Xem mẫu

Part 2 Reections on Organizational Shifts This page intentionally left blank 7 Management Accounting Inscriptions and the Post-Industrial Experience of Organizational Con-trol Paul Andon, Jane Baxter, and Wai Fong Chua Introduction The idea that management accounting information may be used to control organizational functioning is not new—indeed, this has constituted one of the cornerstones of our disciplinary discourse (Emmanuel et al. 1990; Horngren et al. 2000). However, given that the so-called post-industrial economy is sustaining ‘new’ modesof inter-and intra-organizational functioning (Castells 1996; Harvey 1989; Rifkin 2000), the process of organizational control, and accounting`srole in it, becomesa topic of renewed interets. Will accounting continue to be connected to organizational functioning in familiar waysor willaccountingcontrol emerge in new and different forms? Thischapter explores such issues. In thischapter we argue that organizational control, and accounting`srole in it, hasbecome an increasingly digitized and technologically enabled process. New ‘centresof calculation’ (Latour 1987: 216) have arisen within post-industrial organizations which, in turn, are facilitating more disembedded and intensified formsof accounting control. We examine and illustrate this post-industrial phenomenon of organizational control within a call centre context. Data have been drawn from a case study of an Australian call centre operation, which processes in excess of 12 million customer enquiries each year. The remainder of the chapter isstructured in the following way. We commence with an overview of accounting and control in industrial organizations. This is followed by an outline of the emerging nature of accounting and control in post-industrial organizations. This is then illustrated in the context of the changing practices of the case organization. We conclude by considering the disciplinary implications of this account. Accounting and Control in theIndustrial Organization There have been many different constructions of organizational functioning and accounting`s connection to it within the literature. Burchell et al. (1980), 136 INSCRIPTIONS AND THE POST-INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE for example, outline a variety of organizational rolesfor accounting: first, accounting may assume a decision-support role within organizations; second, accounting may promote dialogue within organizations; third, organizational learning may be facilitated by accounting; and, finally, accounting information may provide the impetusfor novel forms of organizational functioning. However, themost enduringcharacterizationof accounting`s rolein theindustrial organization hasbeen asan enabler of ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ (Emmanuel et al. 1990: 29). The dual mantrasof ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ have endowed accounting with a central role in maintaining organizational control—in ensuring that organizational objectives are pursued and that resources are used wisely in moving towards such ends. And whilst subsequent and sporadic debate may have emerged to question this means–end relationship between accounting and organizational functioning (Cooper et al. 1981), such debate has been conducted at the disciplinary periphery and in counterpoint to thisentrenched and prevailing viewpoint. Indeed, the waysin which the rhetoric of ef ficiency and effectiveness connects accounting to the industrial organization has become a central part of the contemporary research agenda. Whilst a number of different research approaches have been adopted to investigate this issue (e.g. see Covaleski and Dirsmith 1983, 1988; Hopper and Armstrong 1991), we will confine our attention to that research, which draws upon the writings of the late French social scientist, Michel Foucault. This is the literary corpus which articulates most closely with the ideas that we will draw upon in our investigation of accounting in post-industrial organizations. Foucault`sworkon ‘discipline’ (1977) hasprovided a platform for manyinteresting renderingsofaccountingcontrolin industrial organizations. More particularly, Foucault`s description of Bentham`s panoptican (a type of building that enablesan overseerin a central tower to watch the activitiesof all the occupants —such as the incarcerated, the insane, or the industriously employed)provides a metaphor that has recast accounting control and its quest for efficiency and effectiveness into a more dismal and constraining language. Foucault writes: the major effect of the Panoptican: to induce . . . a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange thingsthat the surveillance ispermanent in itseffects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it. (1977: 201) Drawing on this, systems of accounting control have been examined for the ways in which they create and perpetuate an unrelenting form of organizational surveillance from a distance. As a consequence, accounting inscriptions have become associated with the regulation or ‘governance’ of organizational functioning, aswell asthe unequal power/ knowledge relationships between the controller and the controlled. PAUL ANDON ET AL. 137 The seminal work by Miller and O`Leary (1987) illustrates the application of this perspective in a study of the emergence of standard costing and budgeting systems in the early 1900s. Miller and O`Leary argue that standard costing and budgeting have embedded a detailed knowledge of individual organizational participant`s behaviour in accounting systems. Accounting systems became the panoptican of the industrial organization, highlighting the economic contribution of organizational participantsand the extent of their wastefulnessand inef ficiency. Behavioural deviations from prescribed norms, suchas standard costs or budgetary targets, are made visiblebyaccountingsystems. Thisenablessubsequent management interventionin ‘out-of-control’ work processes. In brief, accountingsystems are characterized by Miller and O`Leary asbeing instrumental in the production of ‘docile’ and compliant organizational participantsin the industrial age. As a further illustration, Knights and Collinson (1987) adopt a Foucauldian lens in their study of the impact of accountingsystems on male manual workers in a heavy manufacturing context. Faced with the possibility of their own redundancy, these workers accepted unquestioningly financial data that demonstrated the need for greater stringency and cost control,particularly withrespect to theleveloftotal labour costs. The workers wereunabletorallyagainst the ‘concreteness’ of theaccountingfigures, as Knights and Collinson describeit (1987: 472). They had implicitlyaccepted the classification of labour asan ‘expense’ to be minimized at the discretion of management. Knights and Collinson correspondingly argue that accounting had become a way of ‘disciplining the shopfloor’ (1987: 457). In effect, these workers were participants in their continued subordination to the extant managerialist power/knowledge regime that characterized their organization in particular, and industrial society more generally. As such, it may be argued that accounting prospered in industrial organizations, such as those considered by Knights and Collinson (1987) and Miller and O`Leary (1987), because accounting inscriptions sustained the networks of interests and power/knowledge relationships that were embedded in their design—strong vertical hierarchies, authoritarian managementroles, and Taylorized production functions (Harvey: 1989). Accountingwas an efficient and effective form of discipline: it ensured the bodily engagement of workers in the production function in parsimonious ways, but it also ensured that management remained ever watchful and vigilant with respect to prevailing interests of capital. Accounting in thePost-Industrial Organization However, the argued transition to a post-industrial economy is transforming organizational functioning in radical ways (Castells 1996; Harvey 1989). Organizational boundaries have become less distinct as various forms of ... - --nqh--
nguon tai.lieu . vn