Stability and Change at FPTL: An Institutional Perspective

Once institutionalised, routines are a force for stability and resistance to change. This creates a problem for institutional theorists in explaining changes in accounting practice. This paper attempts to illustrate that institutional theory can encompass a processual explanation of change, through a case study of Fiji Posts and Telecommunications Limited (FPTL). We illustrate how institutional contradictions or inconsistencies were an impetus to institutional change in the organisation. Institutional entrepreneurs were instrumental in abandoning the existing routines and introducing new commercial ones. The commercial business norms were stabilised by the management team through the process of enactment, reproduction and routinisation.     

Examining Management Accounting Change as Rules and Routines: The Effect of Rule Precision

This study examines change in management accounting practices as change in rules and routines. Informed by the institutional theory‐inspired framework of Burns and Scapens (2000) , the rules and routines relating to capital expenditure controls in a capital‐intensive organisation are analysed. We explain how preciseness of rules affects not only the coupling of rules to routines, but also the emergence of multiple routines, enhancing the understanding of how management accounting practices remain stable and/or change over time. These results extend and refine recent research relating to management accounting change and offer new empirical insights into practice.     

Stability and change in management accounting over time—A century or so of evidence from Guinness

In recent years, much has been written on the nature of management accounting change, and indeed stability. Many researchers have used concepts such as rules and routines to interpret this change and/or stability. Recent research has provided an increasingly clear picture of what rules and routines are, as well as contributing to our understanding of the processes of change and stability in management accounting.Management accounting research has mainly presented rules and routines as related phenomena, but some conceptual work has suggested they are separable and can (and possibly should) be considered independently when studying processes of change/stability within management accounting. However, empirical support for such work has been scarce to date. This paper uses data from the archival records of the Guinness company in an effort to establish whether rules and routines, at least in management accounting research, are best considered separable concepts or not. The archival records are artefacts of rules and routines and thus can be used to trace the interactions of rules and routines over time. Support for the notion that rules and routines should be considered separately is presented. The findings also portray the stable, but changing, nature of management accounting routines over time; a point worthy of further research.     

Accounting for trust: some empirical evidence

This paper is based on case studies of performance-evaluation routines in two small companies in Sweden—one firm of consultants and one manufacturing company. In the firm of consultants the research was organised as a longitudinal case study. The empirical material was collected over a period of four years and consisted of different types of interviews, video recordings, field observations and sociograms. The research at the manufacturing company was organised as an action research study. One of the authors remained with the company for over a year, observing and participating in real-life situations. In line with Old Institutional Economics institutions are seen as the social linkage of human activities created and recreated by habitual thoughts and actions. Unlike earlier studies that see performance evaluation as a tool for ensuring improvements in organisational performance, our cases reveal no such clear relationship. By focusing on the accountant’s part in the action–reaction chain between evaluator and evaluated, it is possible to unveil evidence that performance evaluation is dependent on trust, as too are the production and reproduction of performance-evaluation routines.     

机构投资者与上市公司年报披露及时性的实证研究

我们运用Logit模型检验机构投资者持股量与上市公司年报披露时间差异之间的关系时发现,机构投资者促进了上市公司年报的及时披露。但是,机构投资者在促进上市公司年报及时披露的程度与整个证券市场环境相关。在证券市场整体牛市时,机构投资者似乎对上市公司年报披露是否提前并不产生影响,但是当股票市场整体处于熊市时,机构投资者对会计信息的需求愿望比较强烈,机构投资者持股量与上市公司提前披露年报显著正相关。这说明了机构投资者只是会计信息的外部使用者之一,机构投资者促进了上市公司年报及时披露,机构投资者没有降低信息披露的质量。     

Management accounting change and stability: Loosely coupled rules and routines in action

A problematic practical situation, which had remained unsolved for a long period, was encountered in a case research project. The apparent problem of the case firm was the modest standardisation of its information systems and management accounting reporting. Though problems linked with standardisation seemed to chronically look for solutions in the firm, only few attempts to change the situation emerged. The immediate purpose of the paper is to explain why there appeared to be problems without solutions in the case firm, and, in particular, how it managed to cope with such a situation. The paper contributes to recent literature on management accounting change and stability, primarily by drawing on the framework, based on institutional theory, by Burns and Scapens [Burns, J., Scapens, R.W., 2000. Conceptualizing management accounting change: an institutional framework. Manage. Acc. Res. 11, 3–25]. The notion of loose coupling is mobilised and integrated with the framework, and thereby the many-sided relation between two of its central notions, rules and routines, is refined. Loose coupling between rules and routines was characteristic of the everyday management accounting life in the case firm: well-developed and flexible informal routines and knowledgeable actions by the organisation's participants had the capacity to smooth the frictions of the formal rule systems related to management accounting, saving them from pressure for major change. The findings support the argument of the possible coexistence of change and stability in management accounting, however pointing to the need of keeping clear what aspect of management accounting – formal or informal – we refer to in each instance. They also suggest that the legitimising relation between the formal and the informal domains of an organisation can be an inverse of that typically claimed in the new institutionalist theory.     

管理会计变革与创新的实地研究

本文在已有文献的基础上提出了管理会计变革的制度化模型,并通过我国上市公司ABC实施的实地研究进行理论检验和发展。该模型从一个全新的视觉,即新的管理会计规则和惯例的制度化的实现来衡量管理会计变革与创新的成功;强调制度化的实现要通过一个进化式的阶段变革过程来完成;每个阶段在不同程度上要受到外部环境、个人特征、组织、技术、任务特征等因素的影响;并通过三种分类方式对制度化后果进行评价。本文研究有助于我们深刻理解管理会计变革的过程本质和后果,并为我国企业引进和实施管理会计创新提供极其宝贵的经验证据。     

Trust for accounting and accounting for trust

This paper combines insights from the sociology of knowledge and the emerging practice-based literature on learning and knowing to extend the institutional framework of accounting change developed by Burns and Scapens [Burns, J., Scapens, R.W., 2000. Conceptualising management accounting change: an institutional framework. Manage. Acc. Res., 11, 3–25]. In particular, it explores how management accounting systems (MAS) can be implicated in processes of learning and culture change, and used to identify ‘trustworthy’ solutions in the face of organisational crises. A case study of an Italian company, which was subject to massive change following its acquisition by General Electric, is used to discuss how, when crises arise and organisation members find themselves under intense pressure for change, their rationales and routinised behaviour, which are driven by the existing knowledge and cultural assumptions, are challenged. The case illustrates how MAS can act as sources of trust for the processes of change – i.e., accounting for trust; while at the same time being socially constructed objects of trust – i.e., trust for accounting. Drawing on the concept of personal trust and the notion of roles as access points to organisational (expert) systems, the paper discusses how, in this case, finance experts facilitated the acceptance and progressive sharing of new rationales and routines. Clearly, this does not guarantee that change will occur or occur in some ‘desired’ direction in other cases, but it increases the possibility of replacing trust in the predictability of routines with feelings of trust for change.     

会计准则的产生与制定权归属的经济学解释——来自企业所有权理论的观点

本文从新制度经济学的企业所有权理论出发,对会计准则的产生及其制定权的归属提出经济解释。会计准则的产生与制定权的归属缘于降低交易费用的需要。为什么可以降低交易费用,有学者从索取权出发进行了分析,本文则从控制权的角度进行了讨论:为了遏制经理的“特定控制权收益”,政府拥有了会计准则的制定权,而经理仅拥有了在会计准则框架内作出会计判断的权力。本文认为控制权角度的解释在以股份公司为主的经济环境中是更加有力的。     

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.     

Conceptualizing management accounting change: an institutional framework

Starting from the position that management accounting systems and practices constitute organizational rules and routines, this paper describes an institutional framework for the conceptualization of management accounting change. Drawing from (old) institutional economics, the framework explores the complex and ongoing relationship between actions and institutions, and demonstrates the importance of organizational routines and institutions in shaping the processes of management accounting change. The inherent stability and continuity of organizational life is discussed, and three categorizations of institutional change are explored. The framework is offered as a starting point for researchers interested in studying management accounting change, and through such studies the framework will be extended and refined.     

‘Agents-in-focus’ and ‘Agents-in-context’: The strong structuration analysis of central government accounting practices and reforms in Nepal

Drawing on Stones’ (2005) strong structuration theory, the paper unfolds why and how the key stakeholders of central government accounting in Nepal are involved in the reproduction of routinised accounting practices, resisting the externally-propagated changes. Government accountants (the agents-in-focus) through their capability to control the budget routines have enjoyed a powerful social position in their position–practice relations with the agents-in-context, i.e. professional accountants and international consultants, higher-level officers and administrators, auditors, and politicians. Social position along with historically-imbued dispositions and their conduct and context analysis have enabled government accountants to strategically exercise their agency. Government accountants have articulated duality and a dialectic relation with the agents-in-context, which have resulted in the reproduction of everyday accounting practice and the resistance to the World Bank-led reforms, such as accrual accounting and, more recently, the Cash-Basis IPSAS.     

Committed to professionalism: Organizational responses of mid-tier accounting firms to conflicting institutional logics

We study how mid-tier accounting firms deal with changes in their institutional environment that resulted in a shift in emphasis from the trustee logic to the commercial logic. We find that these mid-tier firms selectively adopt practices related to the commercial logic, while retaining a principal commitment to the trustee logic. Interviews with high level informants in these firms show how specific strategic choice opportunities serve as independent critical events framing practice-adoption decisions. Main strategic issues for the mid-tier firms relate to the changing role of the accountant and changes in organizational structure and practices. As these issues fundamentally challenge characteristics of their professional identity, there is internal resistance against this transformation. Non-partnered accountants mainly challenge new roles that upset their extant work routines, whereas partners resist changes affecting their autonomy. These types of resistance directly impact the strategic organizational responses of the accounting firms to institutional pressures.     

Management accounting systems, top management team heterogeneity and strategic change

Institutional and market changes force many organizations across economic sectors to reconsider their strategic position and engage in strategic change. Organizations differ in their ability to realize strategic change, however, which appears to depend on several factors in their strategic management process. In this paper we explore two such factors simultaneously, which are the composition of the top management team and the characteristics of the management accounting system. In particular, the paper investigates how top management team heterogeneity affects strategic change both directly, and indirectly, through the design and use of the management accounting system. Hypotheses are developed and tested through a survey study among 103 Spanish public hospitals. We find significant effects of top management team heterogeneity on the extent and direction of strategic change, and find that the use of the management accounting system partially mediates the relationship between top management team heterogeneity and strategic change. The paper contributes to the extant literature on the complex relationships between strategic change and MAS [Gerdin, J., & Greve, J. (2004). Forms of contingency fit in management accounting research – a critical review. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 29, 303–326], by analysing both extent and direction of strategic change, and by recognizing the importance of top management teams’ use of the management accounting system for strategic change.     

Extent of managerial IT use,learning routines,and firm performance: A structural equation modeling of their relationship

Organizations increasingly rely on information technology (IT) to improve performance. Yet, there is debate about the pay-off of the IT revolution, and empirical evidence suggests that investments in IT do not guarantee enhanced performance. Drawing from accounting, marketing, management and information technology literature, this study uses structural equation modeling to assess the extent to which managerial use of IT is intertwined with control issues including learning routines (internal and external), product quality, cost improvement, customer satisfaction and firm profitability. The conceptual framework builds on knowledge- and resource-based views and return on quality perspectives. The results indicate support for the theoretical framework. Extent of managerial IT use influences internal and external learning routines that influence quality and cost improvement. Quality improvement significantly impacts customer satisfaction and cost improvement that significantly impact firm profitability. The non-hypothesized paths are not significant, indicating that learning routines, quality improvement, cost improvement and customer satisfaction are intervening variables between extent of managerial IT use and firm profitability. Further, the sample is split into two industry subgroups, durable and nondurable goods subgroups, and the two-group analysis reveals that industry moderates the relationship among the variables under study. The effects are in general more pronounced for durable goods firms.     

代理理论、经理层行为与管理会计研究——基于代理理论的管理会计研究综述

本文系统梳理了基于代理理论的管理会计研究经典文献及最新研究成果,这其中既包括代理理论对管理会计总体框架的影响,又包括其对管理会计体系中的预算管理、成本计算与管理、管理控制系统、业绩评价与激励等子系统的影响。作者认为,代理理论与管理会计研究的相互交融巩固了管理会计的经济学理论基础,转换了管理会计的研究视角,增进了管理会计的科学性及研究深度,进而指出未来研究中探讨代理理论各分支相互融合对管理会计的影响,以及关注模型的细节有效性方面,结合实地研究、心理学和行为学的研究成果将是该领域深化研究的重要方向。     

Strategic Governance and Management Accounting: Evidence From a Case Study

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.     

管理会计决策中的框架效应初探——以转移定价决策为例

近年来,西方管理会计研究中,有两大趋势值得关注:第一,研究方法不断丰富,实验研究方法的地位日益凸现;第二,立足于管理会计实践,越来越多的引入行为学、心理学理论研究管理会计问题。基于此,本文引入心理学中的框架效应理论,以转移定价决策为例采取实验研究的方法,研究管理会计决策中的框架效应问题。研究表明,转移定价决策受到框架效应的影响,缓解框架效应有助于优化决策。本研究丰富了我国管理会计的研究方法,为管理会计理论与实践长期脱节现状的改观做出贡献。     

The Life and Death of the Canadian Contingent Gains and Losses Accounting Standards Project*

In April 1994, the Canadian Accounting Standards Board formally approved a new accounting standard for contingent gains and losses. The new standard would have increased the frequency of recording contingent losses, enabled the accrual of some contingent gains, and enhanced disclosures for all contingencies. The changes would primarily have been achieved by requiring management, and their legal advisers, to make predictions, estimates, and disclosures that the existing accounting standard enabled them to avoid. Over two years later, and following numerous changes to the implementation date, the board ultimately decided not to release the new standard, and in July 1999, formally abandoned the contingencies project. This study provides a telling of the standard's genesis, development, and ultimate demise, which should prove instructive to those parties with an interest and a stake in accounting standard setting.     

Addressing unobserved endogeneity bias in accounting studies: control and sensitivity methods by variable type

Together with their associated statistical routines, this paper describes the control and sensitivity methods that can be employed by accounting researchers to address the important issue of unobserved (omitted) variable bias in regression and matching models according to the types of variables employed. As with other social science disciplines, an important and pervasive issue in observational (non-experimental) accounting research is omitted variable bias (endogeneity). Causal inferences for endogenous explanatory variables are biased. This occurs in regression models where an unobserved (confounding) variable is correlated with both the dependent (outcome) variable in a regression model and the causal explanatory (often a selection) variable of interest. The Heckman treatment effect model has been widely employed to control for hidden bias for continuous outcomes and endogenous binary selection variables. However, in accounting studies, limited (categorical) dependent variables are a common feature and endogenous explanatory variables may be other than binary in nature. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of contemporary control methods, together with the statistical routines to implement them, which extend the Heckman approach to binary, multinomial, ordinal, count and percentile outcomes and to where endogenous variables take various forms. These contemporary methods aim to improve causal estimates by controlling for hidden bias, though at the price of increased complexity. A simpler approach is to conduct sensitivity analysis. This paper also presents a synopsis of a number of sensitivity techniques and their associated statistical routines which accounting researchers can employ routinely to appraise the vulnerability of causal effects to potential (simulated) unobserved bias when estimated with conventional regression and propensity score matching estimators.