Wai Fong Chua

Experts, networks and inscriptions in the fabrication of accounting images: A story of the representation of three public hospitals☆

Abstract This ethnography of three Australian hospitals seeks to understand how and why new accounting systems are “experimented” with in organizations. Latours sociology of translation is adapted to argue that accounting change emerged not because there was certain knowledge of positive economic outcomes but because an uncertain faith, fostered by expert-generated inscriptions and rhetorical strategies, was able to tie together shifting interests in an actor network. The paper also highlights how accounting may ironically be both real and a simulation.

Alternative management accounting research—whence and whither

Abstract This paper reviews alternative management accounting research in AOS from 1976 until 1999. We highlight seven different research perspectives that have flourished under this label: a non-rational design school; naturalistic research; the radical alternative; institutional theory; structuration theory; a Foucauldian approach; and a Latourian approach. It is contended that these different approaches have assumed an important role in raising a number of significant and interesting disciplinary insights. As a form of collective non-positivist enterprise, alternative management accounting research has demonstrated: the many different rationalities of management accounting practice; the variety of ways in which management accounting practice is enacted and given meaning; the potency of management accounting technologies; the unpredictable, non-linear and socially-embedded nature of management accounting change; and the ways in which management accounting practice is both constrained and enabled by the bodily habitudes of its exponents. In conclusion, we consider how alternative management accounting research may sustain its distinct contributions in the future.

The dynamics of "closure" amidst the construction of market, profession, empire and nationhood: An historical analysis of an Australian accounting association, 1886-1903

Abstract This paper argues that Webers class-status-party model enables an in-depth understanding of the cross-border professionalization projects of accountants. Analysis of the activities of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants (VIC) from 1886 to 1903 shows that (a) the concept of monopolistic closure is imprecise; and (b) its activities were significantly shaped by multiple and changing divisions within the association, between it and competing colonial and imperial associations, the actions of ‘autonomous’ state agencies and wider political and communal tensions. Specifically, imperial discourses and institutions, which mutated when transplanted from the metropolitan centre to the penal (then productive) periphery, were material.

Rethinking the profession-state dynamic: The case of the Victorian charter attempt, 1885–1906☆

Abstract Historical analyses of specific professionalization projects and of the profession-state axis have been suggested as possible remedies for the “unexciting routine” into which the sociology of the professions has recently slipped. Accordingly, this essay analyses an attempt by Victorian accountants to attain a Royal Charter from 1904 to 1906 and its antecedent world dating from 1885 to 1903. It tracks the shifting constraints upon, and opportunities available to key players in state agencies and accounting associations. It thereby accounts for the shifts in the aims and strategies of those, the intended and unintended consequences of their actions, and the ultimate outcome of the charter attempt. In doing so it questions the assumption of a tightly defined concept of occupational “monopoly” or “closure” associated with a stable set of strategic imperatives. It also questions the tight coupling of action, interest, and outcome implied by “crude” Marxian analyses, and supports the contention that “professions” are the dynamic outcome of the mutual interaction of “state” and “profession”.

Theoretical constructions of and by the real

Abstract In accounting, there are few accounts of theorising as a lived, social process. Governed by the restrictive tenets of hypothetico-deductivism, the manufacture of theory has been objectified into an activity which is divorced from the life-world of the researcher and the researched. This paper gives a reconstruction of theorising on a four year research project and argues that (a) Theory is grounded in prior assumptions about the constitution of the Real; (b) Theory constructs and is constructed by the Real; and (c) Theory choice is an inevitable part of the act of research.

The Empire strikes back? An exploration of centre-periphery interaction between the ICAEW and accounting associations in the self-governing colonies of Australia, Canada and South Africa, 1880-1907

Abstract British imperialism not only changed borders, it made the British model of accounting associations and the imaginary of ‘professional accounting men’ known to spaces far from the metropolis (mother state). Imperialism was thus integrative in this sense. In administrative terms, however, a very large, differentiated and spatially dispersed Empire became expensive. It could not be ruled uniformly or in detail and different governance structures emerged. In the settler colonies, relatively autonomous ‘self-government’ embodying variants of British precedents and institutions, provided a loose coupling of centre and periphery. The accounting associations that developed in this type of colony were, then, not compliant clones of the centre but hybrids reflecting the specificity of place and British accommodation of peripheral demands. The result was the emergence of an imperial accountancy arena. These empirics contribute to our understanding of the nineteenth century professionalisation of accounting as a cross-border phenomenon by showing how the strength of weak ties between parts of a periphery characterised by inter-colony differences (as well as similarities) imposed constraints on the imperial centre.

Critical perspectives in management control

Notes on the Contributors - PART 1 CRITIQUE IN CONCEPT - Introduction the editors - The Problems of a Pardigm: A Critique of the Prevailing Orthodoxy in Management Control T.Lowe & T.Puxty - A Strategy for the Development of Theories in Management Control D.T.Otley - Accounting as Social Science: Abstract Versus Concrete Sources of Accounting Change T.Lowe & A.M.Tinker - Authority, Accountability and Accounting A.J.Berry - Power and Management Control D.J.Cooper & K.Robson - Ideology, Rationality and the Management Control Process T.Puxty & W.F.Chua - Accounting and the Pursuit of Social Interests A.G.Hopwood - PART 2 CRITIQUE IN ACTION - Labour and Deskilling: A Critique of Managerial Control in the Glass Industry J.Black & F.Neathey - The Management and Control of Experts and Expertise: The Case of the Nurse W.F.Chua - Accounting in the Production and Reproduction of Culture T.Capps, T.Hopper, J.Mouritsen, D.J.Cooper & T.Lowe - The Accounting Profession, Corporatism and the State D.J.Cooper, T.Puxty & T.Lowe - Authority or Domination: Alternative Possibilities for the Practice of Control J.Roberts - Professional Authority and Resource Allocation: Treasurers and Politics in UK Local Governments D.Rosenberg - PART 3 AUTOCRITIQUES - Autocritique I K.Maunders - Autocritique II H.Willmott - Index

The field researcher as author‐writer

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce the literary authority of qualitative management accounting field research (QMAFR) and its interconnectedness with the scientific authority of this form of research. Design/methodology/approach - The paper adopts a non-positivist perspective on the writing/authoring of QMAFR. The paper illustrates its arguments by analysing how the field is written/authored in two well-known examples of qualitative management accounting research, using Golden-Biddle and Lockes framework as a way of initiating an understanding of how field research attains its “convincingness”. Findings - The paper finds that these two examples of QMAFR attain their convincingness by authoring a strong sense of authenticity and plausibility, adopting writing strategies that signal the authority of the researcher and their figuration of the “facts”. Research limitations/implications - The paper argues for a more aesthetically informed consideration of the “goodness” of non-positivist QMAFR, arguing that its scientific and aesthetic forms of authority are ultimately intertwined. Practical implications - This paper has practical implications for informing the ways in which QMAFR is read and written, arguing for greater experimentation in terms of its narration. Originality/value - The value of this paper lies in its recognition of the authorial and aesthetic nature of QMAFR, as well as it potential to encourage debate, reflection and changed practices within the community of scholars interested in this form of research.

In Search of ‘Successful’ Accounting Research

This critical commentary on Ohlsons paper (in this issue) problematises the concept of ‘successful’ accounting research; highlighting its ex-post, variable nature as a socially manufactured object. Contrasting Ohlsons notion of a singular body of shared ‘common knowledge’ in accounting with the plurality of knowledges valued by different research communities, the commentary advocates a deliberate courting of heterogeneous research paradigms so as to stimulate insightful scholarship. The commentary also reflects on systemic trends underlying the growth of research measurement programmes, and points out that the quest for ‘successful’ research could perversely undermine the generation of memorable and innovative research. Finally, individual researchers are encouraged at each career stage to determine for themselves the intended results to which they aspire, conscious that there are multiple notions of ‘successful’ research and therefore multiple routes to success.

Accounting and Control in Health Care: Behavioural, Organisational, Sociological and Critical Perspectives

Abstract This chapter synthesises literature exploring complex technical, social, political and institutional influences on the inception and operation of accounting in health care contexts and its diverse effects. The review is organised according to two key methodological positions adopted by researchers—behavioural/organisational and critical/sociological. The review demonstrates that although behavioural/organisational studies focus on technical economic imperatives associated with the design and use of accounting and control systems in health care organisations these cannot be disentangled or decoupled from the historical, institutional and socio-political contexts of health care accounting. To this end the chapter calls for increased methodological pluralism to further improve our understanding of accounting in health care contexts. A number of other suggestions for future research are offered and projected trends in the structure and delivery of health care services are discussed.