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Situated rationalities in response to institutional complexity: the role of management accounting practices

Fabiano Siqueira de Oliveira (Graduate Program in Management Control and Business Finance, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil)
Octávio Ribeiro de Mendonça Neto (Graduate Program in Management Control and Business Finance, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil)
Jose Carlos Tiomatsu Oyadomari (Graduate Program in Management Control and Business Finance, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil, and Department of Accounting, Insper, São Paulo, Brazil)
Claudio de Araújo Wanderley (Department of Accounting, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil)

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change

ISSN: 1832-5912

Article publication date: 25 August 2023

Issue publication date: 27 May 2024

258

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore how management accounting practices act as drivers of organizational change in situations of institutional complexity.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study was carried out in a small company with a strongly rooted social culture, which was acquired by a large conglomerate and underwent a process of strategic change as part of a new control logic. Based on this, the study analyzes the evolution of this change, with a particular focus on the efforts to construct the meaning of the performance through the inscription of objects from the cultural system to which it is attached and the “situated rationality” of the managers who are involved in its production.

Findings

The authors show how managers link their own concepts of performance to accounting practices. At the same time, the authors show how accounting practices unfold through representational gaps that their production generates.

Research limitations/implications

This study acknowledges that bias may arise from reliance on retrospective views of past processes and events, gathered primarily through interviews, documentation and observations.

Practical implications

This study highlights that the way in which the performance concept is presented by accounting practices can have a constructive effect on the organization through the aspirations that its representations entail, thus having the potential to stimulate change in organizations.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the organizational literature by clarifying that accounting practices drive change by providing spaces for debates and questions that affect the way organizations understand and report their performance.

Keywords

Citation

de Oliveira, F.S., Mendonça Neto, O.R.d., Oyadomari, J.C.T. and Wanderley, C.d.A. (2024), "Situated rationalities in response to institutional complexity: the role of management accounting practices", Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 486-512. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAOC-11-2021-0165

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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