Making Sense of Research Into The Organizational and Social Aspects of Management Accounting

Hopper, Trevor; Powell, Andrew

doi:10.1016/b978-008044725-4/50008-4

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…This would enable participants to make their own sense rather than a preimposed sense of specific techniques. Similar approaches have been advocated in the past by researchers such as Mitroff and Mason's (1981) dialectical decision-making techniques, Hopper and Powell's (1985) interpretive accounting information system design and Goddard and Powell's (1994) naturalistic approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company

Tillmann

Goddard

2008

Management Accounting Research

118

131

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This paper investigates strategic management accounting in a large multinational company in Germany. Much of the prior research in SMA has concentrated on which accounting techniques are used and in what circumstances. This paper is more concerned with how SMA is perceived and used in practice. The principal research findings relate to the core phenomenon of sense-making. The paper explores just what is meant by sense-making and how management accounting is used to assist the process. A substantive grounded theory of strategic management accounting and sense-making is developed. Sense-making is a basic social process that revolves around organisational actors' attempts to understand their past, present and future situations. Management accountants consciously and unconsciously undertake 'sense-making' activities through the strategies of structuring and harmonising; bridging and contextualising and compromising and balancing. Sense-making is also carried out within both external and internal contexts. In addition, the intervening conditions that have an impact on the sense-making activities were 'sets of information', 'professional know-how' and 'a feel for the game'. Two sets of consequences of sense-making were discovered; consequences for making strategy and consequences for management accountants. All these phenomena and their interrelationships are discussed in the paper and a nascent formal theory of SMA is proposed by discussing the substantive theory in relation to broader theoretical frameworks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company

Tillmann

Goddard

2008

Management Accounting Research

118

131

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“…Similarly, a strict adherence to complying with ethical codes may discourage managers from acting in the spirit of those codes in corporate governance reporting by placing undue constraints on entrepreneurial behaviour. Other researchers have also found that managerial disaffection sets in when accountability becomes formalized and standardized (Roberts and Scapens, 1985; Hopper and Powell, 1985; Cooper and Hopper, 1990). This ultimately leads to a reduction in organizational value, although no regularity codes have been broken.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The key driver of adjustments to plans can be analysed in terms of what Hopper and Powell (1985) state is the major reason for institutionalized change; change comes about when the ‘working hypothesis’ character of the basic assumptions that are embedded in management knowledge are put to the test through experiences from the performance of role behaviour. When conditions change, experiences also change.…”

Section: Case Study Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Governance and Management Accounting: Evidence From a Case Study

Ratnatunga¹,

Alam²

2011

Abacus

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This paper seeks to establish if top management (the board) of a firm should extend its overview of the governance process to the execution of strategy (i.e., strategic governance) and, if so, does the management accounting information system (MAIS) have a role in facilitating this strategy execution process. This study investigated the role of the board and MAIS in strategic governance by examining a company with a public record of both successful governance and integrated strategic management accounting processes in a high-risk industry. The analysis demonstrates that boards should go beyond the minimum conformance (compliance) requirements of the governance-regulatory legislation and assume ultimate responsibility for strategy execution and enterprise performance. However, while management accounting techniques, processes and reports were found to be used extensively in strategic governance to integrate the policy-management interface in numerous conformance-performance domains, the traditional role of the management accountant was found to be limited in terms of their role in such governance. The study demonstrates that a more strategic governance role offers the management accountant a way back into senior management by using the routines of management accounting to socialize the board and curb any opportunism that may arise.

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“…There is an increasing emphasis by management accounting researchers on the adoption of an organizational perspective and interaction with a variety of organizational participants in order to illuminate the dynamics of management accounting practices (Burchell et al, 1980;Hopper and Powell, 1985;Hopwood 1978). The approach adopted here follows this perspective.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%