Chapman, Cooper y Miller - 2009

1
Linking Accounting, Organizations,

and Institutions
Christopher S. Chapman, David J. Cooper, and Peter B. Miller
A simple proposition underpins the title of this volume and the papers
collected here: that there is much to be gained by looking at the relations
among accounting, organizations, and institutions. This of course begs many
questions, not least what is meant by each of the three nouns that make up the
title. For the moment, we shall adopt some rudimentary deWnitions without
being too sensitive to nomenclature and the intellectual traditions that are
attached to certain words. By accounting, we mean all those spatially and
historically varying calculative practices—ranging from budgeting to fair
value accounting—that allow accountants and others to describe and act on
entities, processes, and persons. By organizations, we mean not only those
formally constituted and bounded entities—such as Wrms, not-for-proWt, and
government organizations responsible for providing services—but the pleth-
ora of less formal and less bounded associations of actors and activities, such
as industry associations, inter-Wrm alliances, and even ad hoc advisory
groups. And, by institutions, we mean those stabilized and legitimized ideas
and groupings, together with their attendant bodies of knowledge and ways of
classifying, that are taken for granted and accorded authority (more or less)
by common assent.
This tripartite schema leaves out much of course, and it also risks over-
stating the boundaries between each component and the solidity of each.1 For
instance, at what point does an organization become an institution (and vice
David Cooper is pleased to acknowledge the Wnancial support of the CertiWed General
Accountants of Alberta and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
1
We also limit our focus largely to the Weld of accounting research that is represented and
constituted by a number of journals, most notably Accounting, Organizations and Society,
Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal. That
means that this chapter and volume tend to underplay the substantial contributions from
research inspired by conventional economics and psychology.
2 Accounting, Organizations, and Institutions
versa), how can we understand accounting practices without recourse to the

languages and rationales that mobilize them as practices, and to what extent is
accounting itself an ‘institution’? These are no doubt important questions,
but we think for the time being that a highly simpliWed schema helps us to at
least pose some questions that are generic to the contributions to this volume
and the research tradition they exemplify.
Many before us have adopted similar terminology and addressed similar
issues. Anthony Hopwood, in particular, has argued for at least three decades
that we should pay attention to the organizational and social contexts in
which accounting operates (Hopwood 1978).2 He has also argued that we
should attend to the ‘external’ origins of ‘internal’ accounts, that we should
not see ‘context’ as something external to organizations, but as something
that passes through them, and that we should see accounting as both shaped
by, and shaping, wider social processes (Hopwood 1983; Burchell et al. 1985).
Our arguments here are very much in line with this way of thinking, as are
the contributions to this volume. We suggest that accounting, organizations,
and institutions should be viewed as fundamentally interrelated and interde-
pendent, that the links among them should be viewed as mutually constitu-
tive. Accounting, one might say, is simultaneously social and technical. Put
diVerently, the roles of accounting co-emerge with the social relations that it
helps make possible. To paraphrase and adapt Hacking (1992): if our accounts
of the world Wt reasonably snugly with the world we observe, this is less
because we have found out how the world is, than because we have tailored
each to Wt the other. The calculative practices of accounting here are primary,
but understood in a speciWc sense: the objects upon which they act are the
correlates and constructs of its practices, rather than something pre-existing
or given. As Hopwood (2007) has recently re-emphasized, those who claim to
know what accounting is are simply wrong. Accounting changes, and those
changes are part and parcel of changing social and economic relations.
Accounting is a craft without an essence. It has changed signiWcantly across
time, adopting new forms, devices, and roles. We need to study those changes,
rather than treat the present forms of accounting as immutable.
This broad sensitivity to the nature of accounting and its implications for
the ways of studying, understanding, and intervening in accounting can
be found in all the chapters of this volume. Of course, they individually
approach these wider questions in diVerent ways and with diVerent emphases.
Some focus more on the development of particular themes, whereas others
focus more on emergent and future research themes. Some focus on meth-
odology while others stress modes of intervention or understanding. Both
2
Lowe and Tinker (1977) is another early (albeit less inXuential) example of these arguments.
Linking Accounting, Organizations, and Institutions 3
individually and collectively, however, they demonstrate the interest and

relevance of a concern with the links between accounting, organizations,
and institutions.
In framing the writings brought together within this volume in this way, we
mean to address not only accounting researchers, many of whom may view
these general arguments as well established. We also mean to address a wider
social science audience that is now paying increasing attention to the ways in
which social and economic life is constituted to an important extent through
the calculative practices that give it visibility. This is perhaps one of the
greatest achievements of the research that is gathered here, and the much
wider set of writings that it draws upon and connects with: to have contrib-
uted to the creation of a distinctive Weld of research within the social sciences;
to have borrowed concepts and categories from elsewhere and adapted them;
but, equally, to have given something back to social science, having engaged
with a phenomenon—accounting—that seems to be of ever-increasing sign-
iWcance in contemporary society. Somewhat belatedly, social scientists are
beginning to pay attention to the important roles that accounting plays in so
many aspects of social and economic life. Accounting is no longer perceived as
‘mere’ bookkeeping, as a set of records that neutrally records the facts of
economic life. Accounting has Wnally arrived, or, to be precise, arrived back on
the social science agenda.
A quarter of a century ago, such claims for accounting research could not
have been voiced, even if ‘behavioural accounting’ was in full swing by then.
And, a quarter of a century before that, even behavioural accounting—the
idea that accounting should be studied in terms of social psychological
dynamics—was novel. This is a remarkable transformation of a discipline
that increasingly is seen as a legitimate social scientiWc endeavour. The
contributors to this volume, along with many others, have brought this
about. The purpose of this introduction is to step back a little, to reXect on
how far the social scientiWc understanding of accounting has developed in the
past half century.3 Our reXections on developments in the areas of accounting
research that we examine lead us to ask two basic questions. First, what are the
historical and emerging relations between an important subset of the social
sciences and accounting research, and what implications do these interrela-
tions have for the future. Second, what interesting questions are raised by
stressing the links between accounting, organizations, and institutions; for
example, whether conventional boundaries within accounting (such as the
3
This opportunity to reXect on the history of the discipline is also combined with a desire to
remember and build on some of the classical founders. As Adler (2009) argues, ‘a social science
that forgets its founders is lost’ (2009: 3).
distinction between Wnancial and management accounting) are helpful in

understanding the eVects of accounting on organizations and institutions.
Finally, in the conclusion we consider some challenges currently facing
accounting, both as an academic discipline and as a practice.
C L A S S I C A L C O N C E P T I O N S O F AC C O U N T I N G
AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE
Max Weber, writing in the Wrst two decades of the twentieth century, considered
accounting to be at the heart of the rationalization of society under capitalism.
Weber argued that capitalism should be understood as the continuous pursuit
of proWt by means of ‘rational, capitalistic enterprise’ (Weber 1930: 17). This
‘rational’ pursuit of proWt required as its counterpart calculations in terms of
capital. The modern, rational organization of capitalistic enterprise would not
have been possible, Weber argued, without the calculative practice of book-
keeping. Weber was concerned with the conditions which gave rise to and
enabled the spread of the ‘speciWcally modern calculating attitude’ (Weber
1956: 86). Accounting, in the sense of both budgetary management and capital
accounting, was central to his analysis of the sociological conditions of eco-
nomic activity. Calculation was the mechanism by which rational economic
provision could be conducted, and capital accounting was the form of monet-
ary accounting peculiar to rational economic proWt-making.
Weber deWned an economic enterprise as ‘autonomous action capable of
orientation to capital accounting’ (Weber 1956: 91), and stated that ‘this
orientation takes place by means of ‘‘calculation’’ ’ (Weber 1956: 91). To this
extent, he placed a concern with calculation at the heart of a sociological
analysis of economic activity. Calculation was located mid-way between
rational proWt-making enterprises and the opportunities available to them,
and helped mediate between them. Double-entry bookkeeping, according to
Weber (1956: 92), was ‘the most highly developed’ form of bookkeeping, in so
far as it permits ‘a check in the technically most perfect manner on the
proWtability of each individual step or measure’ (p. 93). Sombart (1902) put
forward an even stronger argument concerning the links between double-
entry bookkeeping and capitalism, speculating whether it was double-entry
bookkeeping that had enabled the rise to capitalism.
Prior to Weber, Marx had also signalled the importance of the relationship
between accounting or bookkeeping and capitalism. Marx remarked in
Volume I of Capital that one of the Wrst tasks of an aspiring capitalist is to
keep a set of books (Marx 1974a: 81). In Volume II of Capital, where Marx
deals with the transformations of the forms of capital from commodities into
money, and from money into commodities, he addresses the issue of the
labour-time expended in bookkeeping, which is depicted as a deduction from
the productive process, albeit an essential part of the circulation process
(Marx 1974b: 136). In so far as capital seeks its own reproduction, this
deduction from what Marx regarded as the real process of production is an
essential part of the capitalistic process. And as the production process
becomes ever more social in character, and loses its individual character,
bookkeeping becomes ever more necessary.
Marx did not accord accounting as central a role as did Weber. Nonetheless,
when placed in the context of a theory of value and the concept of mode of
production, Marx gave accounting an important place alongside other polit-
ical interventions in the relations of production. In Marx’s writings, account-
ing is accorded a macro-structural role, both shaping and reproducing the
nature of capitalist relations of production. To this extent, Marx and Weber
occupy a similar terrain. For both, accounting helps shape the social and
economic relations that deWne a society, although these classical social scien-
tists tended to equate accounting with book keeping.
But, following these bold pronouncements concerning the link between
accounting and societal development, accounting was more or less ignored by
social scientists for almost half a century. It was not until the 1950s that the
interest of social scientists in accounting resurfaced. And, when it did, the
large economic and sociological questions about accounting that Weber,
Marx, and Sombart had posed were replaced by more micro-level concerns
with the role of accounting in organizational design and the operation of
groups.4
The role of accounting in organizational design is signalled by a study by
the inXuential US Controllership Foundation, which commissioned a leading
group of management theorists from Carnegie Mellon University (Simon
et al. 1954) to study the organizational location of controllers. The study
was grounded in the emerging theories of the bounded rationality of organ-
izational decision-making and the importance of intra-organizational politics
and the local allegiances of managers in large dispersed organizations. These
theories connect strongly with concerns about the functioning (and dysfunc-
tions) of bureaucracy, exploring the limits of Weberian conceptions of instru-
mental rationality and the limits of viewing organizations as well-functioning
4
There are some prominent antecedents to the developments discussed in this chapter. In
the English language tradition, authors such as Scott, Devine, and Chambers are worth
mentioning as accountants who took social sciences seriously. Similar examples can no doubt
be found in the non-English literature.
machines. It examined whether controllers should be part of the centralized

management of the organization, reporting on the actions of local manage-
ment teams, or should be part of the decision-making group of local manage-
ment teams, providing speciWc information for local decisions.5 That study
also identiWed diVerent purposes of accounting, emphasizing its multiple
roles, for example in decision-making for the future as well as providing a
scorecard of the past.
The role of accounting in the operation of groups is signalled by Chris
Argyris’s (1952) inXuential study on the impact of budgets on people (also
commissioned by the Controllership Foundation). Argyris examined what
‘budget people’ think of budgets, and how factory supervisors think very
diVerently about budgets. He combined a study of accounting practices with a
sociological concern with groups. Rather than taking groups as given and self-
evident, he described the interaction between people and budgets as one of
the creation of groups. If management puts increased pressure on individuals
via budgets, he argued, groups are likely to form. These groups can in turn
help absorb the increased pressures placed by management on individuals.
Once formed, such groups can persist even after the initial pressure to
produce them has disappeared. In proposing that the interaction of people
and accounting practices be understood in this way, Argyris was drawing on
research that emphasized groups and their dynamics.
‘Behavioural accounting’ is a common label for describing the wave of
studies that appeared from the late 1950s onwards, and which built on these
developments in the analysis of groups and organizational design. It exam-
ined in diVering ways the interrelations between accounting, organizational
design, and group relations. For example, Dalton (1959) showed how pres-
sure to meet cost targets, when combined with reward schemes based on
success in meeting such targets, can result in the distortion of records.
Historians of business such as Chandler and Litterer pointed out the crucial
role of accounting calculations in developments in organizational design,
particularly the creation of multidivisional enterprises. Wildavsky (1964)
examined the interaction between calculations and politics in his study of
budget processes, particularly in government organizations. Ridgway (1956)
oVered analysis of diVerent types of performance measurement systems,
pointing out, many decades before it became a common observation, that
single, accounting-based measures often had undesirable performance eVects.
While these examples involve researchers who would not deWne themselves as
5
This is an issue that has resurfaced in post-SOX debates about corporate governance and
the role of controllers in recent corporate scandals.
accountants, increasing numbers of accounting researchers began to develop

‘behavioural accounting’.
Within accounting, Shillinglaw (1964) and Gordon (1964) explored the
accounting implications of developments in operational research and eco-
nomics on the optimal design of organizations and management control
systems (Bonini et al. 1964). They discussed the interrelations between
responsibility accounting, internal performance reporting, transfer pricing,
and organizational design. The organizational and behavioural aspects of
budgeting became a central preoccupation for many researchers in the
1960s and early 1970s, partly stimulated by the behavioural theory of the
Wrm (Cyert and March 1963), which oVered insightful comments about
the role of routines and standard operating procedures in organizational
resource allocation (e.g. Lowe and Shaw 1968). Increasingly, accounting
research traditions emphasized positivist approaches to research, particularly
the value of laboratory experiments. In the area of management accounting,
Becker and Green (1962) used laboratory settings to examine the interrela-
tions between the cohesiveness of work groups and the acceptance of budget
goals, and the impact of this interrelation on outcomes. A series of inXuential
experiments was published under the editorship of Tom Burns (1972, 1979)
at Ohio State. However, the use of a wider range of research methods and
approaches to epistemology was also sustained. Hofstede (1968) depicted the
budgetary process as a game which people play for its own sake, the key
ingredient of which, he argued, was the ‘game spirit’ with which managers
entered the ‘budget game’. And this line of reasoning was extended sign-
iWcantly by Hopwood (1974), who identiWed three distinct ways of using
budgetary information, styles he called ‘budget constrained’, ‘proWt con-
scious’, and ‘non-accounting’. Only the ‘proWt conscious’ style succeeded in
producing an intelligent concern with costs, one that went without the
manipulation of accounting reports and general deterioration in relationships
between managers and those to whom they reported.
Two decades of research into the behavioural aspects of budgeting and
related evaluation mechanisms transformed the discipline of accounting and
placed it Wrmly within the social sciences. Accounting was no longer to be
perceived as a purely technical process, but was to be viewed as organizational
and behavioural. But, despite the advance this represented, this was a highly
constrained view of the roles of accounting, one that was limited to studying
accounting within organizations only, and often at the micro level of groups
and group dynamics. Across these two decades, the links between accounting
and organizations became less prominent and institutions were simply
absent. From the mid-1970 onwards, however, things began to change in
line with wider developments in the social sciences.
M A K I N G O RG A N I Z AT I O N S M O R E C O M P L E X
Accounting researchers enthusiastically adopted an approach to behavioural

accounting that emphasized the psychological rather than the sociological
and political basis of behaviour. Some, however, continued to be inspired by
the earlier focus on organizational design, and looked to sociology and
political science to understand how and in what ways accounting was impli-
cated in wider organizational processes. In so doing, they opened up analysis
that stressed the complex nature both of organizations and accounting.
Particularly inXuential were those social scientists that empirically examined
the operation of bureaucracies, and applied ideas from systems thinking and
from theories of bounded rationality to organizational decision-making.
At a time when large organizations were increasingly dominating economic
and social life, empirical studies conducted by Woodward, Burns and Stalker, and
the ‘Aston Group’ in the United Kingdom, Crozier in France, and Lawrence and
Lorsch and Perrow in the United States drew on systems thinking and the idea
that organizations have environments that can aVect organizational functioning.
They pointed out that contingencies, such as technology and environmental
change, could impact the optimal design of organizations. This gave rise to what
came to be called the ‘contingency’ approach, which investigated the impact of a
range of environmental factors on organizational design and ultimately organ-
izational performance. Galbraith (1973) oVered a synthesis of the various factors
identiWed (such as production technology, size, strategy, and various conceptu-
alizations of an organization’s environment) that placed accounting at the centre
of organizational design, positing that these environmental factors all reXected
aspects of uncertainty and that the eVectiveness of an organization to manage
uncertainty was dependent on its ability to handle information.
The contingency approach was enthusiastically applied by those seeking to
both understand and prescribe accounting system design. Early empirical
applications include Khandwalla (1971); Bruns and Waterhouse (1975); and
Hayes (1977); and the innovative essay by Gordon and Miller (1976). These
studies demonstrated that simple prescriptions for the design of organiza-
tions were unlikely to be universally valid. They also emphasized the import-
ance of Wtting the internal accounting systems, whether we are referring to
cost, responsibility, budgeting, or performance evaluation and incentive sys-
tems, to the overall logic of organizational design. Although these studies
were subsequently the subject of criticism (Cooper 1981), they demonstrate a
commitment to studying the overall package of accounting technologies
(Otley 1980) in its organizational context. This project continued in the
1980s with studies such as Merchant (1981) and Chenhall and Morris (1986)
further developing our understanding of the contingent nature of accounting.
Developments in this literature oVer increasingly complex views of account-
ing and organizations, aided by further theorization of the role of accounting
coupled with new statistical techniques such as structural equation modelling.
One of the most inXuential developments was inspired by Simons (1987),
who sought a more detailed understanding of organizations and accounting
after being puzzled by his own quantitative results on the relation between
strategy, innovation and design, and use of accounting systems. He carried
out further research, combining qualitative, quantitative, and theoretical
analysis, which resulted in his levers of control framework (Simons 1995).
Just as Miles and Snow (1978) had previously triggered a stream of studies in
the contingency literature by making the concept of strategy measurable, so
the multiple and ever more complex measures of diVerent types of control
oVered ways to move beyond limited notions of the role of accounting
(Chapman 1997). More recent studies have become increasingly sensitive to
the signiWcance of the nature of communication patterns surrounding
accounting systems and information. This has led to questioning of the
continued fruitfulness of simple oppositions between stylizations of mechan-
istic and organic organization (e.g. Chenhall and Morris 1995) that had
dominated contingency modelling in accounting.
Reviewing these developments, Ahrens and Chapman (2004) suggest the
notion of enabling control to overcome some of the challenges to be faced in
researching complex organizations and complex accounting systems and
calculations. Widener (2007) demonstrates the continuing value of the levers
of control framework, particularly when it incorporates the costs and beneWts
of management control activities. Together with the ‘business systems’
approach of Whitley (1999), all these developments point to the importance
of detailed understandings of organizations and accounting and the associ-
ated role of careful Weld studies that capture the complexities of organizations
and internal accounting systems and practices.
AC C O U N T I N G A S A N O RG A N I Z AT I O NA L
A N D I N S T I T U T I O NA L P R AC T I C E
Periodizing is a risky business, but it has beneWts. For the case in hand, it helps
identify turning-points in research agendas, highlights the limits of previous
ways of posing questions, and allows the scale and potential of a new research
agenda to gain sharper relief. If ‘behavioural accounting’ helped place account-

ing research within the social sciences for about two decades until the mid-
1970s, it was also constraining as a paradigm. In focusing almost exclusively on
things that happened within organizations, it left out much. The need to alter
this was Wrmly and unambiguously stated by Hopwood (1978). This was a call
to arms to address the interrelations between accounting change and large-
scale social change. Hopwood had been a strong advocate of the importance of
studying the uses of accounting within organizations. But, he suggested, this
needed to be matched by attending to the pressures arising in the wider
social and economic environment, and how they impacted on accounting
(Hopwood 1974). In so far as much contemporary accounting reXects the
ethos of capitalism, so too would one expect the forms and philosophies of
accounting to change in line with changes in the social and political environ-
ment. The initial editorial of Accounting, Organizations and Society referred to
an ‘urgent need for research which can provide a basis for seeing accounting as
both a social and organizational phenomenon’ (Hopwood 1976: 3), arguing
that studies of power, inXuence, and control should complement studies of the
behavioural aspects of accounting within organizations.
Research traditions do not change overnight, however. Indeed, it was to be
a few more years before things began to alter noticeably and Hopwood (1978)
could still comment that there was little research that addressed the wider
social and political inXuences on accounting. The more social—psychological
focus that was characteristic of the North American research tradition con-
tinued to dominate, in contrast to European approaches that drew increas-
ingly on research traditions that emphasized broader inXuences that went
beyond the boundaries of groups and organizations. Even as late as 1980,
Hopwood argued, along with others, that a sociological analysis of accounting
that could blend successfully micro-level and macro-level concerns remained
largely an aspiration. Indeed, it was not even clear what concepts and issues
would guide such a research agenda.
Some suggestions, however, were put forward in an inXuential paper that
sought to identify the roles of accounting in organizations and society (Burch-
ell et al. 1980). A wide range of hitherto neglected issues should, it was argued,
be brought within the purview of accounting researchers, and the basic
premise on which accounting was analysed should change. Rather than seeing
the technical dimensions of accounting as independent of social dynamics,
they should be seen as interrelated. Just as Argyris had argued nearly three
decades earlier that accounting practices can create groups, so too, it was
argued, can accounting create other social forms. The role of accounting in
creating particular organizational visibilities, in impacting particular patterns
of organizational and social management, and in aVecting structures of power
needed to be addressed. The analysis of accounting within organizations

should be connected explicitly with the analysis of more general forms of
economic and social management. Accounting should, that is to say, no
longer be conceived as a purely organizational phenomenon. Particular
emphasis was placed on the institutional nature of accounting. The earlier
tradition of sociological enquiry concerning accounting, as embodied in the
writings of Marx and Weber, was appealed to as having identiWed issues
worthy of systematic study. Processes of rationalization should be addressed,
as should the mythical, symbolic, and ritualistic roles of accounting (Cooper
1983). Studies of the organizational roles of accounting should, it was
argued, be complemented by studies of the societal and institutional roles
of accounting.
A M U LT I P L I C AT I O N O F M E T H O D O LO G I E S
From 1980 onwards, the range of methodologies drawn upon by researchers

broadened, as did the focus. Institutional structures and processes, and their
interrelations with accounting practices, were given increasing attention. A
concern with organizations remained, but this was now paired with an
interest in the social and institutional aspects of accounting (Hopwood and
Miller 1994). In part this reXects the increasing attention to the power of
institutions such as the modern state, accounting standard setting and other
regulatory bodies, professional associations and, more recently, multinational
accounting Wrms and transnational organizations (Cooper and Robson 2006;
Suddaby et al. 2007).
A diverse range of researchers began to focus increasingly on examining the
interplay between accounting, organizations, and institutions, partly as these
institutions were seen by a range of social scientists as prominent actors in
society. In the process, the discipline of accounting was reshaped, as it became
more reXective both of the methodologies to be used and the objects to which
they should be applied. Of course, researchers did this in very diVerent ways.
There was a multiplication or proliferation of methodologies used, in line
with what was happening in the social sciences more generally. But there was
more. For, along with this multiplication of methodologies, the domain of
accounting research itself broadened. If the pressures on accounting were now
seen to extend beyond the enterprise, things worked in the other direction
too—accounting itself came to be seen as contributing to the shaping of those
social and economic relations themselves. The distinction between manage-
ment accounting as a matter of ‘internal’ reporting, and Wnancial accounting
as a matter of ‘external’ reporting, no longer worked so neatly, if it ever did.

External accounts, and requirements for them, were seen to inXuence internal
accounts (Miller and O’Leary 1994, 2007). Reciprocally, internal accounts
could inXuence wider social relations (Miller and O’Leary 1987). Finally, this
was to have profound eVects for accounting research.
To characterize this pluralization of approaches to the analysis of account-
ing from 1980 onwards again requires that we simplify drastically. But,
hopefully, this simpliWcation allows us to appreciate not only methodological
diversity but also the diversiWcation of substantive analyses of accounting.
Once opened up to a wider social science agenda, accounting turned out to be
more interesting and signiWcant than many had previously realized. It is a
much larger endeavour, and one that has a far-reaching role in shaping social
and economic life. We identify four strands of research that contributed to
this expansion of the domain of accounting research from 1980 onwards: Wrst,
a concern with the institutional environments of accounting; second, a political
economy of accounting; third, an ethnography of accounting; and fourth, a
concern with the roles of accounting in governing economic life.
The Institutional Environments of Accounting

The ground was already laid within organization theory and sociology for the
analysis of the institutional environments of accounting. In the late 1970s, the
study of the institutionalized ‘myth structure’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977) of
rationalized societies had emerged. Meyer and Rowan argued that prevailing
theories neglected a concern with the legitimacy of rationalized formal struc-
tures, as distinct from day-to-day work activities. In so far as rationalized and
impersonal prescriptions attribute a social purpose to technical activity, and
specify the appropriate manner in which to pursue this activity, these ration-
alized prescriptions were worthy of study in their own right. Terming such
prescriptions ‘myths’, their importance stems from the extent to which they
become institutionalized, that is to say taken-for-granted ways of achieving
organizational ends. Such myths, Meyer and Rowan argued, become binding
on particular organizations, and shape the development of organizations and
societies.
The myths of the accountant thus took their place alongside those of
doctors, management thinkers, lawyers, and others. Whether it was a matter
of a particular category of cost, or the broader ceremonial role attributed to
Wnancial values in a rationalized society, myths, rationalization, and organ-
izations were to be linked, with accounting playing a key role. Echoing some
of Max Weber’s formulations, formal organizations were depicted as being
driven to adopt practices and procedures deWned as rational. The conventions

of modern accounting were central here, key mechanisms by which organ-
izations come to be linked to their institutional environments. To the extent
that organizations incorporate practices deWned as rational within their
institutional environment, it was argued that they increase their legitimacy
and survival prospects. The rules embodied in such practices then become
binding on the organization. The formal structures of organizations thus
come to reXect the myths of the institutional environment, as well as the
demands of the work activities of the organization.
Viewed in institutional terms, accounting is understood as one of the
mechanisms through which organizations come to incorporate rational con-
ceptions of ways of organizing. Accounting is one of many such practices in
contemporary societies, albeit a highly signiWcant one in a number of con-
temporary societies. It provides a set of techniques for organizing and mon-
itoring activities, and a language with which to deWne and delineate
organizational goals, procedures, and policies. Accounting performs a cere-
monial function that helps legitimate an organization among its ‘users’,
whether these are participants within the organization, stockholders, the
public, or regulatory bodies such as the Securities Exchange Commission.
Instead of presuming only eYciency eVects, the adoption and diVusion of
particular accounting practices can be studied with regard to their roles as
rational institutional myths. At a societal level, one can study how the amount
of accounting performed in a particular society or organization is inXuenced
by its environment, rather than by the intrinsically necessary technical work
processes.
An important new research agenda within accounting was opened up by
this focus on institutional environments. Researchers within accounting were
encouraged to look beyond the organization, to see changes within the
organization as dynamically linked with changes in the wider environment.
Accounting lost some of its apparent uniqueness in this view, and became
part of the cultural apparatus of a society. Budgetary and performance
measurement practices within an organization could be viewed in terms of
the articulation, enforcement, and modiWcation of societal expectations of
acceptable budgetary practices during a period of organizational decline
(Covaleski and Dirsmith 1988; Oakes et al. 1998). Questions such as how
this occurred, to what purpose, and from whom and where such expectations
arose, could be directed to a range of actors beyond the organization. The
increasing dominance of Wnance personnel in the control of large corpor-
ations could be explained by pointing to national cultures and traditions
(Armstrong 1987), changes in the strategy and structure of organizations
(Berry et al. 1985), changes in anti-trust laws, and the mimicking of Wrms
in similar environments (Fligstein 1990). A shift in intra-organizational

power relations is viewed as a result of events within the organizational
environment, and as a result of the way in which key actors within organiza-
tions deWne their problems. A range of further studies drew more loosely on
the institutional perspective (Ansari and Euske 1987; Espeland and Hirsch
1990; Bealing et al. 1996), and demonstrated the importance of linking
changes in accounting and auditing practices within an organization to the
demands and expectations of the institutional environment.
An appreciation of institutional environments also stimulated research on
accounting institutions, such as the accounting profession and the regulatory
bodies that produce and legitimize accounting rules. Initially, such studies were
conducted within the relatively untheorized traditions of conventional histories
(ZeV 1972). Yet, new forms of historical accounting scholarship, inXuenced by
theoretical developments in sociology and political science that drew on Weber,
began to emerge. Studies of the emergence and elaboration of professional
Welds were sensitized to the social relations between producers and consumers
of accounting and audit services by sociologists of professions (Johnson 1972)
and studies of accounting standard setting were inXuenced by developments in
political science that emphasized legitimacy, ideology, and power (Lukes 1974).
Accounting institutions and traditions were linked to other social institutions
such as the modern state (Puxty et al. 1987; Miller 1990); educational practices
(Hoskin and Macve 1986); stock market regulators (Miranti 1988); and more
general ideological and discursive developments (Montagna 1986). A concern
with accounting institutions thereby began to interconnect with studies that
took a more explicitly political economy approach.
A Political Economy of Accounting

Other researchers also drew attention to the importance of addressing the
macro-environment within which accounting operates, but borrowed their
theoretical coordinates instead from Marx and later writers in the political
economy tradition. Here, the emphasis was on the conXicting political and
economic interests at stake in accounting, both within and beyond organiza-
tions. Political economy writers placed particular emphasis on the ways in
which historically speciWc power relations are shaped by and in turn shape
accounting practices. The image of accounting as a technically neutral and
objective practice was rebutted sharply by political economy writers.
Accounting was viewed instead as a partial and interested language and
practice, one that represents and reinforces the interests of particular occu-
pational groups and classes.
Political economy is used here in a broad sense. We refer not only to those
writers who drew their inspiration more or less directly from the writings of
Marx (Tinker 1980; Bryer 1999), but also to those who drew on the writings of
those such as Braverman and Gramsci who did much to demonstrate the need
to extend and develop political economy analyses. Labor and Monopoly
Capital (Braverman 1974) was an intellectual call to arms to those who are
interested in understanding changes in the productive process and in the
occupational structure of the workforce that had occurred across the century
following Marx’s writings. He examined the ways that the knowledge and
expertise of workers was appropriated by management, and stressed the
enduring exploitation and alienation of work in capitalist enterprises. Braver-
man inspired many accounting researchers to explore the role of accounting
in the accumulation of wealth through large organizations. For instance,
Hopper and Armstrong (1991) and Armstrong (2002) analyse the role of
costing systems in such processes, while Hopper and his associates (e.g. Uddin
and Hopper 2001; Wickramasinghe and Hopper 2005) have extended this
form of analysis to developing countries.
Braverman further argued that monopoly capitalism devotes ever more
resources to accounting for value, to the point at which the labour expended
on such processes begins to approach or even exceed the labour used in
producing the underlying commodity or service. The growth in the amount
of accounting carried out in monopoly capitalism, according to Braverman, is
not just a function of increasing complexity. It is a matter also of trust, or the
lack of it. Indeed, the Wrst principle of modern accounting, Braverman
argued, is the presumption of dishonesty. And, if distrust is the norm, then
auditing has an important role as a means of certifying—or at least aspiring to
reassure—outside parties about the truth of the Wnancial records. Cast in
these terms, monopoly capitalism is characterized by a vast paper empire
which appears as real as the physical world, and which comes increasingly to
dominate it.
Within accounting, a number of writers developed and extended the
political economy approach, albeit with diVering emphases. The changing
form and content of Annual Reports were linked to changing strategies of
capital accumulation (Neimark and Tinker 1986; Neimark 1992). A ‘social
critique of accounting’ based on marginalist economics was proposed (Tinker
1980), together with an historical analysis of the material basis of accounting
ideas about the nature of value (Tinker et al. 1982). Such critiques were
coupled with a proposal for an ‘emancipatory accounting’ (Tinker 1985:
201). With a somewhat diVerent emphasis, Bryer (1993, 2005, 2006) has
embarked on an extensive series of historical analysis of accounting, arguing
that shifting calculations of accounting returns reXect the dominant mode of
capital appropriation in diVerent historical eras. A particular strength of such

analyses is their focus on the roles of accounting in shifting forms of capitalist
economic organization, whether they be historical analyses of the forms
studied by Bryer or more current forms, such as privatizations (Arnold and
Cooper 1999) or the international division of labour (Hanlon 1994).
Other writers in the same tradition drew less directly from the writings of
Marx, and more from recent political economy approaches. Drawing on more
cultural forms of Marxist analysis, inXuenced by writers as diverse as Gramsci
and Habermas, accounting researchers have studied representations of
accounting in various media (Lehman and Tinker 1987), accountability prac-
tices in public sector organizations (Broadbent et al. 1991; Townley et al. 2003),
as well as returning to the question raised by Sombart concerning the necessity
of accounting for the development of capitalism (Chiapello 2007). Variations
in modes of regulation of accounting practices (e.g. between state, market, and
professional) were linked to variation in the institutional and political struc-
tures between capitalist economies (Puxty et al. 1987). The roles of accounting
in industrial relations and wage determination negotiations were addressed
(Bougen 1989; Bougen et al. 1990). The dominance of accounting controls
over the labour process in the United Kingdom were explained by reference to
the ‘collective mobility project’ of the accounting profession in the United
Kingdom, and the dominant position it has achieved within the ‘economic
functions’ of the global function of capital (Armstrong 1985, 1987). And the
diVerential spread in the United States and the United Kingdom of practices
such as standard costing, budgeting, and performance reports were examined
using a historical-comparative method. A number of further studies were
conducted drawing broadly on the principles and concepts of political econ-
omy. The interaction between state actions and the distributional conse-
quences of accounting policies were examined (Arnold 1991), as were the
links between cost accounting techniques and attempts to control the labour
process. More recently, the importance of using concepts of class, ideology,
and social structure in analysing labour relations, and a factory reorganization
programme in particular, has been reaYrmed (Arnold 1998; Froudet al. 1998).
Ethnographies of Accounting
A diVerent agenda, one that can be labelled approximately an ethnography of
accounting, also emerged in the early 1980s. The concern here was with the
meanings and perceptions of the actors who develop and use accounting
practices in highly localized settings. An ethnography of accounting sought
to understand what was said, done, and understood by the actors involved
in a particular situation. While loosely inXuenced by anthropological and

sociological methods of Weld research (notably Glaser and Strauss 1967),
the study of the meaning of accounting calculations drew on a variety of
theoretical positions, from the dramaturgical approach of GoVman, the
phenomenology of Schutz, the symbolic interactionism of Mead and
Blumer, the social constructivism of Berger and Luckmann, and the ethno-
methodolgy of GarWnkel. Sense-making, understood as the conditions and
consequences of accounting in speciWc organizations, provided a popular
focus here (Weick 1979).
The ‘lived experience’ of individual actors was addressed through case
analyses that emphasized the symbolic use and interpretation of budgets
(Boland and Pondy 1983). An understanding of how practices of account-
ability contributed to the production and reproduction of organizational life
was the aim of such research (Roberts and Scapens 1985). Based on partici-
pant observation, Preston (1986) uses symbolic interaction and sense-making
theories to analyse the multiple and often informal ways that managers
inform themselves. Pentland (1993) alerts us to the emotional dimensions
of auditing, stressing the central role of comfort-producing practices in the
production of a credible account. A focus on the changing relations between
volumes and costs in advanced manufacturing (Jonsson and Gronlund 1988)
allowed one to understand how practices and procedures are worked out in
local settings. In so far as new ways of accounting have to be understood and
made sense of, an understanding of accounting change in a particular organ-
ization could be enhanced by referring to the meanings people attach to the
social world (Nahapiet 1988). The emergence of a new accounting-based
organizational culture could be analysed using an interpretive or ethno-
graphic frame (Dent 1991), as can the diVerent uses of accounting calcula-
tions in diVerent countries (Ahrens 1996). Meanwhile, the process of
‘becoming’ a professional accountant (Power 1991) could be viewed as
analogous to that of the ‘moral career’ of the mental patient (GoVman 1961).
The constructivism of Berger and Luckmann was augmented by an increas-
ing use of the actor network theory of Callon and Latour. Thus Preston et al.
(1992) examine the fabricating of hospital budgets, identifying the processes
by which an accounting innovation becomes taken for granted. Changes in
accounting practices and systems within hospitals (Chua 1995; Kurunmäki
2004) and manufacturing (Briers and Chua 2001) were studied in terms of
changing understandings of how and why the new accounting numbers were
produced, and how the social linkages among a relatively small group of
people enabled this to occur. More recently, this set of sensitivities to the
situated functionality of accounting has drawn on a growing range of theori-
zations of practice (e.g. Ahrens and Chapman 2007; Lounsbury 2007).
Accounting and Governing Economic Life

By the mid-1980s, there was an increasing acceptance that accounting did more
than mirror economic reality, and that its sphere of inXuence extended beyond
the boundaries of organizations and Wrms. But the notion that accounting
could shape and create social relations, that it could inXuence the way we live
our lives, that it could alter the ways in which individuals and organizations
understand the choices open to them, remained to be demonstrated. A set of
diverse yet loosely connected bodies of work made this possible, and in the
process broadened the terrain of accounting research signiWcantly.
A concern with enterprise calculation in the concrete conditions of speciWc
capitalist economies had directed attention to the forms of organization and
conditions of operation of enterprises (Cutler et al. 1977, 1978). The criteria of
calculation and the forms they took were seen to be shaped within particular
institutional and social arenas. The calculation of proWt was viewed as an
outcome of particular norms of measurement, and those norms of measure-
ment were themselves held to be understandable in terms of the particular
national context in which they gained acceptance and signiWcance. Economic
policy, taken to include the objectives and practices of any agent in the
economic sphere, similarly directed attention at both the means and instru-
ments through which particular calculative techniques were accorded sign-
iWcance (Tomlinson 1994). In a manner that preWgured some of the arguments
of Callon (1998), economic calculation was seen to require some agent or
agency that calculates, and that in turn was seen to be explicable in terms of a
dispersed organizational and institutional matrix (Thompson 1986).
Within accounting, Hopwood and others pointed to the importance
of studying historically speciWc ‘constellations’ (Burchell et al. 1985). This
referred to the particular social space where a set of diverse practices, processes,
and institutions intersected. A proposed accounting innovation (the ‘value
added’ event) was analysed as a Weld comprised of a very particular set of
relations established between calculative practices and norms, bodies of know-
ledge, economic and administrative processes, and institutions. In a related
manner, although drawing on distinct reference points, Robson (1991) set out
explicitly to apply and extend this approach in a study of accounting standard
setting in the United Kingdom. Accounting practices change, Robson argued,
when a particular group or institution is able successfully to enrol other actors
in their proposals by incorporating and translating the interests of others into
the solutions proposed. In this process, problems are deWned as shared,
alliances formed, arguments mobilized, and the interests of other groups,
parties, and institutions enrolled towards a common interest.
At the margins of the discipline, the issue of calculation as a complex

calculative practice was placed centre stage by the writings of Miller and Rose
(1990) and Callon (1998). These gave pride of place to the material reality of
calculation, the Wgures, mechanisms, and inscriptions that are decisive in
performing calculations. For Miller and Rose the emphasis was how the
technologies of calculation and management gave shape to the rationalities of
administrative and political programmes. Calculation and agency are two sides
of the same coin, according to this view, and the existence of calculative
agencies correlates closely according to Callon with that of calculative tools.
These tools, viewed as ‘performative’, mutually deWne the nature and content of
the calculations made by calculative agencies, and the tools themselves are
open, plastic, and reconWgurable. These ideas, along with others coming from
science studies,6 gave renewed impetus across the social sciences to a concern
with the tools of economic calculation. Out of this concern emerged what has
since come to be termed the sociology of Wnance (Mackenzie and Millo 2003;
Beunza and Stark 2004; KalthoV 2005; MacKenzie 2006).
Viewed in terms of governing economic life, the emphasis was not only on
the tools of economic calculation. Of equal interest was the language or
vocabulary in terms of which particular forms of accounting were articulated
and called for. As Hopwood had put it some years earlier, the spread of costing
is typically linked to the spread of a language of costliness. Likewise with tools
for assessing investment opportunities and divisional performance, which are
typically framed in terms of managerial decision-making (Miller 1998). If the
single Wnancial Wgure is a potent tool for intervening—in so far as it appears
to confer objectivity and neutrality—then its deployment is always in relation
to a particular object and objective, whether that be improving eYciency,
reducing waste, or transforming individuals into calculating selves (Miller
1994). The same holds for audit, as Power (1997) convincingly demonstrated.
For audit is made up not only of samples, checklists, and analytic methods.
Equally important is that audit is an idea, a generalized aspiration that is
shared by a wide range of regulatory agencies and policy designers. Auditing is
more than a collection of tests and an evidence gathering task, it is also an
assemblage of values and goals that are inscribed in the oYcial programmes
that demand and desire it.
By the late 1990s, the constitutive or inventive capacities of accounting had
been Wrmly demonstrated in a number of studies. The importance of attending
6
The humanities are similarly interested in calculative practices, particularly in the rhetoric
of economic calculation and valuation, literary understandings of the relation between individ-
uals, capital and markets, and the power of objectivity and facts in modernity (MacIntyre 1984;
Zelizer 1994; Porter 1995; Poovey 1998).
to the links between what happens within organizations, and what happens
beyond them had been widely accepted. The basic premise set out at the begin-
ning of this introduction was established by this point. Accounting practices were
seen as inextricably linked not only to what took place within Wrms and
other organizations, but were also viewed as similarly linked to what happened
beyond their boundaries. Accounting was a legitimate object of social scientiWc
enquiry.
AC C O U N T I N G F O R T H E F U T U R E
Disciplines can be discomforted by reXections on their past, just as they can

be by analyses of their current practice. We have seen this, for instance, with
disciplines that seem distant from accounting, such as anthropology, psych-
iatry, and medicine. Commentary can appear as critique, and critique can in
turn be viewed as outright opposition. An implicit belief in progress can be
unsettled by a demonstration that things could have turned out diVerently,
and the present can be made to seem at least a little less secure and stable. Our
aim here has been neither critique nor opposition, but we have sought to
disturb the self-evidence that can be attached to the present state of account-
ing and accounting research. We have drawn attention to the curiously
punctuated history of a social science concern with accounting. Initially,
central to social science at the start of the twentieth century, accounting
more or less disappeared from the social sciences for approximately half a
century. And, when it was ‘rediscovered’ by social scientists in the 1950s and
1960s, this was in terms of a rather constrained social—psychological and
rationalistic framework. It was not until the mid-1970s that a broader concern
with the links between accounting, organizations, and institutions began to
emerge, and it was not until the last two decades of the twentieth century that
this research tradition began to Xourish.
But a social scientiWc concern with accounting as an organizational and
institutional phenomenon is still very much in its early stages. For too long,
the economy has been left to the economists, and other social scientists have
failed to address this immensely important phenomenon. If we learn only one
thing from recurrent Wnancial crises, it should be that a fuller understanding
of all those calculative practices that underpin the modern economy is
urgently needed. And this understanding should not be viewed as a narrow
technical understanding, but it should be viewed as including the ideas and
aspirations that are so intimately attached to the roles of accounting in
organizations and institutions. If we neglect the latter, then our understanding
of the former is seriously diminished. Accounting is too important to be

studied only by accountants! But, even today, the growing interest in account-
ing by those such as economic sociologists is partial and geographically
diVerentiated. While European economic sociologists are paying increasing
attention to accounting, mainstream North American economic sociology
has barely registered it as a topic worthy of attention (Mennicken et al. 2008).
Organization theorists outside accounting, including ‘critical’ management
studies writers, have been similarly neglectful of accounting. The chapters in
this volume, which come from both ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ the discipline of
accounting, seek to redress this neglect, and hopefully they indicate the scale
of the research agenda that lies ahead.
This research agenda also entails an engagement with practice and meth-
odology. Engagement with practice could include, but should also extend
beyond, managerialist improvements in the service of those in positions of
authority and inXuence (Sikka et al. 1995). Critical Wnancial analysis (Shaoul
1998) and policy advice in the public interest, however diYcult that term is to
operationalize, need to be encouraged (Sikka and Willmott 1997; Neu et al.
2001). Practice also refers to academic institutions and practices and we can
elaborate our argument and the rationale for this book by turning our gaze
inwards and encourage critical reXexivity.
There is little point in suggesting that ‘others’ should take note of account-
ing, if we fail to take note ourselves of the ways in which particular forms of
economic calculation are shaping and reshaping professional and academic
life. Academic practice includes recognizing the increasing schism between
teaching and research and the impact of performance measurement regimes
on academic life and student experience. We know already how audit and
performance assessment, when deployed more or less indiscriminately to
evaluate such entities as schools, hospitals, and universities, can transform
accountability into a simpliWed and standardized set of metrics (Power 1994;
Strathern 2000). Inspired at least in part by desires to increase accountability
and transparency, such measures can result in a focus on the indicators
themselves, rather than the qualities the measures were supposed to evaluate.
Likewise, rankings and reactivity to rankings can become diYcult to diVer-
entiate, with consequent eVects on the distribution of resources, deWnitions of
work, and the extent of gaming strategies (Espeland and Sauder 2007). Invest-
ment in metrics and rankings of academic performance seems to reinforce
some of the very trends—writing only for prestigious journals, teaching that
becomes separate from research, and narrow, mono-method, and manage-
rialist research—that the investments are purportedly trying to combat.
One possible implication of these developments, which may be more severe
in accounting and other business disciplines than in the social sciences more
generally—and possibly even more severe in the United States than else-
where—is the decoupling of research from the institutional and philosophical
traditions that gave rise to it (Hopwood 2007). This can result in a situation
where the only consumers of accounting research are other accounting
researchers. In such circumstances, institutional careerism can produce intel-
lectually constrained and conformist research agendas, whose incremental
contribution to knowledge is minimal and where only elite researchers have
the authority to innovate. The risks of careerism also include intolerance of
intellectual and methodological diversity. We can only speculate on solutions
to such problems, although an appreciation of what is already known about
the linkages between accounting, organizations, and institutions suggests
change will be diYcult. It can, however, be fostered through increased reXex-
ivity and dialogue with respect to the multiple roles of accounting in organ-
izations and institutions, whether those reside within academia or beyond.
The chapters in this volume are, we hope, a testament to intellectual
diversity, experiment, and how far we have travelled, even though reading
them makes one appreciate how much further we need to travel in under-
standing and intervening in the interrelations among accounting, organiza-
tions, and institutions. Appreciating their collective contribution requires a
serious commitment to understanding multiple methodologies and a respect
for diVerent research traditions. By commissioning chapters from a diverse set
of researchers from inside and outside accounting, we trust this volume
demonstrates the value of such an endeavour.
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1

Linking Accounting, Organizations,

versa), how can we understand accounting practices without recourse to the

individually and collectively, however, they demonstrate the interest and

distinction between Wnancial and management accounting) are helpful in

machines. It examined whether controllers should be part of the centralized

accountants, increasing numbers of accounting researchers began to develop

Accounting researchers enthusiastically adopted an approach to behavioural

agenda to gain sharper relief. If ‘behavioural accounting’ helped place account-

needed to be addressed. The analysis of accounting within organizations

From 1980 onwards, the range of methodologies drawn upon by researchers

as a matter of ‘external’ reporting, no longer worked so neatly, if it ever did.

The Institutional Environments of Accounting

driven to adopt practices and procedures deWned as rational. The conventions

in similar environments (Fligstein 1990). A shift in intra-organizational

A Political Economy of Accounting

capital appropriation in diVerent historical eras. A particular strength of such

in a particular situation. While loosely inXuenced by anthropological and

Accounting and Governing Economic Life

At the margins of the discipline, the issue of calculation as a complex

Disciplines can be discomforted by reXections on their past, just as they can

of the former is seriously diminished. Accounting is too important to be

Armstrong, P. (1985). Changing management control strategies: The role of compe-

Bryer, R.A. (1993). The late nineteenth-century revolution in Wnancial reporting:

Hopwood, A.G. (1983). On trying to study accounting in the contexts in which it

Power, M. (2004). The Audit Explosion. London: Demos.

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