Gudrun Baldvinsdottir

An institutional perspective of accountants' new roles – the interplay of contradictions and praxis

Abstract Recent years have witnessed a flurry of commentaries, mainly in the professional accounting literature, on new business-oriented roles for management accountants. Often premised on the generalisation of survey data, such work undoubtedly provides useful publicity to the underlying trends. However, to date, empirical research into the dynamics of role(s) change in actual organisations is scarce. This paper describes the emergence of new team/process-oriented roles for so-called ‘hybrid’ accountants in the manufacturing division of a multinational pharmaceuticals organisation. Adopting institutional theory, the following provides insight into role(s) change, as processes that encompass both institutional embeddedness and transformational agency. We highlight institutional contradictions that create potential openings for change, and discuss the praxis that underpin when, how and why role(s) change is carved out.

Accounting for trust: some empirical evidence

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