Theoretical and practical implications

This thesis aimed to contribute to the research project MASI, which purpose is to pro-pose a blueprint of new management accounting in the era of digitalization and knowledge economy. From the theoretical point of view, in the beginning of this work the very connection of multimedia and accounting seemed a bit unusual, if not even weird. The researcher had to go through literature in such different and distant from each other fields that sometimes it seemed as a desperate attempt. However, now when the work is almost over, reflection about the resulting framework brings a feeling that something meaningful has been created.

The theoretical findings are in certain sense innovative. As was discussed in previous chapters, studies of visual narratives as a specific type of knowledge representation form are just in their beginning, even though the phenomena exists since the origins of civilization. This thesis can contribute to this research field, by bringing together theo-ries from cognitive psychology and instructional design to explain the mechanisms of learning and deriving meaning from a visual story. The topic of thesis was, however, closely connected with management accounting, and with the business knowledge it brings to the organizations. The objective was to find ways for integrating MA knowledge into a broader organizational context, in order to improve its position as a common business language and as a support for managerial decision-making. There are certain streams in MA research dealing with the topics of visualization and narratives;

however, the researchers in those fields are struggling not only with finding appropriate frameworks but also in convincing the research community about the relevance of their approaches for MA (Davison and Warren, 2009). No wonder that there have not been any previous research of visual narratives in management accounting: this knowledge representation form is barely studied by itself, not to say of its connections with such distant fields. Nevertheless, the results of this thesis show that the studies of VN in ac-counting can produce viable and relevant academic outcomes.

The theoretical framework and preliminary empirical results of this thesis have been presented at the annual gathering of MA researchers in Finland in October 2015. The presentation has triggered an interesting discussion, the feedback was overall positive, and the researcher has got valuable comments from senior accounting researchers about the possibilities for publication and further research. During the discussion within this professional community, it has been mentioned that such topics are of interest in the major accounting research journals. This paper barely scratches the surface, but hope-fully it can attract more attention to the fact that studying arts, design, communication

and multimedia with connection to accounting can produce interesting results for the research communities of all those fields.

Regarding the practical implications, the most immediate and obvious impact can be seen in applying animations in the teaching process for industrial management students.

During the project, the animations were presented to about 200 unique viewers and have received a warm welcome. These empirical results were also presented at the meeting of accounting researchers, along with the examples of animations, and have sparked the interest of researchers who are also involved in university teaching.

Nowadays, when the technology progress is changing our world day to day, it is quite common that innovative industries adopt the most novel practices and tools as they ap-pear, going faster than academic research. The professional community of business ana-lytics and intelligence is discussing visual anaana-lytics and data storytelling during the lat-est decade. The software vendors of business intelligence technologies are developing the so-called data discovery tools, which enable business analysts to create presenta-tions as visual stories. It can be concluded that the business analytics industry does their own research and development in the field, though more practically oriented, very likely protected as companies’ know-how, and thus not very well known in the academic re-search community. The findings of this thesis could be potentially useful for practical development in the industry.

Many companies reasonably strive to apply information technologies for effective knowledge transfer. However, Davenport and Prusak (1998) warn that information technologies as such cannot guarantee and promote knowledge sharing in a corporate culture which does not favor these activities. Effective knowledge sharing culture, ac-cording to Vuori (2011), depends on the following factors:

 Understanding the value of knowledge

 Motivation to share knowledge

 Organizational culture supporting teamwork and information flow

 The nature of knowledge

 Opportunities to share knowledge

It can be said that multimedia tools for accounting reporting are not a magic artifact for integration of economic knowledge in the organizations. Rather they can be seen as supporting practical tools for the organizational culture which understands the value of knowledge, its creation and sharing. The development of visual narrative reporting tools on the basis of existing information systems requires solid understanding of information needs of different business units and organization levels. Such development cannot be done in isolation, but as a part of organizational efforts to improve their knowledge management strategy.

The question also arises about visual narrative design in practice. As was demonstrated by one of the empirical cases, it requires precise accounting data in the first place, and solid understanding of processes. In addition, making animations and videos manually is time-consuming and not very flexible. In order to benefit from visual storytelling as an everyday communication tool, its production should be automated in some way – both in the aspects of data availability and design. The company should have certain technology capabilities to gather precise and timely data about their processes, as well as well-designed knowledge management practices to ensure that right information is coming to right people at a right time. Having these two prerequisites, designing an ap-plication for generating multimedia artifacts should not be a big issue. However, even though it may sound unrealistic for companies who are not there yet, the technologies are going forward and there is nothing impossible. In the beginning of Internet, all webpages were created manually; nowadays there are content management systems and design templates, which allow everyone to create websites without even thinking of the technology behind.

Recent R&D projects by Google and IBM in the field of artificial intelligence are fo-cused on natural language understanding, ultimately aiming to bring human and tech-nology interaction on such level where computers will be able to compose and tell sto-ries. Videos are not seen as mere entertainment, but become increasingly important in education, mass media and business communication. The technical director of Google Finland, Hanna Kivelä told at her lecture in TUT on 2.10.2015 that the future source of competitive advantage and efficiency is in “those little moments” when people are go-ing up and down in the elevator, waitgo-ing for the bus or for the traffic lights. There are solid grounds to believe that accounting knowledge in the nearest future will become as

“ambient” as many of the information services nowadays. In this sense, the results of this thesis can find their practical application not only now, but especially in the upcom-ing years.