Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125-149

Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125–149
Management Accounting
Issues in interpreting its nature and change
Cristiano Busco a,∗ , Paolo Quattrone b , Angelo Riccaboni a
a
Università di Siena, Faculty of Economics, Piazza S. Francesco 7, Siena, Italy
b
Saı̈d Business School and Christ Church, University of Oxford, Park End Street, OX1 1HP Oxford, UK
Abstract
Studies in the area of management accounting change have proliferated in the past few years. It seems then time for
systematizing the analysis of management accounting change along some key dimensions which can prompt some
further reflection. This paper proposes to organize such reflection along these dimensions: the agents and object of
change; the forms and ratio of change; the space and time of change; and the interplay between change and stability.
This systematization, the paper argues, will help us to relate a reflection on the process of change with the nature
of management accounting itself. Studying change entails a reflection on what changes and studying what changes
implies a reflection on the nature of management accounting and its ability to become what is not, i.e. its change.
© 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Management accounting; Change and stability; Nature of management accounting; Heteromogeneity
1. Introduction
“I definitely agree we need to improve our processes of integration within [MEGOC], we shall
communicate better and engage more effectively in day-to-day operations . . . at present, despite the
six common strategic imperatives, each business line is a kingdom on its own, we know that . . .
However, I have heard we are introducing a new system called Balanced Scorecard that run within
the SAP’s platform [MEGOC’s Enterprise Resource Planning system] and allows us to monitor
the achievement of our strategic imperatives along four different perspectives of analysis. Let’s see
what it is like, and its impact on the job as I wouldn’t like to change my existing working practices
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: busco@unisi.it (C. Busco).
1044-5005/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mar.2007.04.003
126 C. Busco et al. / Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125–149
because someone on the Board has fallen in love with the flavour of the month during a training
course in London . . .” (Operating Manager).
Middle-East Gas and Oil Company (MEGOC) is a large corporation operating in the oil and gas
industry. The company is owned by the national government and the revenues generated constitute a
large part of the GDP of that country.1 In 2002, following a call from the government for companies
to take some action to improve the local economy and increase the revenue generated for the country,
MEGOC’s executive management board redefined the strategic direction of the company “to significantly
increase its contribution to the country’s revenue needs and [. . .] consistently promote the development
of the local economy” (MEGOC’s mission statement).
One of the concerns evoked by MEGOC’s operating manager relates to whether change is good to have
or should be resisted. He also questions the novelty of the proposed new technical solution, the Balanced
Scorecard (BSC) in this case, asking whether it is the result of transitory fads and fashions or of more
profound reflections on effective organizational needs for such a new system, and on its effects on the
corporation and its employees.
The quote reported above and the brief description which followed it are illustrative of many of the
themes that the literature on management accounting change has been addressing in these last few years,
and that we also intend to recall and systematize in this paper, which opens the second Management
Accounting Research Special Issue on Management Accounting Change.
In doing so we believe that the first building block of our systematizing effort concerns the issue of
what and who drives management accounting change and whether this is some hidden structural force,
some clear individual agency, an opaque combination of the two or even something else. The operating
manager rightly evokes ideals which are often mobilized for prompting change: ‘integration’ (see Busco
et al., 2006; Dechow and Mouritsen, 2005; Hansen and Mouritsen, 1999), various ‘imperatives’ and
slogans (see Quattrone and Hopper, 2001, 2005, 2006), and so forth. Are these the drivers of change? Are
they the result of broader environmental, contextual and institutional forces (see, for instance, Baines and
Langfield-Smith, 2003; Carmona et al., 1998) or the product of individual visions which are translated
into the framing attempt of the Balanced Scorecard (see Bloomfield and Vurdubakis, 1997)?
Addressing these issues and offering some material for reflection is the first building block of the
systematization we intend to offer in this piece (see Fig. 1).2
1
This is the disguised name of a company, the analysis of which will be used for illustrative purposes along the whole
paper. The insights from the MEGOC case are based on a longitudinal study conducted by one of the authors. From May 2003 to
December 2005 we had the opportunity to collect empirical evidence through interviews, observations, participations in meetings
and internal workshops. Overall, we conducted 32 interviews with managers and employees operating in various Divisions of
MEGOC. The company is divided into seven major Divisions (or business lines): Exploration and Producing; Gas Operations;
Refining, Marketing and International; Engineering and Operations Services; Law; Finance; and Industrial Relations. These
business lines are headed up by Corporate Heads at the Senior Vice President level, and all report to the President and CEO. In
addition, support functions such as Corporate Planning, Information Technology, Human Resources and Management Services
(where the internal consulting department is located) also report directly to the President and CEO of MEGOC.
2
This figure has been used by one of the authors in other papers (e.g. Quattrone and Hopper, 2001) but with different poles
of interaction. What seems interesting though is that whatever issue one intends to study from a constructivist perspective, this
is always made of various concepts which appear as being in opposition and in need of being rethought under different terms.
We begin in this paper by looking at issues of ‘agency’ in studying management accounting change, but this is done only for
illustrative purposes and to follow the linearity of the paper for agency is indeed part also of the other poles constituting the
figure which are not sequential but all affecting issues of management accounting change.
C. Busco et al. / Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125–149 127
Fig. 1. Issues in interpreting management accounting change and stability.
The second set of questions that the opening quote poses concerns the process through which these
ideas and management accounting innovations travel and become successful (see, for instance, Lapsley
and Wright, 2004). The quote calls for interpreting their ability to attract hordes of practitioners who more
or less genuinely believe that the latest innovation is able to solve a problem, make financial transactions
more transparent, hold employees more accountable, and making the corporation more integrated (among
a plethora of many other hopes and myths). How are management accounting techniques able to spread
and become practiced (Quattrone, 2006)? How do they manage to engage practitioners who are driven by
different and sometimes opposing agendas? How do they manage to instil hope (of solving a problem, be
it at the personal level of the manager or at the institutional level of the organization) in the perspective
user? All of this is still quite obscure. It seems to us that a greater understanding of the process through
which this happens (the How) can provide an understanding of Why this happens for it is also in how the
management accounting solution is evoked and then performed, rather than only in the content it seeks
to convey, that an understanding of successful management accounting practices can be gained. This is
the second speculation we intend to provoke in the debate on management accounting change.
Establishing a link between How and Why management accounting practices spread across organiza-
tions, economies and societies is not without consequences. Going back to the opening quote, we could
be led to believe, with the operating manager, that the decision to implement the Balanced Scorecard
was taken by some senior executive on a course in a prestigious business school in the UK. That senior
executive would have seen the BSC as a knowledge package easily transportable from cold Britain to hot
Middle-East. If this were the case (and indeed most consulting products are underpinned by that assump-
tion), we would see a separation between the senior executive as agent (i.e. the subject of change—the
active Who on the left hand side of Fig. 1) and the management accounting technique (i.e. the object of
change—the What on the right hand side of Fig. 1). Agency thus would either be in the individual or in
the context as driving forces of change.
However, our operating manager is smarter and thus does not buy this simple story and the whole process
of management accounting change at MEGOC is more complex than a linear evolution from MEGOC
‘without’ and ‘with’ the Balanced Scorecard. We do not witness a diffusion of a given practice across space
and time, but its translation, i.e. a process by which the aim, nature and goal of the management accounting
innovations are constantly shifted, mediated and renegotiated: management accounting change always
entails a difference, a movement, a variation, in the nature of what is subject to change.3
If we were to think though that this translation stopped at some point in time (even for a nanosecond, see
the arguments in Quattrone and Hopper, 2006) we would be back to the issue of recognizing that we have
agents separated from the object of change. Thus, linking How management accounting changes (through
a process of translation) to Why this happens implies a serious ontological question which concerns how
to conceptualize the nature of management accounting, i.e. What is subject to (or object of) change.
Indeed, the question can be also re-phrased in this way: if the process of translation necessarily needs
to be thought as continuous, thus management accounting is never stabilized, for we would otherwise
fall into a reification of subjects and object of change (with a clear move towards stabilization), how
can this constant movement be combined with the apparent stability of these managerial practices? Yet,
assuming that management accounting innovations stabilize and gain a certain degree of functionalism
would limit the possibilities for these innovations to spread and diffuse. In other words, if budgeting is
seen and theoretically conceived as something related to planning and operational control it would not be
used (and theorized) as something instead related to organizational politics: its possibility of spreading
will be limited and we would be editing a special issue on management accounting stability rather than
change (see, on this matter, Granlund, 2001).
Indeed this is a theoretical conundrum for, on the one hand, Balanced Scorecard, Six-Sigma, Activity
Based Costing and the alike must appear quite concrete, stable, functional and homogeneous management
solutions if they manage to mobilize millions of euros, dollars, pounds, etc., and if corporations are ready
to invest considerable resources in consulting to have them implemented to the joy of consulting firms.
On the other hand though, research shows how these are instead so fluid, unstable and heterogeneous
that it would appear miraculous to find the same management accounting technique implemented in
different organizations in the same manner, with the same range of problems and implementation patterns.
Furthermore, they rarely solve the problems for which they were initially mobilized. However, despite all
of this, they are successful if by that one means that they manage to diffuse across the globe, industries
and sectors of the economy.
These questions, in our view, concern the nature of management accounting practices and systems
and thus call for a reflection on their nature, i.e. their ontology.4 Rather than looking for something
‘else’, something which is contextual to the practice that is object of change or related to the action
of specific individuals (certainly legitimate paths of inquiry already successfully explored), we want
to reflect on a different level which may prove equally fruitful. It seems to us that in the very nature of
management accounting (and of accounting tout court) there are already some elements for understanding
how accounting has the tendency to become what is not (Hopwood, 1987, p. 207). This thus prompts a
reflection on the What is object of change (and whether this relates in some way to the identity of those
involved in the process of change, the Who; but we will debate this aspect later).
3
Latour defines it as follows: “A relation that does not transport causality but induces two mediators into co-existence” (2005).
In accounting see the classic Robson (1991).
4
The definition of the term ‘ontology’ used in this paper is drawn from Laudan’s concept of “research tradition” (1977, pp.
78–81) and from its etymological analysis. As is widely known, the etymology of the term ‘ontology’ (Chambers, 1989) derives
from the Greek on, ontos (present participle of einai, to be) and logos (discourse). Thus ontology is a discourse, a reflection on
the essence of various entities with no intention of reaching a concluding point.
This leads to the fourth point of reflection we want to offer to the reader of this paper, that is, Where
and When this change happens (and who is there to observe it). The initial quote and the other illustrative
anecdotes we will use from the MEGOC experience are yet again insightful. What the operating manager
is telling us is that change may happen in specific spatial and temporal niches, so it may have begun
somewhere but not somewhere else. It may have begun in the mind of the senior executive but not yet
in the department he works in or even in the whole corporation (‘every division is a kingdom on its
own’). This will lead our reflection on a methodological plane. There the matter concerns those who are
observing processes of management accounting change and whether in understanding these processes it
is important to observe the phenomenon or instead speculate on the theoretical development which such
observation may inspires rather than drive.
What we have described may be a call, we will argue, to develop an understanding of the multiplicity of
the nature of management accounting systems which makes them appear always different but inevitably
the same (Burns and Scapens, 2000, quoting Lanza Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard). And thus
the last set of issues we will address are those of Change and Stability and how this dichotomy can be
overcome, i.e. how they may coexist and thus how these categories are somewhat useless and in need of
urgent replacement.
Before providing a more conventional introduction to the papers in this Special Issue (see Section 7),
we will debate issues of management accounting change along the lines represented in Fig. 1 (Sections
2–6). This will constitute the structure of the paper and the flow of the arguments; but we recognize that
these matters are never sequential and always intrinsically related to each other.
In summary, this paper has grander aims than simply introducing the contributions in this special issue.
However, we only aim to provide some possible directions for systematizing issues concerning change,
in general, and management accounting change, in particular, and thus our contribution to the debate is
more methodological and systematic that content driven. This will hopefully help clarify the choice of the
papers included in this Issue and their contribution to the understanding of the process of management
accounting systems change, as well as the gaps which are left open for further research and speculation.
In order to make these complex and abstract issues intelligible we have decided to use MEGOC as an
illustrative case, to which we will refer throughout the reminder of the paper.
2. What and who makes change happen? Issues of agency, structure and interaction
The opening quote of MEGOC’s operating manager interestingly points out one important issue in
understanding management accounting change: who/what is the agent in the process? Is change prompted
by a serious matter concerning his/her job and the vision of the corporation or the result of a trendy
fashion which will last as long as the life of a butterfly? Is it necessitated by the implementation of a new
information or cameral technology?
When interpreting management accounting change, one of the key issues that scholars have to address
seems to concern where to locate the agency prompting the whole process. In this respect, for instance,
change factors have been identified in individuals, be these a human actor (e.g. a rational accountant who
identifies a calculative issue normally addressed with ‘better’ systems, as is the case of our MEGOC
operating manager or the character of Johnson and Kaplan’s plot, 1987) or a non-human actant (e.g.
the irruption of a new IT system entailing a need for a new accounting system as part of a broader
organizational change, cf. Granlund and Malmi, 2002). Some other works have instead sought to identify
these prompting factors in broader contextual issues, related to certain institutional pressures, political
decisions economic imperatives, and some combination of them (e.g. Hopper and Powell, 1985; Carmona
et al., 1998).
The irruption of Giddens’ Structuration Theory in the management accounting literature (e.g. Burns
and Scapens, 2000; Busco et al., 2006; Macintosh and Scapens, 1990; Modell, 2003; Scapens, 1994) has
certainly sought to overcome this dichotomy. Several works have searched for more complex interactions
between management accounting systems and organizational, institutional and contextual factors. In this
respect, for instance, Burns and Scapens (2000) have argued that the incomplete isomorphism between
management accounting systems as rules (i.e. stable but inanimate templates) and as routines (i.e. concrete
practices which evolve over time) is what enable the link between the institutional context and the realm
of actions. Management accounting systems are thus, and at the same time, rules, routines and roles
(i.e. the network of organizational positions) which change in the constant interaction between contextual
factors and human actions (see also Busco et al., 2006; Lukka, 2007). They embed norms and institutional
factors which are mediated by human actions through routines.5
Analogously, the wave of studies inspired by Actor-Network Theory (e.g. Chua, 1995; Briers and Chua,
2001; Dechow and Mouritsen, 2005; Jones and Dugdale, 2002; Robson, 1991, 1992) has been partially
driven by similar desires to overcome dichotomies between structure and agency which are exemplified
in Latour’s call (2005) for a ‘flat sociology’, where, in solving the problems of the social, the notion of
context must be abandoned or, at least, reformulated in ‘flatter terms’.
Within MEGOC, the national imperative for ‘making the company a strategy focussed organization’
(see Kaplan and Norton, 2001, 2004) was eventually translated into six imperatives to be followed by
the whole corporation: (1) Transform Corporate Performance; (2) Optimize the Corporate Portfolio; (3)
Maximize Revenues by Capturing Oil Growth Opportunities; (4) Protect the Future Market for Oil; (5)
Leverage the Oil and Gas Resources to expand the National Economy; and (6) Prepare the Workforce for
the Future. Once these were defined, several divisions and departments of MEGOC began the implemen-
tation of the BSC. Ideals such as performance, optimization, maximization and the like, are something
one cannot be against (Hansen and Mouritsen, 1999) for they present an appeal which is difficult to resist
and thus they do seem ‘imperatives’ no one can oppose.
What makes management accounting an interesting locus to speculate on issues of agency in change
processes is exemplified in the MEGOC case by the conspicuous lack of understanding and ignorance of
the content, key features and function of the BSC in the company. People referred to these ideals and to
the BSC without having a clear idea of what they were. Yet, the extent to which its deployment (or better
the deployment of the multiple scorecards) had fostered organizational integration within MEGOC was
(and still is) questionable before, during and after the implementation. Even at the end of the process
of deployment, the BSC failed to achieve what it was supposed to deliver, i.e. a greater integration.
5
Similar problems have been addressed in the Information Systems literature where, for instance, the notion of ‘technology
in practice’ (Orlikowski, 2000) has viewed technologies as enactments of given structures in order to see them not as ‘systems’
out there, i.e. external or independent of human agency, but as the result of the interaction between structure and agency,
which does allow the change of the IT artifact in directions which are not predetermined. However, if “people’s situated
and recurrent use of a technology simultaneously enact multiple structures along with a technology-in-practice” (Orlikowski,
2000, p. 411) then the heuristic value of the notion of ‘structure’ is questionable (cf. Thompson, 1989; Giddens, 1989) given
that there are as many technologies-in-practice as people enacting the structure (as Fig. 2 in Orlikowski, 2000, suggests). A
similar argument can be made for Barley and Tolbert (1997). This argument is explored in greater details in Quattrone and
Hopper (2006).
Integration, as much as the BSC, was constantly referred to and evoked but always absent, never achieved
and always in the making. However, and paradoxically, this constant failure and continuous unstable
situation made these ideals and the BSC ever present.
The illustration which follows may clarify the point. The ability of the BSC to be present in working
relationships, although being absent ‘in practice’, is well illustrated by the way in which it engaged with
the Finance division of MEGOC. The BSC was generally perceived within the Finance organization as
an ‘operational tool’ (“it was invented by an engineer [Kaplan], wasn’t it?” commented a management
accountant), which some business lines were eventually implementing—supervised by the Corporate
Planning area. Although the average awareness on the BSC features was probably higher than in other
divisions, within the Finance organization it was interpreted as a non-core initiative and, most importantly,
often perceived as potentially disrupting for existing working practices. Talking to Finance experts the
impression was that there were more important and valuable things to care about. A senior accountant
stated:
“I know some business lines are implementing the Balanced Scorecard with the help of Corporate
Planning or external consultants, but we do not get involved with that, we don’t even have our own
scorecard at present . . . Ultimately, what is the linkage between the scorecard and the budget? I
do not see it, yet. Here we do not flex the budget: once it is finalized, that’s it (!) . . . so we better
concentrate on that, as well as on the accountability reviews. Indeed, you can say we focus on one
perspective [financial], and we are happy to leave the other three to the rest of the company (!)”.
Significantly, also the way in which MEGOC came across the BSC was an object of speculation and
story telling (see the quote in the prologue). Several managers within MEGOC knew the BSC (or some
BSCs) was (were) there in the organization but they could not fully explain its (their) origins, and reasons
for implementation. Frequently, managers ended up discussing advantages and disadvantages of the BSC
in its absence, i.e. they speculated around the ideal of ‘translating strategy into action’ but the BSC was
not yet a working technology with a clear identity and features for them—although this may have already
occurred within other corners of MEGOC (see Quattrone and Hopper, 2006 for a similar situation with
reference to information technologies). People referred to the BSC in its absence.
However, despite this hetaerae nature, its lack of clarity and (paradoxically) possibly because the whole
idea was fuzzy and obscure, the BSC was able to gain organization-wide visibility by mobilizing networks
of relations with users and other organizational information systems.
This posits an interesting question in terms of agency for something which is perceived as potentially
absent and surely obscure, something which is always different from itself when observed in different
organizational settings, but manages to spread and become present. So what is the driver of change and
who is eventually there to prompt and steer it? And, if the BSC is so evanescent, the questions to be asked,
as is argued later in the paper, are: how and why does change happen? what is subject to it and who? and
where and when does it happen?
A popular quote from Latour may provide some interesting insights on these issues. He asks whether:
“you can, with a straight face, [keep] . . . hitting a nail with and without a hammer, boiling water
with and without a kettle, fetching provisions with or without a basket, walking in the street with
and without your clothes, zapping a TV set with or without a command, slowing down a car with
or without a speed-bump, keep track of your inventory without a list, run your company with or
without book-keeping . . .” (2005, p. 71).
This quote tells us a few things. The first of these is that every agent is an actor-network (see Latour,
2005) for her or his agency is diffused and not stably located in a centre from which change is thought
to be prompted. The second is that the nature of what is subject of, and to, change is also diffused.
If the actor is conceived as an actor-network then agency and an object’s identity do not reside either
in an individual or in an object but in a chain of relations. We enter into the realm of what Law and
Singleton (2005) calls a ‘semiotic ontology’ where the nature of a thing is made in nests of references,
in patterns of absences and presences. Everything is much more complex than a linear view of change
presupposes and implies. This view would conceive, say, MEGOC without the BSC at a certain point
in time and with it at a later point in time (see Quattrone and Hopper, 2001 and Andon et al., 2007,
for an extended discussion of the problematic notion of linear change), with the clear corollary that
everything would be clearly identifiable: agencies, rationales for change, objects and subject of change and
so forth.
This point is quite fundamental with respect to a theory of change, a theoretical framework which aims
to explain change rather than stability, stabilization and finite institutionalization, and it can be illustrated
further with another example. Think of a criminal organization such as the Mafia (as the three authors of
this paper are Italian we are possibly the only ones allowed to use this example without being criticized as
politically incorrect!). If one assumes that this superstructure exists then there is little room for resistance.
The matter is very simple: who resists is killed. End of story. But if one assumes that Mafia does not
exist6 then change is at least thinkable.
We thus face an interesting paradox: if one assumes a linear view of space and time in which change
happens, for instance, as an interaction between structure (e.g. Mafia) and agency (e.g. those who fight it),
then we are theorizing stability or, at best, a process of institutionalization which leads to the replication
of the status quo. If one assumes that the agents and the entities subject to change are definite, there
is little room for thinking about change: change, in these conditions, is not thinkable and thus it is not
possible. There is no progress and only conservatism. There is no theory of change but only of stability,
stabilization and equilibrium.
Thus, interpreting the nature and change of management accounting cannot rely on notions of structure
and agency as explaining factors because if one assumes their finite existence this only explains tendencies
towards stability. Notions of structure and agency are, thus, the problems rather than the solution to
problems of management accounting change: change is thinkable only if there is a gap within and between
these two entities. Without gaps, without this lack of isomorphism, without some kind of contradiction
(see Nor-Aziah and Scapens, 2007), without some kind of incompleteness in the interpretation of the
nature of management accounting (see Quattrone, 2000, 2006) there is no room for change: change
cannot even be thought. Change requires an absence, a lacuna which can be mobilized and which can
mobilize. This is why, in the MEGOC case, it is not surprising that the BSC was often referred to in its
absence.
How and Why this happens, how it is that an absence is able to mobilize and become presence; how
these absences are partially filled with meanings, rationales, agencies and so forth; is the theme of the
following section where it is argued that understanding these Hows sheds new light on understanding the
Whys; i.e. the rationales underpinning the diffused agency.
6
Indeed the etymology of the term may come from the Arab maffia, which means ‘it does not exist’. We are grateful to Rihab
Khalifa for reassuring us of the etymological analysis.
3. How and why change happens? The translation of management accounting as a communal
effort
In this section we want to link issues of agency in management accounting change, which were
highlighted above, with those of process (discussed this section) and its nature (discussed in the next
section). If agency is diffused across a nest of relationships then how change happens is probably also in
need of rethinking and, arguably, rationales for management accounting change can equally be rethought
as more fluid, multiple and multifaceted.7 Once again, we will use, in even greater scale, material from
the MEGOC case, as this will help make these abstract claims more intelligible.
As normally happens with the deployment of any managerial innovation, the implementation of BSC
within MEGOC was not easy. Scepticism was mounting in some parts of MEGOC, and this suggested one
of the divisions that pioneered the BSC implementation (Engineering & Operations Services—E&OS)
to stimulate an internal debate on strategy by relying on the BSC jargon and metrics.
In 2004, some of the key customers of the division and several delegates from other business areas and
divisions of MEGOC gathered together with a large number of E&OS employees for a meeting called
the Café.8 Few months after the E&OS café, a member of E&OS BSC team stated:
“What we did in our 2004 café was to illustrate the way in which the business line is attempting to
align its strategies and initiatives with corporate level strategic imperatives. Using the strategy map
as a guide, we relied on the BSC to describe the division’s objectives and the specific initiatives
that were about to be undertaken over the business plan period. The strategy map builds from our
mission statement – the reason we exist as an organization – which is to add value to [MEGOC]
through the innovative solutions developed by our people”.
As the interview with the member of E&OS BSC team was progressing, he increasingly relied on the
BSC rhetoric and visual aids to clarify his story:
“as you can see [pointing at a chart on the training room—see Fig. 2], our key goal is to focus on
customers needs. [. . .]. Like a good strategy for a winning soccer club, our strategy map is strong
up the middle: goalie – midfielder – centre forward. Therefore we have these nine objectives [again,
pointing at the chart] locked within cause and effect relationships with the aim to improve produc-
tivity and achieve ‘best-in-class’ performance. Then, there are seven more supporting objectives to
achieve increased revenue growth, to protect the oil market, to optimize the Corporate portfolio, and
to support the national economy. Altogether these sixteen objectives complete the high-level view
of the strategy map of the division”.
And again:
“These are the objectives that were highlighted in the 2003 E&OS Operating Plan presentation.
Horizontally the objectives are organized according to the four balanced scorecard perspectives;
vertically they are organized by strategic imperatives. Like any good map, it has coordinates for
both longitude and latitude (!). [. . .] Strategy begins to be effectively translated into action when
7
This will also relate to the lack of clear starting and ending points, something which relates to space and time issues as
discussed in Section 6.
8
Significantly, 680 out of 8650 employees of E&OS attended the meeting. Additionally, another 230 managers and employees
joined the 2004 café from other business lines of MEGOC, as well as representatives from key customers of the company.
Fig. 2. E&OS strategy map.
every individual can identify with one or more objectives that describe his/her participation in
the workplace. A deeper connection or personal line-of-sight is made when an individual shares
ownership of a measure that is critical to the achievement of one of the objectives of the division”.
Clearly the reference to translation in these quotes is not casual. As noted by Latour (1999), a translation
always entails a change, a difference, the creation of a link which was not there before. To become
something to which people can refer to, the BSC, as much as any other managerial practice, needs to
offer a possibility for engagement, for becoming what is not, for being translated into something which
is less alien and more familiar to the user than what it may have seemed when it made its appearance in
MEGOC.
Following the executive management board decision to clarify MEGOC’s strategy by releasing the six
imperatives to be pursued, the number of BSC implementation teams proliferated within the organization
both at the division and department level. Each team was urged to identify the mission, vision and strategic
imperatives of the area, and link them with the corporate strategic direction and its six imperatives. The
jargon of the BSC spread rapidly throughout the organization. Calendars, diaries, posters were some of
the means used to diffuse the idea of MEGOC as a strategy-focused organization around four clear and
balanced perspectives. Walking along the corridors of MEGOC it was quite common to find statements
that were trying to communicate the ‘spirit’ of the BSC. The following flyer was posted in several corners
of a leadership development centre:
“The Balanced Scorecard will help us translate our strategic imperatives into real action. [. . .] The
foundations of the scorecard are the mission, the vision and the strategies. Any participating business
line develops a Strategy Map that describes the way in which objectives are linked in line with the
strategic imperatives. It helps us understand our strategy by looking at it from four perspectives:
Financial, Customer, Internal Business, and Learning and Growth. It provides a snapshot of the way
in which activities are linked to and support each other. By studying this map, you will be able to
identify where you fit into the company’s plan for realizing its vision”.
In fact, without entering into detailed and exhaustive representations of all the possible actions and
constructions that the BSC can enable, its simplicity was ‘marketed’ to offer a space to practice the
technique and to make it suitable for everybody’s need. Managers at E&OS were not trying make every-
thing clear and rigid, and they were not forcing anybody ‘to fall in love with the initiative of the month’.
Rather, they were trying to engage potential future users who could eventually come to see the BSC as
an opportunity for action. Thus, happenings such as the E&OS 2004 café and the workshop we attended
seemed to contribute to the diffusion of the BSC in a manner which is visually and methodologically
engaging (see Quattrone, 2006). In this context, it is worth mentioning the way in which the member of
E&OS BSC team ended the workshop:
“. . . and now it is up to you, and your department leaders to find the proper objectives and measures
to make sure you can orient yourselves on the [MEGOC] strategic map, and show how you can add
value along these longitude and latitude [while pointing at a chart reproduced on Fig. 3]”.
What we seemed to be witnessing in this recursive process of defining mission, vision and strategy is
the possibility of creating forms, links, objects and subjects of accountability. The form of the Balanced
Scorecard and how it seems to be offering space and time for its utilization (the How of management
Fig. 3. MEGOC’s “road ahead to achieve a better tomorrow”

accounting change) becomes thus intertwined with the reason it is considered suitable for each organi-
zational unit and individual within the organization (the Why). As illustrated by Alvesson and Willmott,
2002, presenting the BSC as something which empowers offers the possibility of collectively defining
the identity of each organizational unit (see also Ezzamel et al., 2004). What we have here is the BSC’s
ability to enrol users because, by using the BSC, they are defining what and where they are, and what
relationships they have with the other units in the organization. The BSC becomes a heuristic device;
a learning machine (Hopwood, 1980) which is appropriated by managers for various reasons and aims.
This introduces the following aspects we intend to speculate on in interpreting management accounting
change: What and Who is subject to change?
4. What and who is changing? From an epistemological to an ontological problem of change
In the MEGOC case, the BSC seems to be assuming an almost infinite set of features while failing
to deliver integration and allowing each division to be a ‘kingdom on its own’. And still the BSC is out
there as an apparently coherent practice which people refer to and it is able to mobilize actions, as we
have already argued. Management accounting seems to be less than a real artifact (for it can theoretically
assume infinite forms and never constrains entirely) but it is more than a mere social construction (for is
not malleable ad infinitum and it allows things to be done in certain ways and not others). It is only in
this space ‘in between’, the ‘real’ and the ‘constructed’ that a speculation on the nature of management
accounting can take place.
This theoretical conundrum resembles what the contributions hosted in a recent special issue of
Organization (2005) had to face in theorizing ‘objects’. As Law and Singleton (2005) noted in that
special issue, the strategy that scholars may follow to study the ‘strange objects’, i.e. strange artifacts
which do not easily fall within standard categories, may be two-fold. On the one hand, the difficulty in
understanding their nature and evolution can be attributed to the observer. In this case, the complexity of
understanding the object can be termed ‘epistemological’ for the object simply means different things to
different people and constitutes a means to establish communication between different communities of
practices (see also Burns and Vaivio, 2001).
On the other hand, scholars may follow what Law and Singleton (2005) have termed an ‘ontological
strategy’, i.e. objects are complex per se not (only) because people interpret them differently. This onto-
logical approach has been followed by a series of works in the area of Science and Technology Studies
(STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT, e.g. Dugdale, 1999; de Laet and Mol, 2000; Mol, 1999). In
the case of IT, for instance, Quattrone and Hopper (2006), have addressed the question of ‘What is IT?’,
by exploring how a software best seller (SAP) paradoxically established its presence in a multinational
organization by being absent as working technology in that corporation. The homogeneity of this system
was not the result of a process of isomorphic adherence to a template or a set of rules but it was possible
thanks to the presence of a space offered by the IT system to experiment, mediate and thus attract diversity.
The object assumed an identity (albeit unstable and precarious) because it attracted rather than reduced
diversity and difference. IT appeared homogeneous because it was heterogeneous in nature: hence the
term heteromogeneous.
Similarly, within MEGOC, the BSC has established its presence organization-wide by being absent as
a working technology in several divisions and departments—such as the Finance organization and others.
However, despite not using the technique, the majority of the people within these areas did engage with
the BSC, although in its absence (“Indeed, you can say we focus on one perspective [financial], and we
are happy to leave the other three to the rest of the company (!)”—[as cited earlier]). Eventually, it is the
simplicity entailed by the four perspectives of the BSC as well as the visual clarity of the strategy map
that made such techniques performable within MEGOC. The BSC is performable not because it forces
users in certain directions, but because it leaves the potential adopters free to enact the space which is
offered within it (“. . . and now it is up to you, and to your department leaders to find the proper objectives
and measures to make sure you can orient yourselves on the [MEGOC] strategic map, and show how
you can add value along these longitude and latitude”—as cited earlier). Eventually, it could be said that
despite being developed under the umbrella (and the rhetoric) of the six corporate strategic imperatives
the BSC has made it possible to preserve each division of MEGOC as a ‘kingdom on its own’.
Thus, the ontology of the BSC is not clearly defined, but it is multiple and multifaceted. Despite
the metaphor of a map, which offers longitude and latitudes for objects to be classified univocally, the
BSC does not easily fit within conventional spatiotemporal co-ordinates. For example, the BSC was
able ‘to attract’ divisions such as Human Resources and Information Technology for reasons that were
quite different from E&OS or other functions (including Finance, where the ‘potential’ of the BSC was
re-discovered in a second stage—see the remaining paragraphs of this section).
Human Resources and Information Technology were among the first divisions to pioneer the BSC
within MEGOC. Managers within these two areas were attracted by the opportunity to increase their
visibility within the company as human capital and Enterprise Resource Planning systems were about
to acquire greater importance through the logic of the BSC. Interestingly, the rhetoric of the BSC was
also used to downplay the relevance of well-established accounting-driven practices within MEGOC,
such as the budget and variance analysis. The following is the remark of an IT manager responsible for
a knowledge management program labelled ‘shared values’:
“. . . although our crude [oil] and natural gas are invaluable assets, in today’s turbulent competitive
environment, [MEGOC] must compete not only through its physical resources, but also through its
intellectual and knowledge capital. Employees’ capabilities and motivation, information technol-
ogy, customer relationships and quality improvements represent the main ground to improve our
contribution to the Government and the community. In this context, the annual budget exercise is not
sufficient anymore to manage effectively such heterogeneous resources at work. Financial metrics
alone are inadequate to drive the organization when so much of the value creation comes from
things other than inventory, plant or equipment. You teach us [pointing at one of the researchers
conducting the interview] this has historically been the focus of companies’ financial statements,
which in actual fact are not able to capture the value of intangible assets, yet”.
In line with the overall call of this paper for multiplicity and fluidity, it is also interesting to link
ontological issues concerning What changes to those who are involved in this change. However, this time
the focus is less on the active role of the subject and more on the effects on individuals of management
accounting change, i.e. a focus on Who is subject to change. This calls for a speculation on how the
diffused agency and ontology of management accounting that we are debating in this paper also has
an effect on people and the way in which they see themselves when in interaction with these powerful
heteromogeneous objects.
At the beginning of 2005, the ideal of better integration among the different divisions of MEGOC was
still on top of the agenda. Interestingly, given the original hostility to the BSC in the first stages of the BSC
deployment in the company, the Finance organization displayed an active role in fostering cooperation
and knowledge sharing across the company by developing a series of workshops tailored to illustrate the
importance of relying on financial metrics and on Finance experts for achieving effective organizational
integration. In doing so, the Finance organization decided to open “the door to other divisions to describe
the way we can add-value to [MEGOC’s] operations, and contribute to the execution of the company’s
overall strategic imperatives” (Finance manager). Several managers within Finance increasingly realized
that the function needed a boost to “regain relevance within the company”. We had the opportunity to
attend one of these workshops where a senior management accountant opened as follows:
“It is a pleasure to be here with you this morning to give you an overview of the Finance organization.
Working for a big company like [MEGOC], we all get so busy in our own operations that we do
not get much chance to interact with each other and learn what each of us has to offer towards the
accomplishment of the company’s corporate objectives. Many thanks to the [hosting department’s]
coordinators for giving us this opportunity to speak to you today. My colleagues and I will help you
opening up the Finance black box, as some of you have referred to us lately . . .”.
During his speech, the senior management accountant surprisingly built on the BSC language, metrics
and underlying logic to describe the reasons why Finance should be perceived as ‘a crucial partner in the
business’:
“The vision of the Finance organization is to be recognized as a responsive and effective busi-
ness partner providing innovative financial expertise with a highly skilled, strongly motivated and
empowered staff . . . I want to emphasize the word partner to you here because this is how we want
you to see our organization: as your business partner, providing you as well as all the other operating
and support organizations within [MEGOC], with innovative financial expertise to meet your opera-
tional needs and improve the quality of your economic decisions in line with the highest ethical and
legal standards and in accordance with top management’s general and specific directives. We are
not able to realize this vision and partnership on our own, by implementing our own initiatives . . .
This makes today’s presentation extremely important to us. If we succeed in encouraging you to call
upon us for consultation, then we can truly become your business partner in achieving the corporate
strategic imperatives, as well as the key objectives included in your scorecards and business plans”
(senior management accounting).
Interviews and observations within the Finance function provided evidence that interest was increasing
in the BSC; a technique that was originally considered an ‘operational tool’ outside the scope of the Finance
organization, and for this reason largely ignored. This was not the case anymore. “We are currently in
the process of developing our own scorecard . . . we already started its implementation in some pilot
departments within Finance”, stated a Finance manager, who then adds, “I guess it is time for us to
foster processes of interactions with the other divisions, which are all placing financial objectives at the
top of their scorecards and strategy maps . . .”. Finance experts perceived a growing interest in financial
measures following the BSC implementation in several operating and service areas of the company, and
decided to build on this increasing focus on Finance to gain new relevance (and control) by introducing
a full costing system within MEGOC.
The malleable BSC made malleable and permeable those who engaged with it. Thus, accountants
forgot their interest in budgets, which were not even flexed, and became ‘business partners’ and ‘experts’
providing ‘innovative financial expertise’, rather than preparers of boring budget figures. They could truly
only become so if another community was created, a community made of hybrids of all sorts (Caglio,
2003; Burns and Baldvinsdottir, 2003), where it is no longer clear who is an accountant and where
accounting is actually done. The authorship of the accounting is diffused as much as the ontology of
management accounting, its agency and forms of translation.
Interestingly, Finance experts started to sell organization-wide their closeness and centrality within
the BSC, which suddenly became a key source and object of trust to rely upon to promote the regained
relevance of the Finance organization (Busco et al., 2006; Seal et al., 2004; Tomkins, 2001). Such inter-
twined relationships between the BSC and the Finance organization were evoked as the senior management
accountant addressed the workshop’s audience as follows:
“In each one of your scorecards you reach a point were operational metrics get translated in financial
terms. Well, we can be your partner with you there, we can build with you an all new level of cost
awareness . . . We have a brand new ‘Full Cost Reporting Project’ that will improve corporate and
divisional performance through higher cost awareness. Current cost sheets include NDEs (net direct
expenses) and support service costs. However these do not fully reflect the true costs required for
each organization to function . . . This new system will help fuel your scorecards with accurate
numbers, and help a better translation of operational achievement into bottom-line results”.
The sceptic accountant has become a BSC enthusiast: the work of fabricating the management account-
ing technique (i.e. What is subject to change) goes hand in hand with the process of constructing the identity
of those who are subject and objects of these new forms of accounting and accountability.
5. When and where change happens? And who is there to observe it? Alternative forms of
interpreting change
Over the last two decades, as accounting began to be understood and interpreted as a situated,
context-dependent practice, the management accounting literature has seen a considerable growth in
both fieldwork and case studies. Motivated by the quest for rich descriptions of accounting in action
(Ahrens and Dent, 1998), case studies have been portrayed as a method that offers the researcher “the
possibility of understanding the nature of accounting in practice; both in terms of the techniques, pro-
cedures, and systems, etc. which are used and the way in which they are used” (Ryan et al., 2002,
p. 143).
It is commonly argued that extensive and longitudinal case studies enrich our understanding of the
field by providing detailed accounts of the intertwined relationships between organizational contexts and
the functioning of accounting (Ahrens and Dent, 1998; see also Burns and Scapens, 2000; Boudreau
and Robey, 2005). Generally, this position is supported by the claim that longitudinal studies allow an
understanding of the object under scrutiny to be developed – in the case of MEGOC the BSC – evolves
over time. However, the epistemological implications of this claim deserve a further discussion.
Although the features of the social context being studied, and its interplay with the accounting con-
structions, can be interpreted only in light of the specific circumstances in which they unfold through
time, a longitudinal case assumes a linearity of time and evolution which, for example, was not wit-
nessed in MEGOC. The complex and continuous intertwining of various attempts of implementing the
BSC(s) suggests that this technique assumed various evolutionary stages simultaneously and not neces-
sarily progressively. MEGOC is so vast and its networks so diverse that the BSC implementation did not
necessarily follow the same pattern and pace within all the participating divisions and departments (for
example the E&OS and the Finance divisions engaged with the BSC in quite different ways and within
different intra-organizational networks).
Therefore, despite the length of time spent within the organizational context researchers need to
confront the impossibility of fully representing and understanding the object of their enquiry as if it
was out there, evolving in front of them along a linear pattern. In the case of MEGOC, for example, the
researcher who developed the case could only offer a partial testimony of the events.9 In fact, the researcher
did not have access to the complete story, which was unfolding simultaneously in different corners of the
company. The BSC(s) engaged differently with the various actors and centres within MEGOC, and every
attempt to account for that is unavoidably a limited and partial story in time and space.
Paraphrasing Mol (1999), it could be argued that the BSC represents a complex object made by
“different versions, different performances, different realities that co-exist in the present” (p. 79). The
BSC is constantly defined by continuous acts of engagements through which it is performed (even in its
absence) in various organizational time(s)–space(s). Therefore, the object did not need to ‘evolve’ over
time to change, but only required the enactment of different realities and connections with other different
practices and systems at work (Law and Singleton, 2005). Within MEGOC change did not happen on
a linear timeline that the researcher could monitor, but in a semantic network of relations that created
multiple spaces and times whose richness is very difficult to account for (Quattrone and Hopper, 2001,
2005, 2006).
We argue this has implications for the rationale of longitudinal case studies and for understanding
issues of Where and When change happens. Information on the project’s length and data collected may
aid others to reflect on the interpretive journey the researcher undertook and the conclusions he has
achieved, but they cannot be perceived as comprehensive and wide-ranging accounts which illuminate
the processes of management accounting change—specifically the processes of BSC(s) implementation
within MEGOC. Definitely, the passage of time was important for the researcher to gain an understanding
of a practice such as the BSC, but it did not help to interpret in full what counts as an object, as well as the
BSC ability to mobilize and engage with other elements (human and non-human) of the organizational
context.
Similarly, a manager from one of the divisions implementing the BSC had “mixed feelings on the
scorecards ability to foster integration and cooperation throughout the organization, as well as on the
process through which it was deployed, cascaded down to the different departments and, eventually, linked
to employees’ appraisal”. Although he claimed to “agree in principle with the idea of translating strategic
imperatives into action through a balanced bunch of objectives and key indicators”, he emphasized the
fact that the BSC was imposed in his department “without taking into account the existing organizational
culture and working practices”. In particular, he suggested:
“top management at both corporate and business line level should have built the business case for
such an important process of change that affects performance measurement systems throughout
the division. They should have better described to the employees how things will look after the
implementation and, eventually, they should have fostered support and commitment for change
through effective communication and healthy dialogue within the division . . . Unfortunately, this is
not always the case, and the process slows down . . . Dealing with resistance to change represents
fifty per cent of my time as a team member for the scorecard implementation in my department.
9
As suggested earlier, the insights from the MEGOC case are based on a study conducted by one of the authors.
[. . .] Regrettably, not all managers within the division understand that resistance is a natural force
that people use to maintain and stabilize any system they are working with, and the scorecard gets
sometimes trapped in such a lack of leadership”.
Translating strategy into action, making companies strategy focussed and enabling alignment and
integration are outcomes that the BSC promises to deliver (Kaplan and Norton, 2001). Whether the BSC
implementation succeeded to do this in MEGOC was questionable, as well as When and Where this
happened. The BSC was received unfavourably in some sections of MEGOC, but more favourably in
some others. This was due to a variety of reasons ranging from a lack of clarity about the reasons for
its introduction (“because someone on the Board has fallen in love with the flavour of the month during
a training course in London”—as cited earlier), to a failure to engage with well established account-
ing practices, which eventually stimulated resistance within the Finance organization. Paradoxically,
instead of integrating the company, the BSC was contributing to reinforce existing boundaries. Ironi-
cally, the initial successful implementation of the BSC in some corners of the organization increased
the disappointment of those managers who talked about it, without being part of the BSC deployment,
yet.
The different business lines of MEGOC had the autonomy to decide whether implementing (or not) the
scorecards in order to better align with the company’s overall strategic imperatives. The map was there
(see Fig. 3), awaiting to be ‘performed’ and not simply followed. Eventually, divisions took different
routes to practice the BSC. Some business lines decided to take a bottom–up approach by first piloting
the BSC implementation in specific departments. In one such case, shop floor employees were deeply
engaged with the new technique at work, and they were soon familiar with its logic and jargon. Such a
bottom–up process of implementation favoured the creation of a sense of ownership and identification
among the employees, as well as enabling it to reduce potential episodes of resistance. As claimed by a
departmental BSC team member:
“We started by brain-storming what we felt were the key objectives to be accomplished by the
department. That was a very useful exercise that allowed us to think about and, sometimes, re-think
the reasons why we were performing certain activities . . . [to understand] the need to operationalise
the suggested objectives, to identify the key performance indicators and to measure them. Finan-
cial and non-financial measures helped us to quantify the statements that define the objectives
and allowed a better process of communication and identification by the potential owners of those
metrics. Then targets were identified according to our perception of the successful levels of per-
formance to be achieved, and potential initiatives were discussed across the department . . . I must
be honest and say that we strongly felt ownership and responsibility for the implementation of the
scorecard, which today gives us a sense of pride and distinctiveness – it is truly seen as our own
baby . . .”.
Clearly, When and Where the BSC was taking shape was not easy to follow for either the researcher or
the practitioner. Understanding how and why the BSC could mobilize potential users and how they could
engage with it was not immediate. It took some time for the researcher as much as for the practitioners
to understand that the BSC was not out there to do things, but offered a space and a time for change to
happen.
6. Change and/or stability? The heteromogeneity of management accounting practices
Conceptualizing ‘change’ and/or ‘stability’ requires theorizing the nature of the ‘object’ that changes.
Therefore, to interpret how management accounting (if not accounting tout-court) changes, we shall first
discuss the nature of management accounting practices, i.e. their ontology. This is particularly interesting
especially after the irruption of accounting studies drawing on various forms of post-structuralism which
have questioned simplistic views of change and their current difficulties in theorizing at the same time
the malleability of practices and their immutability and sameness (see Thrift, 2004). Consequently, the
challenging issue now relates, not necessarily to the need for reconceptualizing change, but to how to
link these non-linear views of change with a new view of the object that is subject to change which
is, in the specific case, management accounting. In this respect management accounting practices can
be interpreted as ‘objects’ that can extend and mobilize networks of relations with users and other
organizational information systems to construct organization-wide visibility.
Interestingly, the literature that relies upon Giddens’ Structuration Theory is sensitive to the temporal
problem of change. As claimed by Orlikowski with respect to information technologies, they are “never
fully stabilized or ‘complete’, even though we may choose to treat them as fixed, black boxes for a period
of time. By temporarily bracketing the dynamic nature of technology, we assign a ‘stabilized for now’
status (Shryrer, 1993)” (Orlikowski, 2000, p. 411). This permits studies using Structuration Theory to
accord time a central role, whereby interactions between structure and action follow a linear and recursive
path in a progressive and ordered manner so that researchers are eventually able to account for situations
at time2 that always follow events at time1 (see DeSanctis and Poole, 1994; Orlikowski, 1996; Orlikowski
and Yates, 2002). However, how can we assume the stability of a practice (even for a limited period of
time) without reifying the practice itself and limiting enactment possibilities?
Management accounting practices are not necessarily a single, stable entity at a point of time, and
change and stability seem to co-exist in forms, relations and within spatiotemporal frames which are
still to be deciphered (cf. Granlund, 2001; Burns and Scapens, 2000). For example, as illustrated earlier,
the BSC did not smoothly evolve over time (or space) but acquired different forms simultaneously in
different parts of MEGOC. Moreover, BSC’s emergence as a working practice relied on human enactments
and non-human praxis involving strategy maps drawing, cost calculations, physical measurement, and
management controls.
The perspective offered in this paper attempts to reconcile the apparent homogeneity of management
accounting practices (such as the BSC) with the heterogeneity of their use, by recognizing that these
practices are amenable to be flexible and malleable. Objects like the BSC can possess diversity and
heterogeneity while being a homogeneous and operative technology. Management accounting (in this
case, the BSC) appears homogeneous for it attracts and generates heterogeneous uses: its homogeneous
nature is intrinsically linked to the heterogeneous nature of those (things and humans) that are attracted
by it.
As we noted earlier, within MEGOC the BSC can be theorized as an absence which establishes
a presence by mobilizing and attracting other actors and technologies. In this respect the BSC seeks
visibility in organizations as it emerges from multiple and continuous translations. Thus, the definition
of a BSC is neither stable nor singular across MEGOC’s time(s) and space(s), and this enables this
management accounting practice to drift across the different divisions and departments.
Management accounting techniques can be interpreted as ‘objects’, which maintain their homogeneity
despite and thanks to their heterogeneous use. Management accounting (the BSC, in this case) is thus
an ‘heteromogeneous object’ (Quattrone and Hopper, 2006) whose ontology can be understood only by
exploring how it is materialized in real or virtual forms, the way in which it relies on image or visual
representation to organize thinking and actions, how it appeals to the potential users by remaining at a
very superficial level of abstract principles and linear visual forms, as well as its ability to become a
working space and time, which is offered to the users to perform and enact (see Ezzamel et al., 2004;
Quattrone, 2006).
One of the features of the BSC within MEGOC was to embody and communicate issues of integration
and strategy execution in manners which are visually and methodologically engaging, without entering in
too detailed and exhaustive representations of all the possible actions. The simplicity of the map described
by E&OS managers during the workshop offered potential space(s) and time(s) to perform actions, to
practice the BSC and make it work. Conversely, an attempt which would try to tell it all would not spread
as it would not be translatable and thinkable at the ‘eventual’ level of the practice (Johns, 1998); i.e.
it would not engage the prospective user who could see a space and opportunity for action. Thus, it is
the simplicity entailed by the method and its visual clarity which make management accounting tools
performable. Paradoxically, the BSC(s) are performable not because they force users to follow certain
directives, but because they leave users free to enact that space which is offered by the technique.
Within MEGOC the BSC thus became objectified, not because it is made of inscriptions which make it
an immutable mobile (as early studies in ANT would have argued), but because it attracts a heterogeneity
of users. This is why management accounting can be interpreted as a heteromogeneous object; i.e. an object
which appears homogeneous and spreads across the organization, not because it is fixed and immutable,
but because it attracts diversity and heterogeneity. The combination of the linearity exemplified by the
visual schematization of the content of the technique and its simplicity ignite a process of reference to
such a technique (Quattrone, 2006). In other words, one needs to understand what makes an abstract set
of inanimate scripts a practice (see also Ezzamel et al., 2004; Chenhall and Euske, in press), something
which can be performed. This is what has happened in MEGOC where multiple BSC(s) and different
strategy maps mushroomed in several organizational-wide networks under the ideal of integrating the
company along six strategic imperatives and four balanced perspectives of analysis.
“I don’t see why we should engage with Finance on our own scorecard . . . at present we feel we are
in control of the metrics and numbers we developed and we do not want to argue, mediate or simply
justify to others what we do around here . . . We have built a solid team here: our employees identify
with our strategy, at corporate planning they have learnt to appreciate our skills and initiatives and,
finally, these guys [pointing at two members of the internal consulting organization] now feel at
home within our premises . . .” (BSC team member).
The extent to which BSC (or better the multiple scorecards) deployment has fostered processes of
integration within MEGOC is currently debated within the organization. When asked, organizational
members interpreted the results of the BSC implementation differently. For example, managers in the
E&OS division celebrate the existence a new organizational map defined vertically by the company strate-
gic imperatives and horizontally by the four balanced scorecard perspectives. Nevertheless, “longitude
and latitude coordinates are useless if employees are suddenly placed in the middle of the desert and
they are not told how to use the compass (!)” claimed a BSC team member from one of the divisions
implementing the BSC. He was complaining that the BSC implementation lacked direction and support
at the shop floor, “where the objectives of the scorecard were struggling to be translated into measures
that make sense to everybody”.
Among those people who appreciated the outcomes achieved by the BSC implementation in MEGOC,
one of the most frequent comments was that “the scorecards were smoothly rolled out in all seven
business lines of the company” (operations manager). In so doing, “it was unquestionably fostering
processes of integration and knowledge sharing across the organization” (E&OS BSC team member).
This was the case in the Finance organization that lately assumed the language, metrics and underlying
logic of the BSC to ‘market’ itself as a crucial partner in the business and to promote a brand new full cost
methodology.
In spite of that, other participants suggested that the BSC was creating further boundaries and separation
among MEGOC’s business lines, which were focussing on their own objectives and measures, and
pursuing their own initiatives. Interestingly, a BSC team member of one of the MEGOC’s divisions
highlighted the absence of a corporate scorecard:
“with seven different divisional scorecards at work, and no corporate-wide scorecard in place, it
is like playing the same sport but in different leagues . . . everybody wins, every business line is
allowed to take its own actions and initiatives in light of the objectives to be achieved . . . Sometime
I feel we miss the overall picture, and the six corporate [strategic] imperatives are not enough in
this respect”.
The absence of a corporate template is what allowed the BSC to persist as a practice which could be
used in MEOC. If it had been implemented according to rigid guidelines, resistance would probably have
stopped its deployment. Much better to leave it malleable, as this allows a nice and smooth combination
of change and stability.
7. The papers in this Special Issue
This Second Special Issue of Management Accounting Research on Management Accounting Change
comprises five papers, which all, directly or indirectly, touch on the issues that we have addressed in this
paper and represented in Fig. 1.
The first three papers in the sequence all relate their analyses to new institutional sociology which
has been largely utilized in the management accounting literature on change. The paper by Ezzamel,
Robson, Stapleton and McLean addresses issues of change by looking at accounting reforms in the UK
school sector. In their paper, the notion of accountability as an institution is seen as the medium and
the outcome of processes of accounting change. They analyse the interplay between rational and legit-
imate notions of accountability, implied by the legal reforms of UK schools, and those ‘folk’ notions
of accountability, implied by the local professional norms and routines, which had kept participants
accountable until the emergence of the new accountability regime. Ezzamel et al. (2007) are concerned
with the matter of assessing whether rational forms of accountability travel untouched and unchallenged
from the reform discourse to the field of school education or instead are mediated by, and mediate,
taken for granted accountability practices currently in operation in the organizational setting. The authors
utilize the notion (and practices) of accountability as a locus where global tendencies towards homo-
geneization clash and/or intertwine with local and tacit forms of ‘giving accounts’. Their findings are
that organizational actors operate under different institutional realms ranging from being accountable
only to the ‘folk’ and local professional accountability, to virtually all of these sources of accountability,
including the new societal demand for being financial efficient. Interestingly though, forms of financial
accountability seem to be more pervasive than folk and local ones so that even these can no longer be
articulated if not in the numerary and monetary terms pertinent to the dominant discourse of efficiency
and value for money. This clearly entails the problem of understanding how some management account-
ing techniques, discourses and rationalities are seen as more valid than others even in (local) contexts
where a strong (although ‘folk’) notion of accountability already exists. The paper also calls for a deeper
understanding of how and why quantitative notions of accountability, i.e. accountabilities which are trans-
lated into numerical metrics, win over qualitative ones which do not translate so easily into monetary
terms.
Similar concerns and approach are offered in the paper by Dambrin, Lambert and Sponem, which
also looks at management accounting change utilizing a New Institutional Sociology perspective in order
to restate the need to move away from a functionalist perspective which views change as the result of
some economic imperative. Drawing on the findings of Hasselbladh and Kallinikos (2000) they reflect
on the explanatory power of the notion of decoupling to illustrate how processes of institutionalization
are never linear, with precise outcomes. They address this issue in the context of a firm operating in the
pharmaceutical context where, they note, management accounting systems play a dual role in the process
of change. On one hand, management accounting is the target of change, in line with a new institutional
approach, for it is utilized to provide organizations with an aura of efficiency and rationality which can
legitimise them in the organizational field in which they operate. On the other, though, management
accounting is also a vector of change. The authors thus offer a reflection on the notion of decoupling
and how change can actually be implemented, rejected or decoupled through the practices currently in
place in the organization. The ideals driving change can generate new ones and consequently the process
of change is never linear, functional or predetermined, but untidy: how changes are internalized across
the organization can vary and assume different forms. Change can be slowly implemented, rejected or
ceremonially accepted depending on the element of the management control system which is having an
effect on the organizational actors. Key in this process is the ambiguity (rather than the clarity) of the
ideal driving change.
The paper by Nor-Aziah and Scapens also reflects on the notion of loose coupling in the context of
the corporatization of a Malaysian public utility. The study is concerned with understanding how and
whether general calls for greater efficiency are translated into daily accounting practices or become instead
loosely coupled from these general calls. They reflect on the notion of loose coupling, highlighting how
loosely coupled budgets were not simply an automatic response to institutional forces driving accounting
change. It was instead the result of institutional contradictions which percolated into budgets making them
a source of tension and conflict between operation managers and accountants, and thus loosely coupled.
Institutional contradictions, power and trust relations, and issues of resistance help to shift the focus of
new institutional approaches: from the context to the individual as agents of institutional change. Yet,
loose coupling facilitates a combination of change and stability in the organization and thus permits the
stable provision of the public service offered by the public utility. It limits the effects on the organization
of external factors calling for a restructuration of management accounting and organizational routines.
The other two papers in the Special Issue follow different theoretical routes, but are still closely related
to issues of stability and change, agency, process of change and its impact on organizational relationships,
and management accounting itself.
The paper by Thrane explores how the notion of organizational systems needs to be rethought in
light of different forms of organizing, self-organizing and contribution of the literature on management
accounting change. The occasion for this exploration is given by the study of a network of indepen-
dent Danish consultants who collaborate to boost their own business by combining a series of actions
which are both competitive and cooperative. In this network, managerial accounting techniques, such as
transfer pricing, act as a source of instability and create unintended organizational outcomes. For Thrane
change happens in systems which are not linear, but dynamic and multidimensional. However, change
is not entirely free—but instead, it is dependent on the presence of path dependences and the influence
(although unintended) of certain points of attraction which directs change. Differently from conventional
approaches to change in management accounting and control, which view change as occurring within
a specified organizational space (be this designed by a hierarchical organization, a market arrangement,
or a more socially constructed notion of trust), the paper seeks to understand how management con-
trol is part of the processes of change, but in ways which are unpredictable, though still dependent
on the self-organizing paths emerging in the interorganizational network which establishes a ‘network-
logic’.
The final paper is by Andon, Baxter and Chua10 who reflect on the notion of accounting change and
develop the concept of ‘relational drift’. This notion conveys the idea that management accounting change
work is always messy as it results from the negotiation and conditioning exerted by a series of collectives
and actants which embrace a vast array of elements and connections (see Fig. 2 in their paper). They
looked at the implementation of a new BSC in an Australasian telecommunication organization, and
used this case to theorize the experimental nature of management accounting and to interpret change
neither as a predetermined movement nor as free floating in a vacuum. Instead change is bound to ties
such as technologies and various inscriptions which help the past, present and future interpretations
of organizational worlds to emerge. Furthermore, given the intrinsically open and performative nature
of the concept of relational drift, the paper calls for further reflection on the nature of management
accounting as a knowledge object which seems to be always in the making. This, in turn, calls for a new
conceptualization of the multiple ontologies which management accounting assumes in the experimental
and relational nature of drift.
As the reader will appreciate the study of management accounting change is an interesting locus
for experimenting the theoretical advancement of our understanding of accounting as a practice which
spans across several realms, from the social to the political via the economic, in forms which are still
unclear. What we have sought to illustrate with this paper and the others hosted in this Special Issue
also seeks to go beyond accounting. Management accounting change is a theoretical space which,
possibly more than many others in management and organizational studies, intersects and interacts
with the broader knowledge area of the social sciences, sociology and philosophy of knowledge and
science and technology studies. Theorizing change, accounting and the alike is not a matter which
can be confined to accounting and economics as disciplines conventionally conceived. It requires the
understanding of ontological and methodological issue which require a tool box much greater and
diverse than what accounting researchers seem to have used so far. Management accounting change
is a laboratory, a theoretical puzzle the solution of which is difficult because there will always be a
missing piece which will allow the continuous work around the composition of the picture. Management
accounting change is possible because of this incompleteness which makes it an interesting exercise to
perform.
10
The paper by Paul Andon, Jane Baxter, and Wai Fong Chua was not originally submitted to this Special Issue and was
accepted independently by the Journal. We have included it with the consent of the authors whose patience in waiting for the
completion of the refereeing process of the other papers is greatly appreciated.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Robert Scapens for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to MEGOC’s
managers who have collaborated to the case study. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125-149

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Management Accounting Research 18 (2007) 125–149

Fig. 1. Issues in interpreting management accounting change and stability.

Fig. 2. E&OS strategy map.

Fig. 3. MEGOC’s “road ahead to achieve a better tomorrow”

4. What and who is changing? From an epistemological to an ontological problem of change

6. Change and/or stability? The heteromogeneity of management accounting practices

7. The papers in this Special Issue

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