Martin Messner is Professor of Management Accounting at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Together with Christoph Pelger, he has been teaching the VHB ProDok course Qualitative Empirical Accounting Research since several years. In his research, he is primarily concerned with the practice of management accounting in organisations and has published on topics such as performance measurement, budgeting and forecasting, and the role and identity of controllers.

Qualitative research in accounting often focuses on the 'day-to-day' aspects of accounting within organisations, such as how systems are introduced, used, mobilised, justified or undermined. I find such questions exciting, as they help us to understand how accounting is actually practised in organisations.

An academic position offers the opportunity to deal with questions that you find interesting. As a rule, you also have a lot of flexibility in your work. At the same time, however, you are much more limited in terms of job opportunities than in the private sector and you also have to be lucky enough to end up in the right place at the right time.

In my research, I am inspired on the one hand by stories from practitioners who report on interesting developments in their company, for example. In addition, of course, from the work of other colleagues, which sometimes gives me ideas for my own research.

I have never regretted taking the step into academia and would make the same decision again today, even though the demands on young scholars have certainly increased since then.

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