Citation
(2012), "Control as governing and socialising. An ethnographic study of management accountants", Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jaoc.2012.31508baa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Control as governing and socialising. An ethnographic study of management accountants
Article Type: Doctoral research abstracts From: Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Volume 8, Issue 2
Purpose – To provide a critical analysis of management accountants’ daily work.
Design/methodology/approach – Inductive ethnographic study based on direct observation and interviews
Findings – Empirically, I show that several of accountants’ audiences are usually forgotten, and try to refine the categories used to describe their work, in order to see how different individuals may follow complementary but distinct positioning in one company. Theoretically, the thesis highlights how processes of production of a feeling that a community of interests exists, even if it is not necessarily intentional, transform potential conflicts into cooperation and harmony, at least in appearance. However, this making of some consistency remains asymmetrical, and stands upon the construction of divergences and distinctions. Then, accounting is deemed an integrative language, and even a peacemaking one. This promotes an expansion of the financial logic as a dominant rationale in organisations. Management accountants’ work thus reorientates managers’ socialisation processes to promote emerging financial modes of organising and governing in companies.
Research limitations/implications – The empirical material might fruitfully be complemented by similar studies using historical materials. The study considers accountants and managers but with a stronger focus on accountants, and could be complemented by a similar study outside financial departments.
Originality/value – The value of the document lies in its detailed observation of daily practices, which helped produce a complex and nuanced picture of management accounting practices in their diversity. The theoretical value is related to the critical analysis of power and domination effects observed within management control devices and of the role taken by accountants within socialising and governing processes, the combination of the two functioning to orientate managers’ subjectivity as well as their behaviour.
Research type: Case study/critical research
Discipline area: Management accounting
Awarded Institution: Université Paris Dauphine (France)
Supervisor: Anne Pezet
Contact details: Jérémy Morales, ESCP Europe, 79 avenue de la République, 75543
Paris Cedex 11, France
E-mail: jmorales@escpeurope.eu