The environment in an ‘information society’: A transition stage towards more sustainable development?

Social scientists and futurists have suggested that societal development is advancing to a novel stage, to an ‘information society’. However, the crucial qualifiers of this ‘new’ society are ambiguous. Furthermore, environmental goals have created new challenges for information society studies. This paper examines the interaction and dynamics between the information society and sustainable development, which most often manifest themselves as competing scientific and socio-political discourses. On the one hand, there is the potential for reducing the stress on the environment: the emergence of information technologies and services can lead to a dematerialisation of production and immaterialisation of consumption. On the other hand, there are risks: positive environmental effects might be overcome by the ‘rebound effect’ caused by excessive economic growth. It is concluded that further theoretical and empirical studies are needed in order to examine the complex and contradictory relationship between the information society and environmental issues.     

Exploring (false) dualisms for environmental accounting praxis

This paper focuses on the political nature of the linguistic dualisms or ‘false antinomies’ that inhere in environmental accounting practice and environmental accounting research. These dualisms, ‘subject–object,’ ‘man–woman,’ ‘mind–body,’ and ‘culture–nature,’ the paper argues, need to be ‘ambiguized’ if the politics inherent in these dualisms are to be resisted. Two strategies for the ‘ambiguization’ of these dualisms are suggested: ‘performative parody,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting practitioners, and ‘democratic reflexivity,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting researchers. In taking this linguistic focus, the paper challenges common sense constructions of the environment and the potentially elitist and anti-democratic nature of environmental accounting research. By offering these two strategies, the paper provides a means of environmental accounting praxis, or means of resisting global ‘environmental’ domination.     

The evolution of management accounting routines in small businesses: a social construction perspective

This paper explores the development of management accounting in small firms through a social construction perspective. Taking Dirsmith’s (1998) (Dirsmith, M. W. 1998. Accounting and control as a solution to technical problems, political exchanges and forms of social discourse: the importance of substantive domain, Behavioural Research in Accounting, 10 (Supplement), 65–77) lead we examine the evolution of control and decision-making processes within four growth-orientated service sector businesses. Key to the perspective is the notion of the owner–manager and his/her employees as creators of management accounting routines that form through a cycle of action, externalization and habitualization. These routines still remain in the control of the originator and are flexible in nature. As the business grows these routines may become objectified into localized management accounting ‘facts’ and they may also be challenged by externally imported accounting conventions. This paper explores the creation of idiosyncratic accounting knowledge and the effects of its transmission over the history of the businesses.     

Enterprise resource planning systems, management control and the quest for integration

This paper analyses how two companies pursued integration of management and control through enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We illustrate how the quest for integration is an unending process and it is produced concurrently and episodically. Integration is not only about ‘mere’ visibility and control at a distance. ERP systems do not define what integration is and how it is to be developed, but they incur a techno-logic that conditions how control can be performed through financial and non-financial representations because they distinguish between an accounting mode and a logistics mode. A primary lesson from our cases is that control cannot be studied apart from technology and context because one will never get to understand the underlying ‘infrastructure’—the meeting point of many technologies and many types of controls. ERP systems are particularly interesting for what they make impossible, and our cases illustrate how the two organizations in the quest for integration mobilized a number of ‘boundary objects’ to overcome systems-based ‘blind spots’ and ‘trading zones’. The paper points out that management control in an ERP-environment is not a property of the accounting function but a collective affair were local control issues in different parts of the organization are used to create notions of global management.     

Accounting, hybrids and the management of risk

This essay addresses the implications of accounting and hybrids for the management of risk. We argue firstly and most generally for a definition of hybrids that extends beyond organisational forms. The existing literature, we suggest, has been too focused on organisational forms, and has largely neglected the hybrid practices, processes and expertises that make possible lateral information flows and coordination across the boundaries of organisations, firms, and groups of experts or professionals. Secondly, we argue that the management of organisations is rapidly being transformed into and formalised around the management of risk, while much of the management of uncertainty occurs through a variety of hybrids that reside beyond the formalised practices of risk management. Thirdly, we argue that accounting practices are central to these issues, in so far as accounting is constantly engaged in a dual hybridisation process, seeking to make visible and calculable the hybrids that it encounters, while at the same time hybridising itself through encounters with a range of other disciplines. We address these issues in three main stages. The first section considers the ‘discovery’ of hybrid organisational forms by researchers on management and organisations over the course of more than two decades. The second section examines the ways in which economists, lawyers and other social scientists have considered the issue of hybrids. Here, the preoccupation with hybrid organisational forms largely continues, with its attendant neglect of hybrid practices, processes and expertises. The third section considers the discovery of a wider range of hybrids by researchers in accounting, and examines two specific arenas in which the hybridising of accounting expertise has been central: the microprocessor industry, and the various encounters between medical and financial expertise in the context of the ‘New Public Management’ reforms. The essay concludes with a discussion of the implications of this broader definition of hybrids for accounting and the management of risk.     

Transferring knowledge across sub-genres of the ABC implementation literature

In the last decade, a continuous stream of empirical articles has investigated how various implementation process factors (including, top management support, adequate resources, and ABC training) influence ABC implementation success. However, at the same time, a growing number of researchers have criticised this ‘mainstream approach’ for, among other things, neglecting issues of power and politics and for viewing ABC implementations as something inherently positive. Based on Lukka and Granlund's [Lukka, K., Granlund, M., 2002. The fragmented communication structure within the accounting academia: the case of activity-based costing research genres. Acc. Organ. Soc. 27, 165–190] call for communication between various streams of ABC research, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how the ‘mainstream’ implementation literature may benefit from insights made in the politically oriented literature. A key conclusion is that such an analysis not only provides us with enriched explanations of the relatively strong and coherent findings in the ‘mainstream’ ABC implementation literature, but has also the potential to explain ‘unexpected’ and ‘contradictory’ results found in this stream of research. Based on these observations, a number of directions for future research are proposed.     

Bridging the divides of online reporting

This paper looks at the possibilities of improving online reporting by closing the ‘digital divide’ through a ‘digitalised revolution’ and by narrowing the ‘accounting divide’ through the sharing of power and the expansion of membership in the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Paradoxically, whilst the IASB may have contributed to the ‘accounting divide’ it may very well possess the potential to close it and thus improve online reporting. The potential to bridge the ‘accounting divide’ rests with the greater participation by developing country members to exert influence and ownership of the accounting standards setting process.     

The effect of framing and negotiation partner’s objective on judgments about negotiated transfer prices

A common approach to set transfer prices is via intra-firm negotiation. However, Luft and Libby [Luft, J. L., & Libby, R. (1997). Profit comparisons, market prices and managers’ judgments about negotiated transfer prices. The Accounting Review, 72(2), 217–229] found that because of the existence of self-serving biases, negotiating managers have different expectations regarding what constitutes a ‘fair’ transfer price, leading to a less efficient negotiation process. In this study, we examine two factors that are expected to affect managers’ transfer price negotiation judgments, namely, framing as a gain or as a loss and the negotiation partner’s objective (whether the partner’s objective involves high or low concern-for-others). We propose that these two factors affect managers’ perceptions of the negotiation context, and thus the way they interpret the economic and social consequences of accounting information. Our results show that a loss frame (compared to a gain frame) exacerbates managers’ self-serving biases and increases the ‘transfer price expectation gap’ between buyers and sellers. Further, in our experiment where market price is higher than equal-profit price, we find that managers’ transfer price expectations are lower (and deviate more from the prevailing market price) when they are negotiating with a partner with high concern-for-others than with a partner with low concern-for-others. We discuss the broader implications of these results for the design of management accounting systems.     

The risk management of nothing

This essay challenges core elements of enterprise risk management (ERM) and suggests that an impoverished conception of ‘risk appetite’ is part of the ‘intellectual failure’ at the heart of the financial crisis. Regulators, senior management and boards must understand risk appetite more as the consequence of a dynamic organizational process involving values as much as metrics. In addition, ERM has operated as a boundary preserving model of risk management subject to the ‘logic of the audit trail’, rather than a boundary challenging practice which confronts and addresses the complex realities of interconnectedness. The security provided by ERM is at best limited to certain states of the world and at worst it is illusory – the risk management of nothing. In contrast, Business continuity management (BCM) may provide clues about how risk management might be reconstructed.     

Social accounting research: An Australasian perspective

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.     

Large-scale participatory co-shaping of technological developments: First experiments with PARDIZIPP

A future-oriented participatory procedure on the basis of the Delphi method was developed and empirically tested a first time with the goal to improve the shaping of technological developments. The technology under study here was micro-electronics or rather their relationship with labor and the test took place in NorthRhine-Westphalia.Today problems exist in all walks of life. There is a lot of talk about today's problems as if they were new, though one has heard similar arguments throughout history. How do we assess if we are really in danger of bringing the world to an end? Although this danger appears real, it would not be the first time in history that people have thought and felt like this--However, one thing that is new are the consequences of modern sciences and technology, which are not suited to given social and environmental requirements. They have given rise to questions concerning the quality of the decision-makers. The questioning of many of these decisions has increased for some time and is now getting more and more specific, with a demand for quality and information rather than managerial skills and competitiveness from the decision-makers. The term ‘decision-maker’ describes those who determine the application of technology, science and technical equipment which has either existed for a long time already or has recently been developed.--It is not easy to change the structures and processes of decision-making so that new structures and processes will be more suited to social and environmental requirements. We have tested our ideas as to how this could be done, in an empirical project. Although we called it ‘Project NRW-2000’, it would probably be better described as an experiment.--We persuaded 90 ordinary people to participate in this project as ‘experts on daily life and work’. This group was asked to work in six regional sub-groups and discuss, with reference to three given normative societal scenarios for the year 2020, the relationship between microelectronics and labour markets of the year 2020, on the basis of a participatory Delphi procedure. Before we elaborate on the concept of our project in Section 3, we would like to outline it in terms of the mainstream of the sociology of technology as well as with research on ‘acceptance’ in Section 1. In Section 2 we will briefly illustrate the framework of the research programme ‘Socially Oriented Shaping of Technology’ of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia, which funded our research project. Section 4 particularly deals with the participatory elements of our project, while Section 5 is devoted to the development of the scenarios. Section 6 sums up the results of the ‘scenario-construction’. Regarding specific elements, we restrict ourselves to topics concerning technology, labour, and the relationship between women workers/employees and technology. As a final outlook we deal with the political implications of our approach. All that is left is to remind our readers that we regard this project as a first application or experiment within our overall approach.     

Sustainable development. With or without mankind?

The author challenges the conventional wisdom that the main risk to Western development is environmental degradation caused by mankind. Concern over the greenhouse effect and global warming have more to do with millenium fever than reality. There is still very little evidence to suggest that these environmental phenomena result from human activity. What we do know is that there have been major cyclical fluctuations throughout history. The author cautions against implementing ‘scientistic’ policies in the face of such doubts, just because it is trendy to do so.     

Smaller business governance: Exploring accountability and enterprise from the margins

Smaller businesses now rank higher upon the corporate governance agenda. This agenda places their accountability and ‘enterprise’ particularly at issue. It is only put at issue because of just one possible problematization however. That problematization firstly assumes judicious accountability to be the crux of good governance with accounting at its hub. It secondly assumes that smaller businesses are the very seedbed of any ‘enterprise economy’, virtually irrespective of what form they take, or ‘enterprise’ they display. By then combining these assumptions together, this finally reproblematizes any relationship between accountability and ‘enterprise’, so that ‘de-regulation’ and decoupled accountability liberates smaller business ‘enterprise’ further. Others might question and challenge the very basis, as well as particular formulation, of this problematization however. A better grasp of the greater fluidity and complexity of smaller businesses would make the boundaries of their accountability and ‘enterprise’ more clear and leave their respective margins more suitably exposed. As a key potential instrument for that purpose managerial accounting research might then better inform the debate by specifically rendering these boundaries more visible while also identifying the precise scope for manoeuvre at/across their margins as well. To that end this paper uses certain enabling frameworks to construct and interpret the particular case of managerially accounting for a grown smaller business working across exactly those margins from the perspective of a ‘reflective practitioner’ acting as a field researcher for these purposes. As well as offering fresh insights into how far the boundaries of accountability and enterprise might legitimately stretch, this case calls for more critical thinking about how they might change.     

Structuration theory and mediating concepts: Pitfalls and implications for management accounting research

Giddens’ way of conceptualizing how structures work as both the medium for and outcome of human action – duality of structure – has been emphasized as a valuable point of departure when studying management accounting in its social context. However, we argue that in the literature there are different ways of using mediating concepts between social structure and action, whereby management accounting systems are conceptualized as both the medium for action, and human action as such. Using the often-cited article by Burns and Scapens [Burns J, Scapens RW. Conceptualizing management accounting change: an institutional framework. Management Accounting Research 2000;11(1):3–25] as an illustrative example, we discuss theoretical and methodological consequences of these different ways of conceptualizing management accounting. A main conclusion is that when management accounting is defined through concurrently referring to both ‘virtual’ structures that generate action and the situated doings of individuals, structure and action risk becoming conflated and there is a risk of drawing erroneous conclusions about structural change or stability. The paper closes with some methodological suggestions as to how these problems can be avoided.     

Envisioning new--buying used: Are the Pacific Islands caught between alternative communication futures?

With the ‘complexification’ of today's society, due in large measure to rapid technological convergence in the fields of communications and informatics, developing Pacific island countries are faced with what at the surface appears to be a devil's choice: jump on the high-tech bandwagon and risk being subsumed by the Western-dominated ‘cyberculture’, or withdraw from the technology-induced developments evidenced in richer countries and thereby run the risk of falling even further behind. This dichotomy is, of course, false and paints a rather nihilistic picture of Pacific islands futures. The contention here is that such a polemic is selling the Pacific islands a ‘used future’. Therefore, it is vitally important, at this juncture, for Pacific island leaders, entrepreneurs and citizens to recognize that creative, long-term future strategies for planning and optimizing the application and use of high-tech communications in economically advantageous and culturally appropriate ways are desperately needed.     

Management accounting and accountability in a new reality of everyday life

This paper focuses on the concept ‘accountability’. Individuality and accountability is discussed against the background of management accounting in a privatised company in transition from command to market economy. With Berger, P.L., Luckmann, T., 1966. The social construction of reality. A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York, Doubleday/Anchor, the accountability concept is presented as a translation and interpretation of an institutional arrangement with a given logic or rationality. Based on a case study, the paper shows that changing views on accountability support the institutionalisation processes, constituting the case company as a market economy actor in which there is a ‘struggle’ between different rationale views (the market economy, social accountability and production-oriented views). The analysis explicates various ways in which these matters relate to the new way of talking about the company and its survival under market economy conditions—a struggle that management accounting must take into account particularly in the way it deals with the consequences of individual action.     

Accounting for People: A real step forward or more a case of wishing and hoping?

In principle, the Accounting for People initiative announced by the UK government in January 2003 held out the possibility of a real step forward in promoting the interests of employees. Despite its distinctly managerialist discourse, the initiative acknowledged that having now recognised that ‘people are our greatest asset’, employers should begin to consider how to report on their people management activities in financial statements. After more than three and a half years of consultation, debate and deliberation, larger UK quoted companies are now charged with providing only a minimal level of general information on their employees. Whatever promise may have been evident to wishful thinkers in the early months of the initiative, this outcome confirms that there is little possibility for progressively ‘accounting for people’ as long as such practices are shaped by powerful sectional interests. The purpose of this paper is to subject the initiative to critical scrutiny. The paper seeks to document how the Accounting for People initiative was quickly and effectively emasculated as a consequence of the power and influence wielded by the UK accountancy profession, identified as a key agent of capital. Additionally, attention is drawn to a number of contemporary developments, largely and perhaps knowingly ignored in the course of the Accounting for People debate, that may yet inform and energise a more radical approach to accounting for people.     

Revisiting the ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment : A conversation

In 1991, futurist Bruce E. Tonn proposed a ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment to the US Constitution. His proposed ‘Court of Generations’ lacked punitive powers but, hopefully, would have sufficient legitimacy to counteract extreme present-minded thinking evident in US political processes and institutions. Although Tonn's ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment has been well received in the futures community, who else has heard of it? Otherwise, has it made any difference? How can the cumbersome and nonfuturistic amendment procedure in the US Constitution generate a futures-oriented ‘Court of Generations’? And for those who sincerely look forward to a ‘Court of Generations,’ precisely what kind of tactically savvy visionary leadership will give the ‘Court of Generations’ any chance of being approved? During 1997, Vincent Kelly Pollard engaged Dr. Tonn in an Internet conversation aimed at clarifying these issues.