Presenting a case study offers a rhetorical challenge for researchers. Mindful of this issue, we decided that the most
effective way to present the paper is to begin with an overview of extant literature to set up the research questions we
address in this study. In this section we develop a model that we expect, ex ante, to result from a lean manufacturing
initiative. In Section 3 we describe our research methods. In Section 4 we provide a description of the case study and the field evidence. In doing so, we discuss the lean manufacturing environment; including the organizational structure,
accounting practices, and control system. So Section 4 presents the “story”. In Section 5 we summarize the evidence
that is both consistent with and inconsistent with the ex ante framework we expected based on underlying literature.
We also present a revised theoretical framework based on the case evidence. Finally, in Section 6 we summarize our
contributions and discuss our limitations and direction for future research.