consequences of adopting managerial technologies, with a particular focus on sustainability. Secondly, she is deeply involved in social and environmental accounting and accountability, which relates to the field of value chain management. Her research in this area explores how organizations can account for their social and environmental impact, considering the broader context of their operations. Lastly, she investigates the implications of advanced technologies on management practices and the transition towards a circular economy.

Teemu Laine

Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Tampere University in Finland. As the Director of the Cost Management Center (CMC) research team, he leads a dedicated group focused on advancing knowledge and practices related to profitability management, management accounting and control, and decision-making across various industries and organizational contexts. With a strong commitment to promoting sustainable and profitable businesses, Teemu collaborates with numerous stakeholders to provide valuable insights and support for managing and developing organizations in a responsible manner.

Teemu Laine's expertise lies in the areas of profitability management, management accounting and control, and decision-making, particularly in the domains of service and innovation activities. He leverages his profound knowledge and experience to help businesses optimize their operations, enhance financial performance, and align their strategic objectives with sound decision-making practices.

As an accomplished scholar, Teemu Laine has contributed extensively to the academic community through his research publications. His work encompasses topics such as performance measurement systems in sustainable business development, decision-making under uncertainty in the service industry, and the role of management accounting in supporting innovation activities. Additionally, he has explored the integration of environmental sustainability into management accounting and control systems.

Carlos Larrinaga

Carlos Larrinaga is professor at the Department of Economics and Business Administration, University of Burgos, Spain. Carlos Larrinaga has made significant contributions to the field of sustainability and environmental accounting. His extensive portfolio includes numerous publications in prestigious journals, as well as books and book chapters published by respected publishers. Larrinaga's works not only provide a solid foundation of knowledge in this specific field, but also offer reflections and critiques of current accounting practices concerning sustainability and environmental matters. As such his work points at several possibilities for accounting to play a role in relations to resource scarcity and thereby taking steps towards more sustainable and environmental forms of production and service practices.

The Manufacturing and Service Accounting Research (MSAR) is a biennial conference at which worldwide scholars, researchers and practitioners debate on control, cost and performance management related issues in a wide range of business organizations, both in manufacturing and service.

Previous conferences have been held in Eindhoven (1993), Bruges (1995), Edinburgh (1997), Kolding (1999), Pisa (2001), Twente (2003), Tampere (2005), Trento (2007), Münster (2009), Ghent (2010), Helsinki (2012), Copenhagen (2014), Lisbon (2016), Oslo (2018), Pisa (2022).

In 2024 the conference will be hosted by Aarhus BSS, Arhus University, Denmark and it is jointly organized by EIASM.

The Arhus -2024 MSAR conference continues and evolves themes established in previous conferences, and explicitly acknowledges and addresses the service dimension in business environment as a relevant area for the accounting research perspective. A direct engagement with operational processes has always been a central feature in the academic papers presented at this conference.

Similar to the earlier conferences, the Arhus -2024 MSAR conference continues to welcome papers with a strong operational orientation. Such papers could relate to, for example, the design and use of management and cost accounting, business analytics, management control, and performance management systems in all functional domains of the organization, the use in combination with advanced manufacturing or enterprise resource planning technology, and the use within customer-supplier and inter-organizational networks.

For decades the dominating idea for manufacturing and service companies has been to streamline production and provision of products and services to customers. How can we increase production? How can we design products and services in order to meet the expectations of the customer? How can we utilise most recent technology to make us attractive for customers? Where can we source components least expensive and of the right quality? By 2022 this customer-oriented focus was suddenly overruled by another agenda: how do we get access to resources?

In this light, the main topic of the MSAR-conference 2024 is: resource scarcity. On that basis we particularly welcome and encourage papers that may address some of the following problems:

• In manufacturing and service businesses, the resource scarcity (e.g., of tangible, intangible or financial resources) has provided some new challenges and perhaps there are several emerging ones that require identification, conceptualization and resolution from the management accounting (MA) perspective as well (i.e. the identification and measurement of business impact on biodiversity). This viewpoint is related to ecological sustainability for sure, but also it suggests finding out new ways to overcome the challenges, with the help of new technologies and with the help of new management approaches. How can MA offer enough support for management from those perspectives? How is resource scarcity theorized in relation to MA? And which kind of theoretical viewpoints are useful – even necessary – to support generation of academic knowledge (that is also relevant in practice) about resource scarcity? Which kinds of management control viewpoints relate to resource scarcity in today’s world?
   
• Many components that are parts of products today contain resources that are scarce. For instance, electric vehicles and batteries need rare-earth minerals, renewable energy, water and air commodities. This may call for paying attention to the resources used through an entity's life-cycle. While also this focus may tap into sustainability concerns, we need thorough understanding about how can the scarce-resource-based economy be operated from an accounting perspective. How do business models accommodate to resource scarcity in the turbulent environment and how can MA support such accommodation? How can business networks operate profitably even if scarce resources play a role in their operations? Again, how would theoretical viewpoints to manufacturing and service accounting help us understand resource scarcity in operations in new and productive ways in the long-term.
   
• Resource scarcity of human resources are also present. How do we find ways to undertake certain activities with less resources available, with the help of new technologies and with the help of new management approaches. How can MA offer support for constructing such new, resource-efficient practices, by e.g., influencing decisions leading to renewing manufacturing or services? Also values such as well-being, quality of life and different emerging lifestyles among other aspects have perhaps changed the way that the human resources need to be approached currently: with less-oppression and more appreciation. This may easily lead into scarce resources from companies and MA analyses perspectives. The nexus of well-being and performance is far from unproblematic either. At the same time, well-being and other social sustainability aspects pose new requirements for value-based decision-making with several restrictions and limitations – but possibilities as well.
   
• The proposed changes in focus for production and service companies may change the fundamental premises for managing such companies. In that case, our methodological approach for doing research in this empirical field may have to be revised. How are we able to obtain relevant research data in order to understand something meaningful about resource scarcity in manufacturing and service operations? Which kind of methodological choices can we make to build solid contributions to academic knowledge and business practice as well?

For the Aarhus-2024 conference we specifically encourage papers that address the problems mentioned above.

Besides those topics, manufacturing and service companies face many challenges that merits research (e.g., price fluctuations, energy source selection, relocation of operation from crisis areas, regulatory environment). Further, we naturally also welcome papers that do not specifically address the problems mentioned above, but topics in line with the background and purpose of the conference:

• The design, implementation, and use of new management accounting and management control techniques and methods;
• The role of management control and performance management systems in enhancing servitization, innovation, and entrepreneurship and new ventures;
• Management accounting and control aspects and support of existing and new business models;
• The role of management accounting, control and performance management systems in manufacturing and service contexts characterized by digital technologies;
• Performance metrics, management accounting and control in Industry 4.0.
• The roles and implications of business analytics and management accounting and control techniques in e-commerce and online business models;
• The use of management accounting and control systems in R&D, Supply Chain Management, (service) production, and the marketing and sales function;
• The design and use of management accounting and control techniques and approaches in people businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and public-sector organizations;
• The use of management accounting and control systems in relation to organizational behavioral change, human resource management, and knowledge management;
• Methodological advances and novelties in researching the operational processes of manufacturing and service organizations.

Academic papers are presented in concurrent sessions with all papers having a discussant.

There is a dedicated track for PhD students and early-career researchers, with selected discussants from various editorial boards.

All research methodologies - either quantitative, qualitative or mixed method - are welcome
 

The submission for Full papers intended for presentation at the concurrent sessions OR the PhD and early-career track has closed. If you still wish to submit, please contact pavlos.dimitrakos@eiasm.be

LOCATION

The conference will take place at

Aarhus University
8000 Aarhus
Denmark

TIMING

The academic programme of the conference will start on Wednesday, June 19, 2024 around 14:00. The conference is scheduled to end at approximately 13:00 on Friday, June 21

ABOUT AARHUS

See: https://conferences.au.dk/about-aarhus

GETTING THERE

You can go to Aarhus by train, bus and car. Follow this link

How to get to Aarhus University

The event will take place at Aulaen, Aarhus University 

Venue Address:

building 1412: map
Nordre Ringgade 4, 8000, Aarhus C

Link to more general information about  https://konferencer.au.dk/en/sustain/how-to-find-aarhus-university

 ^{See the programme and parallel sessions}

The fees include participation to workshop, documents, lunches, the  workshop dinner & morning and afternoon refreshments.

Cancellations made before May 20, 2024 will be reimbursed minus 20% of the total fee. No reimbursement will be possible after that date.

Payments should be made by :

• The following credit cards: Visa or Eurocard/Mastercard/Access

ADMINISTRATION