Lisa Jack

Enterprise Resource Planning and a contest to limit the role of management accountants: A strong structuration perspective

Abstract The implementation and use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems raise fundamental questions about the role of management accountants in an organisation. The case studied here, involving an attempt to establish an ERP system in an organisation funded by both the European Union (EU) and the Egyptian government, is an exploration of conflicting beliefs about the role of management accountants. Elements of strong structuration theory (a reinforced version of Giddens’ structuration theory) are used to analyse how the contest over the role of the management accountant in a new organisation was played out during the partially successful attempt to establish ERP in conjunction with a system that was felt to better support the requirements of the EU for performance-based budgeting. Despite the forward-looking dispositions of key actors within the organisation and from the EU, the role of the management accountant here became compressed to the traditional one of cost information collector and provider.

Introducing strong structuration theory for informing qualitative case studies in organization, management and accounting research

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present a reinforced version of structuration theory, known as strong structuration theory, set out in Stones as a disciplined approach to qualitative case study research in the organization, management and accounting fields. This framework challenges the belief held by certain critics that structuration theory cannot be used in substantive empirical research but is only a sensitising device or analytical tool.Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual discussion is the approach of the paper.Findings – The key concepts of strong structuration theory are outlined and then put in the context first of two attempts to apply the framework to empirical research and second of two recent papers which address theoretically informed qualitative research and the use of structuration theory in IT studies.Research limitations/implications – There are some limitations of this paper. The framework offered was not used to set the original research questions in the two case studies em...

Protecting agricultural accounting in the UK

Abstract This paper examines a particular accounting practice prevalent in the UK agriculture industry and reveals the ‘canopy of legitimations’ that appears to protect the practice and make it highly resistant to change. Agricultural gross margin accounting was innovated through Government sponsored agricultural extension programmes in the post-war period in Britain. The practice is not maintained primarily by farmers but rather by actors within Government agencies and agricultural service industries (including management consultants). New Institutionalism in Sociology (NIS) is used as a theoretical framework, and extended to consider the concept of legitimation as a reflexive process. Although the context is specifically UK agriculture, the theme of the protection of accounting methods by Government and other advisors is of more universal interest. The paper adds to the very few studies in the accounting literature that consider the agriculture and food industries.

The Boundaries of Reporting Sustainable Development in Social Housing

The Registered Social Landlord (an independent housing association in the UK) examined here was widely recognized as providing an example of good governance. The organization was using extensive internal reporting, both corporate and quasi-governmental in language, to try to accurately capture different aspects of performance. This article reveals that reporting sustainable development has boundaries to be overcome, particularly in measuring performance of environmental and community activities.

Facing up to new realities: The case for using relevant cost and target cost approaches in agriculture

The use of management accounting in the agricultural industry has received very little attention by accounting researchers. Agriculture is currently in an era of significant change and adjustment, where change in accounting practice needs to occur in response to external pressures. The traditional use of the gross margin system of accounting has tended to underline a notion that has had a powerful influence on farm business planning that most costs are fixed and that the best way of reducing them to achieve profit maximisation is to spread them by increasing the scale of operation. This logic has been supported by an economic environment heavily influenced by agricultural policy measures that focused on artificial support for market prices and/or direct payments linked to production activities. We argue that the decoupling of support from production has combined with a number of other changes related to payments and cost structures (including those linked to the recent dramatic rise in the price of oil) to provide a very different economic context for farm business planning. The response we advocate to this changed situation is to make greater use of two alternative methods of cost analysis; namely relevant costing and target costing. These have been developed and applied outside agriculture. They have not so far been used in a formal sense within agriculture but have links to existing methodologies used in farm business planning, such as partial budgeting, and in intuitive approaches already adopted by farmers as revealed in recent fieldwork.

Inter-organisational performance measurement practices between supply chain partners: issues for the agri-food industry

Inter-organizational performance measurement (IOPM) is an emerging area of study for researchers. Morgan (2004) refers to the area of performance measurement in supply chain management as just ‘coming of age’ whilst Neely (2005) identifies ‘How to measure performance across supply chains and networks rather than within organizations?’ as one of the urgent questions needing to be addressed by practitioners and researchers. Most commentators agree that there is ‘a dearth of research into performance measurement systems and metrics’ (Shepherd and Gűnter 2006, p242). The current position of IOPM research is reviewed here, in the context of the agri-food industry, with its complex and fragmentary supply chains that exacerbate the common problems found in setting up appropriate metrics and managing relationships in supply chains.

Estates, enterprise and investment at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution: estate management and accounting in the North-East of England, c.1700–1780

There is a general acknowledgement, re-stated at the start of this book that the economic development of Britain from an agrarian, feudal society to an industrial, capitalist one was largely led by estate owners. Estates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the largest, most defined type of business organisation in existence, and formative industrial developments in mining and transportation came through landowners investing in their land, and retaining the rights and rewards from those investments. Accounting historians in particular have interrogated the records from estates to show how estate management practices were disseminated from an agricultural setting to other, industrial sectors. The extent to which those practices are the forerunners of modern management accounting practices is much debated. It has been held that modern accounting practices began during and after World War I but others have pointed to estate practices in the Middle Ages as the progenitors of modern management accounting. This book sits between the two periods, and is thus well placed to explore this issue. By David Oldroyd, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007, xii + 217 pp., £55.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-7546-3455-3

Book Review: Financial reporting and global capital markets: a history of the International Accounting Standards Committee, 1973–2000

This book adds an international dimension to the author’s histories of the British financial system and, in particular, to his important book on the London Stock Exchange by tracing the role of securities from their beginnings in the late Middle Ages to developing into a global securities market at the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first century. In the Introduction the purpose of undertaking such a history is seen not only as addressing a long neglected part of financial systems but, above all, to give securities the place and recognition they deserve in the creation of an advanced global financial market. The progression of securities from local to national markets towards a global market is recorded and assessed meticulously. Chronologically, he discerns six distinct periods, which geographically he places as originating in Amsterdam, spreading from there to Paris, London and other European cities, then further extending into the USA, branching out to Asia, Australia, Latin America and South-Africa, finally becoming a global market. The first period, from 1100 to 1720, saw securities coming into use by merchants in Italian cities during the thirteenth century as convenient negotiable short-term credit, since they represented a promise to pay a specific amount at a specific time. At this stage no market in securities had emerged, but securities served as risk-limitation for merchants as large lenders to frequently defaulting rulers and governments. In consequence of advances in manufactures and shipping moving to the North of Europe and the concomitant financial transactions, the Bourse in Antwerp was opened in 1531. Here Michie places the beginnings of discounting bills related to a market in securities. Subsequently the financial centre of Europe moved to Amsterdam, where by 1609 interest in transferable securities rose. A crucial role in this development was played by the Dutch East India Company, founded as a joint-stock company in 1602. Thus ‘it was out of the private initiative of the Dutch East India Company the global securities market began to take on its modern form’ (p. 26). Any beginning of a global dimension, which the author seems to detect already at that early time, was repeatedly impeded by recurring spectacular booms and busts. These were overcome to a certain extent by restrictions, rules and regulations during the founding period of stock exchanges led by Paris and London. Due to the larger variety of securities in mutual dealings among the rising numbers of stock exchanges as well as among free traders, the international reach of securities markets expanded. The controlling influence resided in London and Western Europe. This development can be seen as happening ‘within the global securities market’, as Michie remarks, at this stage only in the context of the period, although one can agree that a European securities market did exist by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet he shows that in the second period, from 1720 to 1815, securities still represented an insignificant part of trading on strictly regulated stock exchanges as well as on unregulated ‘over-the-counter’ markets. Paris became the leader in the organisation of a general market in bonds, bills and other financial instruments, an increasing number of which became transferable papers used by Business History Vol. 50, No. 2, March 2008, 226–250