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Artificializing accounting numbers: a sensemaking perspective in times of crisis

Nhung Thi Hong Hoang (SKEMA Business School – Université Côte d’Azur, Suresnes, France)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 3 October 2022

Issue publication date: 8 May 2023

435

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study how people use competing accounting numbers to make sense of and legitimize actions in a complex environment in times of crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper analyzes the implementation of a standardized budget model at a USA intergovernmental organization, by relying on a triangulation of data sources, including face-to-face interviews, direct observations, and archival documents. The organization faces one of the greatest crises it has ever experienced. An accounting team and a human resources team make sense differently the same reality–staffing. The sensemaking perspective framework is utilized to provide a theoretical structure for the analysis.

Findings

The understudied organization undergoes constant evolution during the budgetary crisis; data reveal different forms of cues, which activate the sensemaking process, such as fading and compressed cues. Although compressed cues subsequently emerge, they play a more crucial role in managers' enactment than pre-existing fading cues. Artificializing accounting numbers refer to the social process of constructing compressed cues or artificial artifacts that are neither wrong nor right, neither soft nor hard and not useful for peoples' sensemaking but used to legitimize managers' strategic decisions.

Practical implications

This artificializing process explains the people's resistance to policy implementation. Furthermore, the multiplicity of cues provides useful information for regulators and managers to understand uncertainty during a crisis.

Originality/value

This study presents a rare case of an international third sector organization amid a budgetary crisis. Among few studies referring to numbers as sensemaking resources, this study focuses on the importance of systematic power and corporate power relative to the process of sensemaking.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Guest Editors and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on the paper. The author is also indebted to her Ph.D. supervisors, Marie-Léandre Gomez and Chrystelle Richard, for their advice and encouragement. The author extends her thanks to Yves Gendron, Chris Chapman, Charles Cho, Jérémy Morales and Aziza Laguecir for their insightful feedback. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments received during the presentation of earlier versions of this paper at the 13th EIASM Workshop on the Challenges of Managing the Third Sector, the 13th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting (IPA) Conference, the 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, the EIASM Discussion Forum on Qualitative Accounting Research in North American Journals, the 37th European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium and the 13th Workshop on Management Accounting as Social and Organizational Practice (MASOP). All errors remain the author's responsibility.

Citation

Hoang, N.T.H. (2023), "Artificializing accounting numbers: a sensemaking perspective in times of crisis", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 1167-1193. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2021-5424

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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