Anthony G. Hopwood

The roles of accounting in organizations and society

Abstract The paper seeks to contrast the roles that have been claimed on behalf of accounting with the ways in which accounting functions in practice. It starts by examining the context in which rationales for practice are articulated and the adequacy of such claims. Thereafter consideration is given to how accounting is implicated in both organizational and social practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for accounting research.

The archeology of accounting systems

Accounting systems change over time. However relatively little is known of the preconditions for such change, the process of change or its organisational consequences. Existing perspectives on accounting change are reviewed and evaluated in this article. Thereafter three examples of accounting change are discussed. Based on these cases, a number of theoretical issues relating to the understanding of the process of accounting change are examined. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of factors implicated in accounting change, the constitutive as well as reflective roles of accounting and the ways in which accounting change can shift the preconditions for subsequent organisational changes.

On trying to study accounting in the contexts in which it operates

Accounting has come to be seen as playing a key role in organizational functioning. Concerned, as it now is, with such activities as assessing the costs and benefits of organizational actions, the setting of financial standards and norms, the representation and reporting of organizational performance, and financial planning and control, accounting has been used to cast important aspects of the functioning of the modern organization into economic terms. By offering particular economic representations of organizational activities and outcomes to both internal participants and interested external parties, it has come to be involved in the creation of a quite specific organizational order and mission. Accounting is now associated with particular ways of seeing and trying to shape organizational processes and actions, with the maintenance of certain forms of organizational segmentation, hierarchy and control, and with the furtherance of an economic rationale for action (Batstone, 1979). Indeed in many cases the forms taken by decision processes, the structuring of organizational activities and even the specification of an organizational boundary are not independent of the accounting representation of them. Modes of accounting have become not only important and valued management practices but also ones whose existence and consequences are difficult to disentangle from the functioning of organizations as we know them. Accounting, in other words, has become centrally implicated in the modern form of organizing. With accounting so intertwined with organizational functioning it is surprising that so little is known of the organizational nature of accounting practice. That, however, is the case. Although early studies of accounting in action focused on trying to understand its organizational roles and consequences, many more recent investigations have detached accounting from its organizational setting, preferring instead to study the consequences which it has at the individual rather than the organizational level.’ Admittedly such studies are providing us with many interesting and useful insights into both the interpretation of accounting information and ways of trying to facilitate its use in decision making situations. Be that as it may, they do not explicitly aim to help us to understand what is at stake in the organizational

Accounting and Organisation Change

We live in a world in which there is acute consciousness of both change itself and the necessity for it. This is no less true for business and commercial affairs than for other aspects of social and economic life. Developments such as the shifting of political values and ideologies are mirrored in the financial sphere. And of course the financial sector has been an area where change has been occurring in its own right – the growing internationalisation of the financial markets, for example. Indeed, we are living in a world where the ratio between the financial and the “real” sectors has increased dramatically over the last decade.

Changing Pressures on the Research Process: On Trying to Research in an Age when Curiosity is not Enough

Abstract Recognizing that there are increasing concerns about the possible standardisation of accounting research, the paper explores the different pressures that are behind this development. Consideration is also given to possible opposition and coping strategies.

Accounting calculation and the shifting sphere of the economic

The paper examines some aspects of the interrelationship between accounting and economics. Noting that much of the significance of accounting stems from the coupling of relatively routine procedures with wider understandings of the functions which they can serve, the paper examines how economic discourses have provided contexts for accounting elaboration and change. Reference is made to two case examples. The mutual interrelationship between accounting and economics is emphasized in the paper with particular consideration being given to the ways in which accounting calculations facilitate the construction of spheres of economic activity.

Accounting and everyday life: An introduction

Abstract An outline is given of some of the ways in which the functioning of accounting is related to wider cultural and social practices. Some consideration is given to the factors implicated in the construction of todays image of the accountant and the public oriented nature of key aspects of the craft.

Some reflections on ‘The harmonization of accounting within the EU’

Using the Thorell and Whittington analysis of European and international accounting as a basis, consideration is given to a number of important but neglected issues. The discussion focuses on the need to understand better the processes of supranational accounting policy-making, the significant role played by the audit industry and its agents, and the distancing of actual users from the forums of influence.

'If only there were simple solutions, but there aren't': some reflections on Zimmerman's critique of empirical management accounting research

Although having some sympathies with Zimmermans critique of Ittner and Larckers review of the empirical management accounting research literature, this analysis points out how Zimmerman has too easily allowed his own prejudices to influence both his assessment of the empirical management accounting literature and his recommendations for improvement. Particular emphasis is put on analysing Zimmermans classification of the accounting research literature and his unproblematic optimism in the potential of economic modes of understanding.

Understanding financial accounting practice

Abstract In introducing three papers on the institutionalised nature of financial accounting practices, this paper argues for the importance of research that can provide more adequate insights into the wider institutional and social positioning of financial accounting. Illustrating the argument by appeal to both contemporary and earlier examples, emphasis is placed on the ways in which changes in the wider interests in and around the enterprise can and do mediate financial accounting practice.