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Article
Publication date: 31 December 2021

Maurice Gosselin and Marc Journeault

Some public sector organizations have decided to implement activity-based costing (ABC), a new cost calculation device and management accounting innovation initially designed for…

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Abstract

Purpose

Some public sector organizations have decided to implement activity-based costing (ABC), a new cost calculation device and management accounting innovation initially designed for the private sector. The purpose of this study is to better understand the translation of this new calculation device in the context of a local government and to identify the trials of strength that actors faced during the implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on actor-network theory and the concept oftrial of strength,” this study examines how a major change in a large local government’s structure, the merger of several cities, led to the adoption of ABC. This case study provides a setting for conducting a longitudinal analysis of the translation of a cost management innovation, ABC, in a public sector organization.

Findings

This study highlights how human and non-human actors interact when implementing a management accounting innovation in a local government and the trials of strength that they face. It also shows that although ABC helped the local government deal with issues such as setting fees, assessing outsourcing opportunities, increasing accountability and improving processes, the oversophistication of the technology used to implement the ABC model and the lack of links between the costing device and the budgeting process provoked a struggle among these two networks, leading actors to choose the budget over ABC.

Originality/value

This study’s findings extend the work on trials of strength of Christensen et al. (2019) and Laguecir et al. (2020). While those two studies focused on the struggles existing between opposing networks of human actors regarding the strategic orientation or the mission of public sector organizations, this study highlights that trials of strength may also occur when actors agree on the objectives of the new accounting innovation but not on how it is implemented.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 19 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 November 2019

Aziza Laguecir, Christopher S. Chapman and Anja Kern

The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational construction of profit at the responsibility-centre level, how underlying cost calculations are challenged, and the role…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational construction of profit at the responsibility-centre level, how underlying cost calculations are challenged, and the role of accountants therein.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper analyses profit calculation in a public social housing organization that experienced New Public Management (NPM). Participant observations, archives and interviews inform the study over three years, enabling access to day-to-day practices.

Findings

This study examines a trial of strength that revisited long-existing profitability and cost calculations. Accountants held competing views of how to treat labour costs. Some were anti-programme during a trial of incompatibility, while others were programme defenders. The authors also provide evidence of the stability of an established network and its resistance to the claims of an adversary spokesperson in a trial of strength. The concept of trial of incompatibility proved helpful in showing how the actor networks within OMEGA played out the tension between profit orientation and the social mission of offering affordable dwellings.

Research limitations/implications

The paper provides rare qualitative data on the significant and complex role of calculative costing choices in determining intra-organizational profitability and its interference with the inherent social mission of the organization.

Practical implications

The authors suggest that profitability calculations are influenced not only by economic context but also by different views of organizational actors regarding how to calculate profit. These calculations would benefit from a more detailed and explicit documentation of reasons for choices made, given the potential for different and, in principle, equally valid approaches. The authors provide further evidence of the complexity of the public social housing sector.

Social implications

This research points to a departure from the mission of public social housing in the face of NPM reforms and further questions the compatibility of a profit orientation with the provision of affordable dwellings.

Originality/value

The findings show intra-accounting variation regarding a specific element of profit calculation (labour costs) relating to the organization’s wider mission and status.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 33 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 May 2023

Welington Norberto Carneiro, Jose Carlos Tiomatsu Oyadomari, Paulo Afonso, Ronaldo Gomes Dultra-de-Lima and Octavio Ribeiro de Mendonça Neto

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative case study was carried out at a multinational company using mainly interviews for the data collection that were analysed from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

Findings

This paper finds that the company deals with a series of paradoxes while managing the kaizen process. Efficiency and quality paradoxes are the basis for starting kaizen projects. Furthermore, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation, emerge in these processes, and paradoxes relate to how spontaneous ideas emerge in a deliberated context of cost-saving objectives. The supply chain finance team coordinates kaizen projects with the collaboration of plant managers, promoting the paradox of autonomy and control. In addition, as kaizen mobilises and enrols the actors, some trials of strength emerge, showing actors who oppose the kaizen network and create competing networks that mutually exist in the firm.

Practical implications

This study presents valuable insights for professionals to successfully implement kaizen methodologies that take advantage of developing a network for problem-solving in organizations.

Originality/value

This study highlights the supply chain finance team's role in enrolling the actors within a network built by practitioners engaged in kaizen projects. Usually, engineers, quality, or manufacturing teams lead kaizen projects, and only occasionally, accounting and financial teams participate, including multidisciplinary teams.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 July 2014

Martin E. Persson and Christopher J. Napier

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges faced by an Australian accounting academic, R. J. Chambers, in the 1950s, in breaking into the accounting research…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges faced by an Australian accounting academic, R. J. Chambers, in the 1950s, in breaking into the accounting research community, at that time, almost entirely located in the USA and the UK. For academics outside the networks of accounting research publication in these countries, there were significant, but not insurmountable obstacles to conducting and publishing accounting research. We examine how these obstacles could be overcome, using the notion oftrials of strength” to trace the efforts of Chambers in wrestling with intellectual issues arising from post-war inflation, acquiring accounting literature from abroad and publishing his endeavours.

Design/methodology/approach

The article uses actor-network theory to provide an analytical structure for a “counter-narrative” history firmly grounded in the archives.

Findings

Documents from the R. J. Chambers Archive at the University of Sydney form the empirical basis for a narrative that portrays accounting research as a diverse process driven as much by circumstances – such as geographical location, access to accounting literature and personal connections – as the merits of the intellectual arguments.

Research limitations/implications

Although the historical details are specific to the case being studied, the article provides insights into the challenges faced by researchers on the outside of international research networks in achieving recognition and in participating in academic debates.

Practical implications

The findings of this article can provide guidance and inspiration to accounting researchers attempting to participate in wider academic communities.

Originality/value

The article uses documents from perhaps the most extensive archive relating to an individual accounting academic. It examines the process of academic research in accounting in terms of the material context in which such research takes place, whereas most discussions have focussed on the underlying ideas and concepts, abstracted from the context in which they emerge.

Details

Meditari Accountancy Research, vol. 22 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-372X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2000

Yaw A. Debrah and Ian G. Smith

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on…

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Abstract

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Details

Management Research News, vol. 23 no. 2/3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0140-9174

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 June 2015

Stephen Jollands, Chris Akroyd and Norio Sawabe

This paper aims to examine a management control constructed by senior managers, a core value focused on sustainability, as it travels through time and space. The criticality of

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine a management control constructed by senior managers, a core value focused on sustainability, as it travels through time and space. The criticality of sustainable development suggests the need to understand the effects that core values have on organisational actions.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study methodology carried out at a multinational organisation is used. This analysis was informed by an actor-network theory which allowed placing the organisation’s sustainability focused core value at the centre of this research.

Findings

It was found that management control, in the form of a sustainability-focused core value, took on an active role in the case organisation. This enabled the opening of space and time that allowed actors to step forward and take action in relation to sustainable development. It is shown how the core value mobilised individual actors at specific points in time but did not enrol enough collective support to continue its travel. The resulting activities, though, provided a construction of sustainable development within the organisation more in line with traditional profit-seeking objectives rather than in relation to sustainability objectives, such as inter- and intra-generational equity.

Research limitations/implications

These findings suggest possibilities for future research that examines the active role that management controls may take within sustainable development.

Originality/value

This paper shows the active role a management control, a sustainability focused core value, took within an organisation. This builds on the research that examines management control in relation to sustainability issues and sustainable development as well as the literature that examines core values.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 12 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 April 2016

Brian A. Rutherford

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the accounting research project concerned with accounting narrative obfuscation, focusing on the translation of the concept of readability…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the accounting research project concerned with accounting narrative obfuscation, focusing on the translation of the concept of readability from educational psychology via an earlier literature concerned with the readability of accounting narratives per se.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses actor-network theory and examines, in particular, the need for a network to accommodate the interests of its actors and the consequent risk of failure.

Findings

The analysis shows that the project is failing because the network seeking to support it is failing, and failing because of its inability to adapt sufficiently to accommodate the interests of its constituents. This failure is contrasted with the earlier concern with readability per se, which did see a successful reconfiguration of actors’ interests.

Research limitations/implications

The puzzle of the maladjustment of the network concerned with obfuscation is examined and it is suggested that it is a consequence of interests prevailing in the wider academic research network within which the relevant human actors are embedded.

Social implications

The reasons for the failure of the project are bound up in the wider circumstances of the contemporary accounting research community and may affect scholars’ capacity to pursue knowledge effectively.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to a modest stream of actor–network analysis directed at accounting research itself.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 May 2020

Pierre-Laurent Bescos, Aude Deville and Philippe Foulquier

This paper examines the roles of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in a long-term perspective and with a large deployment along numerous hierarchical levels. For this purpose, we use a…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines the roles of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in a long-term perspective and with a large deployment along numerous hierarchical levels. For this purpose, we use a longitudinal analysis of an implementation in a mutual insurance company.

Design/methodology/approach

We combine actor–network theory (ANT) with interventionist research (IVR) to analyze the interrelation between human and non-human actors. Our study is based on various materials like interviews, meeting reports, graphs and so on.

Findings

The BSC is considered as a non-human actor which influences the human actors and provides specific benefits from a long-term use, due to various roles played by this tool (a mediator role, completed by a role of translator and revealer).

Research limitations/implications

Research based on larger cross-sectional studies are necessary to more deeply validate our results based on a single case study.

Practical implications

This paper gives some insights on processes and on actors an organization can mobilize to maintain the benefits provided by a large BSC use in the long run.

Originality/value

In line with the ANT concepts, our main contribution is to explain the outcomes of an innovation in management accounting by the consequences of adaptation mechanisms grounded on actors, translations, alliances and trials of strength.

Details

Journal of Applied Accounting Research, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0967-5426

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 April 2018

Brian A. Rutherford

This paper aims to analyse the nature and extent of convergence within the literature of the narrative turn in narrative accounting research.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to analyse the nature and extent of convergence within the literature of the narrative turn in narrative accounting research.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper offers an actor–network–theoretic perspective drawing on Latour’s theory of citation and Shwed and Bearman’s development of that theory to analyse patterns of convergence.

Findings

The paper finds that across the exemplars of narrative turn research examined, there is only a limited level of epistemic engagement so that exemplars achieve their status without undergoing trials of strength.

Research limitations/implications

The paper argues that the resources of the relevant academic community are spread so thinly that each seam – each research question, methodology or method and research context – is mined by no more than a small handful of researchers unable to generate a meaningful volume of contestation. Steps are suggested to better focus research activity.

Originality/value

The use of Latour’s theory of citation to analyse patterns of convergence in accounting research is innovative. The paper proposes a substantial change in the community’s approach to narrative turn research on accounting narratives.

Details

Meditari Accountancy Research, vol. 26 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-372X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2017

Kari Lukka and Eija Vinnari

The purpose of this paper is to examine the philosophical and practical compatibility of actor-network theory (ANT) and interventionist research (IVR) and search for explanations…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the philosophical and practical compatibility of actor-network theory (ANT) and interventionist research (IVR) and search for explanations for their scant combined use. The scope of investigation is limited to accounting, management and organization studies (MOS), but the findings are believed to be applicable in other social sciences as well.

Design/methodology/approach

An analysis is conducted of accounting and MOS research in addition to interviewing eight accounting scholars who have applied IVR and/or ANT in their research.

Findings

A comparison of the philosophical and other features of ANT and IVR suggests that they should be relatively easily combinable in studies. Based on interview material, three types of barriers to combining ANT and IVR are identified: perceived epistemological incompatibility, fear of going native or losing neutrality and academic tribes. However, subsequent analysis indicates that none of these forms an insurmountable obstacle to the combination.

Research limitations/implications

The combined application of ANT and IVR could benefit both IVR and ANT researchers in management accounting as it would enable them to conduct theoretically grounded studies on dynamic processes, such as the emergence and implementation of accounting innovations, to pose original research questions and to find new perspectives to accounting phenomena.

Practical implications

Employing ANT and IVR in combination could increase organizational interest in management accounting research.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the discussion on the compatibility of different research approaches and highlights ways in which researchers could benefit from combining ANT and IVR.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

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