To read this content please select one of the options below:

The use of accounting in managing the institutional complexities of a festival organisation pursuing financial and social objectives

Per Ståle Knardal (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway)
John Burns (Department of Finance and Accounting, Business School, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK)

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change

ISSN: 1832-5912

Article publication date: 13 November 2020

Issue publication date: 4 March 2021

564

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of accounting when managing the institutional complexities of a festival organisation pursuing financial and social objectives. Specifically, it focuses on how accounting can be implicated in handling a festival’s multiple and potentially conflicting logics. Also, through mobilising the concept of institutional work, the following builds on our knowledge of the importance of what people do, in managing an organisation’s institutional complexity.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is grounded in a qualitative case study, for which the primary data derives from interviews, plus examination of internal documents and information in the public domain.

Findings

The festival studied is commercially successful, though ultimately one of its main organisational goals is to maximise donations to charitable causes. Other goals include: offering an alternative community through music, particularly to the young; fostering new and innovative artistry; and nurturing a festival family that is rooted to a large extent in its army of volunteers. The paper reveals how seeking such goals simultaneously requires the handling of logics that potentially can pull in opposite directions. Moreover, it highlights the efforts of festival organisers to maintain coexistence between the different logics, including the utilisation of accounting, accounts and accountability to facilitate this.

Originality/value

There are three main contributions of the paper. First, it offers new insight into how accounting can be purposefully used to mediate between potentially opposing logics in a complex organisational setting. Second, the paper extends our knowledge of the use of accounting specifically within a popular culture context. Third, the following adds to recent use of the concept of institutional work to understand why and how people mobilise accounting to handle institutional complexity in organisational settings.

Keywords

Citation

Knardal, P.S. and Burns, J. (2021), "The use of accounting in managing the institutional complexities of a festival organisation pursuing financial and social objectives", Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 111-130. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAOC-09-2020-0126

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles