Over the past few decades, accountability has become a central concept in the study of the public sector. However, the concept has proven to be difficult to translate into various situations, considering the diverse ways in which accountability is constructed. Previous literature has provided insight of this diverse concept, as well as highlighting the importance of the accountability context. The present thesis focuses on exploring how accountability is constructed in public collaboration projects by turning to the process of people constructing relationships. Thus, the study goes beyond the concept itself to examine the different aspects of constructing accountability relationships within the context of collaborative dynamics.The empirical study focuses on three cases of collaboration projects initiated by county administrative boards and regions in Sweden. All three collaboration projects address societal and environmental problems, also known as "wicked problems". Despite having limited resources, these projects are driven by individuals who share their knowledge and enthusiasm. By examining the activities involved in 'collaboration work', the study illustrates how accountability is intertwined with context, expectations and engagement.By acknowledging the multifaceted process of constructing accountability, the analysis highlights how individuals create an 'accountability space', in which accountability becomes relevant and expressed. Furthermore, this study uses the concept of boundary action to explore how people make sense of accountability and visualise the different actions that contribute to its creation. The concept of boundary action assumes that accountability is created through time and space and is defined by the actions performed by individuals, and how these actions reflect social agreements within the context of the collaboration project. Contrary to previous ideas, these constructions of accountability demonstrate that questions such as 'who', 'what' and 'why' are rarely precise when accountability is constructed. Instead, this work contributes to highlight the asymmetric, dynamic and pluralistic dimensions of the social construction of accountability. This work reflects the multifaceted, diverse and variegated nature of accountability.

To highlight the ‘in-between’ aspects of organizational ethnography an alternative approach to traditional organizational ethnography is explored: inter-ethnography. This approach serves to destabilize the traditional notion of organizational ethnography as an individual and subjectivist project, as well as to escape the notion of a static field position from which the researcher – as observer or participant – learns about an organization’s culture. Inter-ethnography speaks in favour of a dynamic field presence in which the researchers’ cultural positions and understandings alter as they interact with different actors related to the studied organization. Inter-ethnography in this sense denotes a fundamental shift in epistemology: from individual beings to collective becoming. To illustrate the approach, we report from a doctoral course in qualitative methods that turned out to be a study of academic culture. The report progresses in a transparent manner from a realist account of the organizational setting via our confessions about our own learning processes to an impressionistic dialogue between us to inculcate that the ethnographic knowledge making process resides not only between writers of the text, but also between the writers and the readers. In this sense, our report represents an invitation to the reader to partake in the joint production of intersubjectivity.

Den här studien undersöker beskrivningar av controllerns roll och dess funktion under tre decennier i Europa. Studien utgår från en systematisk granskning av vetenskapligt granskade artiklar som publicerats i tolv ledande journaler under perioden 1990-2014. Begrepp och funktioner undersöks tillsammans med val av forskningens teoretiska ansatser och metoder.

Resultatet i studien visar att det finns tydliga faser av forskningens beskrivningar av controllern, en tidig fas där rollen frigörs från tidigare föreställningar av en ekonom som hanterar redovisning och kassaflöden, en mellanfas där rollen påverkas av exempelvis nya tekniker som IT-stöd och affärssystem leder till att omdefinitioner av rollen anses vara viktiga samt en modern fas där tidigare rolluppdelningar ifrågasätts och fokus ligger på rollens makt i organisationen och möjligheter att skapa sin egen yrkesidentitet. Det finns ett relativt homogent mönster i val av teoretisk ansats gällande beskrivning av controllern. Majoriteten av artiklarna i urvalet utgår från ett sociologiskt perspektiv vilket pekar på att controllern har beskrivits utifrån den kontext controllern verkar i och därmed gett viktiga indikationer för en förståelse av just denna kontext.

Studien visar att det framförallt uttrycks att det är organisationella faktorer som driver förändringarna av roll och rollfunktion. Varje organisation definierar vad controllern har för funktion och vilken påverkan denne ska ha på verksamheten. Den kunskapsbas som en controller bör ha, enligt beskrivningarna, visar att controllern behöver hantera fler områden än redovisning. Detta har rapporterats tidigare, men har beskrivits som att det handlar om en rollförändring och en uppdelning av roller. Resultatet i den här studien pekar snarare på att det är en naturlig process av förändring av rollen för ett företags vidare överlevnad. 

This study examines the descriptions of the role of management accountants in Europe (available only in Swedish). The study is a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles, published in twelve leading journals during 1990-2014. The descriptions of the role are examined in relation to theoretical approaches and methods.

The result indicates that there are three distinct phases of the descriptions of management accountants, from a role that is released from the previous assumptions of an accountant as a bean-counter towards a phase where the role is affected by new technologies that leads to redefinitions of the role, up to today’s phase where previous role types are questioned with a focus on the power position of the role within the organization and opportunities to create a professional identity.

There is a relatively homogeneous pattern in the theoretical approach to the study of the management accountant. The vast majority of articles are based on a sociological perspective, which indicates that the management accountant has been described based on the context the management accountant operates in, given important indications for understanding this particular context.  The study indicates that it is primarily the organizational factors that are driving the changes and the function of the role. Each organization defines the function of a management accountant based on to what extent this function is linked to business. The knowledge base of a management accountant, according to the descriptions, illustrates that the management accountant requires managing more areas than accounting. This has been reported before, but has been explained as a role change and a variety of role types. The results of this study indicate that it is rather a natural process of change in relation to the further survival of a business.