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What does this thesis do? This thesis uses Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to examine how a UK retailer’s organization and strategy, and, in turn, its form of management accounting was shaped by its supply chain. The thesis does this by reporting on four related themes in the form of four inter-connected essays. The first essay undertakes a state-of-the-art review of the literature. It examines how accounting issues within supply chains permeate ‘matters of concern’. In accordance with this idea of ANT, the essay illustrates how issues emerged, controversies developed, and matters evolved through an actor-network of accounting researchers within the supply chain domain. This leads on to the second essay, which exemplifies the nature of the UK’s retailing industry within which the supply chain case organization emerged and developed. The purposes of the essay are twofold: to introduce the contextual ramifications of the case organization; and to illustrate the emergence of a new market logic, which led to the creation of a global supply chain and a new form of management accounting therein. The third essay reports on a qualitative case study. It analyses the dualistic relation between ostensive and performative aspects of supply chain strategy, reveals how accounting numbers act as an obligatory passage point within this dualism, and makes a contribution to the ANT debate around the issue of whether and how a dualism between ostensive and performative aspects exists. The final essay reports on another case analysis of institutionalizing a heterarchical form of management accounting: a distributed form of intelligence that penetrates through lateral accountable relations. The analysis reveals a new form of management accounting characterised by ambiguity; it emphasizes the possibilities of compromises and negotiations, and it thus contributes to knowledge by combining an aspect of ANT with heterarchical tendencies in the world of contemporary organizations. Finally, the thesis concludes that it is the supply chain that organises today’s neoliberal capitalism; and it is management accounting that unites both human and non-human actors within such supply chains, despite that form of management accounting being ambiguous. The thesis comprises the introduction, these four essays, and the conclusion.

This submission represents a journey of learning about learning within accounting education, and, in particular, the role of learning technologies and students’ skills in the process of learning. The work presented was published over the past decade and a half and addresses issues concerned with accounting education both past and present, and includes research on the author of the first printed text on double entry bookkeeping, Fra’ Luca Pacioli. The overriding research interest at the core of this submission and which has guided the various and varied phases and themes within in it is a concern to learn from how learning technologies are and have been an integral part of the educational environment, and to gain insight into how learning technologies might best be utilised in the field of accounting education. The work is presented in two themes with an additional two publications related to methodological approach. The first theme is related to students’ skills and technology and the second theme includes historical research into early accounting education. The published work in these themes is predominantly represented by research published in leading refereed journals in the fields of accounting education and accounting history. The additional two publications are included as they relate to and illustrate the methodological approaches that underlie the overall approach to the research that is presented and developed in the two themes: an approach that privileges, as far as practical, subjects’ contextual understandings of their worlds. Given the diversity of the work included in this submission there is no single research question and there are a diverse range of contributions. The work included contributes to our understanding of the introduction and utilisation of learning technologies in the teaching of accounting, both printed books in the 15th century and Information Technology (IT) in the late 20th/early 21st centuries, and the skills required to facilitate learning within the discipline of accounting. The practical value and importance of the research is supported by, inter alia, reference to the author’s applied work (not part of the submission) that illustrates how the published work contributes to good practice in skills development and the introduction and integration of learning technologies in the accounting curriculum. The papers on IT skills adds to our understanding of the IT skills that students bring with them to university, and raises awareness of the need to challenge the taken for granted assumptions about the abilities of new generations of students. The work on generic skills, whilst showing the importance of skills development also highlights the complexities in this area particularly in relation to issues concerned with confidence in making choices, in the subject matter, via modelling choices, and in time management: not knowing what to do, what to study. The paper on matrix accounting in a Russian university illustrates the potential of an approach to accounting education that is facilitated by the use of IT based learning. The work on Pacioli contributes significantly to our knowledge and understanding of Pacioli as a pioneer in the field of accounting education, and the role of his writing within Summa in the education, development and spread of double entry bookkeeping and accounting, in particular by relating the works to literature in fields such as renaissance art, educational systems and social development. In contrast, the sole authored work on Pacioli concentrates on an element of the minutiae of the bookkeeping process, the accounting for goods inventory, traces the longevity of this method of recording transactions, and shows how this had potential to provide important decision information to merchants, who were the prime market for Pacioli’s writing at the time. The two themes addressed in this submission include works that have individually made unique and significant contributions to the fields of accounting education and accounting history, and the two publications included to illustrate the methodological approach have made a contribution methodologically and to the finance literature. Taken together the works presented also provide a significant and original contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the role of learning technologies in accounting education and, by investigating new learning technologies in the different periods of time, provide a platform for further research to help us to appreciate the importance of technologies in accounting, and in accounting education.

The last two decades have seen an evolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capabilities in the public sector which facilitates the adoption of several IT innovations. Electronic government is one of these strategic innovations that many government agencies have considered adopting to deliver government information and services and support the modernisation of government’s administrative tasks. This research investigates an e-government adoption process as represented by the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) adoption process. XBRL constitutes one of the key components of the electronic regulatory reporting process in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Companies House (CH). A comprehensive conceptual framework is developed to examine XBRL adoption process and the influential technological, organisational, environmental factors and e-government challenges that affect this process. The contribution of this comprehensive framework is that it develops various relationships among these factors, challenges and stages of the adoption process which have not been identified in the IT adoption or e-government literature. The framework for e-government adoption in the public sector is useful in multiple ways. The major benefit is to contribute to understanding the adoption process, identify the technological infrastructure, and emphasise the importance of the organisational readiness and impact of the environment on the adoption process. The framework can also help government decision makers to visualise a suitable strategic action plan for the future of electronic government by identifying the key issues and potential challenges associated with adopting e-government projects.