Accounting, innovation and inter-organisational relationships: avenues for future research

The spatial dimension has always been central to the literature on accounting and inter-organisational relationships. Inter-organisational innovation connects individuals, teams and organisations, both within firms as well as in dyads, supply chains and networks. An explicit recognition, empirically as well as theoretically, of a multi-level perspective would help to develop the literature on inter-organisational relationships in several ways. The literature on accounting and innovation shares many characteristics with the literature on inter-organisational accounting in terms of growth, positioning and research design. Studying the low-price apparels industry, Neu describe how coercive controls are used on an individual level to deal with time pressure and uneven development rhythms in the sweatshops that produce the clothing. The literature on inter-organisational innovation has a long history. Despite studying many process characteristics, the inter-organisational innovation literature has paid limited attention to accounting. In fact, the literature has traditionally seen accounting as hindering the innovation process.