Norman B. Macintosh

A Tentative Exploration into the Amount and Equivocality of Information Processing in Organizational Work Units.

? 1981 by Cornell University 0001 -839218112602-02071

Accounting as simulacrum and hyperreality: perspectives on income and capital

00.75 A model is proposed that relates the amount and equivocality of information processing to thevariety and analyzability of work-unit activities. New questionnaire scales were developed for the information and task variables, and an exploratory test of the model was conducted on 24 work units. The reported amount of information processing increased with both task variety and analyzability; the reported use of equivocal information decreased with task analyzability. The findings suggest a modification of the previously reported positive relationship between task uncertainty and amount of information processing

CATS, RATS, AND EARS: Making the case for ethnographic accounting research

This paper draws on two independent strands of literature—Baudrillard’s orders-of-simulacra theoretic and financial accounting theory—to investigate the ontological status of information in accounting reports. It draws on Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra, hyperreality and implosion to trace the historical transformations of the accounting signs of income and capital from Sumerian times to the present. It posits that accounting today no longer refers to any objective reality but instead circulates in a ‘‘hyperreality’’ of self-referential models. The paper then examines this conclusion from the viewpoint of recent clean surplus model research and argues that the distinction between income and capital is arbitrary and irrelevant provided the measurement process satisfies the clean surplus relation. Although accounting is arbitrary and hyperreal, it does impart a sense of exogeniety and predictability, particularly through the income calculation. Therefore, it can be relied on for decisions that do have real, material and social consequences. The paper ends with some implications of Baudrillard’s theoretic for accounting, reflections on accounting’s implications for Baudrillard’s theoretic and suggestions for future research. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Nature and Use of Formal Control Systems for Management Control and Strategy Implementation

In this paper we argue that ethnographic or interpretive accounting research studies (EARS), which have been marginalized by critical accounting theory studies (CATS) and rational accounting theory studies (RATS), are a valuable way to understand the way accounting works in actual organizational settings. The problem of researching trust and its relation to accounting is used as an example where EARS seems to hold the edge over both CATS and RATS. The paper describes three main types of EARS—cognitive anthropology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology, briefly describes a classical ethnographic study and an accounting example of each type. It then sets up a conversational debate between EARS, CATS, and RATS in order to bring out their major points of disagreement and concurrence. The paper concludes by speculating that some sort of rapprochment might be worked out whereby EARS will be induced to work more closely to current theoretical discourses and that CATS and RATS will pay more attention to the stories and beliefs of real live actors in actual organizational settings. The result could be a sort of critical ethnography. The big challenge seems to be to find out whether trust and accounting are phenomena on different levels of analysis that can be studied (following Wittgenstein) as figure and ground, or whether they are mutually constitutive and thus something we should not talk about—at least until we know more. We conclude that one valuable way to proceed is a research strategy whereby field narratives are produced along classical ethnographic lines and then used to interrogate, reinterpret, and perhaps revise reigning critical accounting studies.

MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS AND DEPARTMENTAL INTERDEPENDENCIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY.

Management control research from organization theory, accounting, and business policy is reviewed; and a two-stage qualitative study of management control systems (MCSs) used in business organizations is reported. The study identified four MCS components used at the middle management level: budget, policies and procedures, performance appraisal system, and statistical reports. Each MCS component played a role during the control cycle of target setting, monitoring, and corrective feedback. The findings were used to propose two models: One model links the MCS to business level strategy implementation, and the other defines primary and secondary roles for MCS components in the management control process.

A New Approach to Design and Use of Management Information

Abstract Behavioral accounting research suggests that (1) the design and use of a management accounting system is related to overall characteristics of the organization, and (2) a management accounting system is one element in a package of control systems. The research reported here investigated the relationship between the organizational characteristic of departmental interdependence and the design and use of three elements in a package of management controls — the operating budget, periodic statistical reports, and standard operating policies and procedures. The findings support the hypothesis that departmental interdependence is related to the emphasis placed on each management control system. Standard operating procedures were an important control device when interdependence was low. The budget and statistical reports were used more extensively when interdependence was modurate. When interdependence among departments was high, the role of all three control systems diminished.

Budget-related behavior in public sector organizations: Some empirical evidence

Information, that is both accurate and timely, is probably the most important resource needed by managers to make sound decisions regarding the problems and issues facing their organizations. Unfortunately, sophisticated information systems often fail to meet this need. Managers complain that the data produced by information systems arrive too late, are too general and lack accuracy. Daft and MacIntosh studied the system problems of a number of organizations, discovering that understanding their work activities is critical to the design of successful information systems. The authors also considered the volume of information, preciseness of information and the way in which it is handled by users to develop a model describing information systems. The article illustrates how the model was applied successfully to four case situations.

A contextual model of information systems

Abstract This article reports on an empirical investigation of the association of managers budgetary behavior and departmental performance under conditions of pooled versus reciprocal task interdependency. Data was gathered from 201 departments in 22 public sector organizations. Multivariate canonical correlation analyses suggest that a significant relationship exists between budgetary behavior and performance and that the nature of this relationship differs in important ways between the two types of interdependency. The research contributes to contingency studies of management accounting and control systems in three ways. First, it extends the budgetary behavior research into the public sector domain. Second, it supports previous research indicating the importance of task interdependence. Thord, it illustrates the power of multivariate canonical analysis as a way of identifying underlying structures of contingent relations between organizational level variables and characteristics of management accounting and control systems. The study also suggests that characteristics of managers budgetary behavior are similar across the public and private sectors.

A literary theory perspective on accounting: Towards heteroglossic accounting reports

Abstract The social-engineering of accounting and information systems has not kept pace with the awesome advances on the teachnical side. Attempts, such as human information processing systems, have proven too narrow and research efforts now are called for which include both the psychology of the user and the program conditions of the task. This paper outlines a model which combines both personal decision style and organizational technology to derive four distinct information systems styles — concise, cursory, diffuse, and elaborate - each of which is suited to a particular technology. The central idea is that accounting and information systems should be designed to be congruent with the organizational context which they serve.

User department technology and information design

This paper adopts a literary theory perspective to depict accounting reports and information as texts rather than as economic commodities and so available for analysis from the vantage point of semiotic linguistic theory. In doing so it takes the literary turn followed by many of the social sciences and humanities in recent decades. It compares and contrasts four dominant genres of literary theory – expressive realism, the new criticism, structuralism, and deconstructionism – to developments in accounting. The paper illustrates these and other ideas in the context of the controversies surrounding the oil and gas accounting crisis and practices circa 1961 to 1990. The paper concludes by outlining a new way of preparing accounting reports based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the heteroglossic novel. This approach calls for making accounting for an enterprise an ongoing conversation rather than a monologic process of closing down on a single meaning.