The Institutional Logic Perspective: A Theoretical Framework in Explaining Management Accounting Practice Change

Abstract

Empirical studies suggest that management accounting practice is shaped and reshaped by both intra, inter, and extra organizational norms, values, and assumptions. There is still a dearth of study to explore how and at which stage various extra-organizational factors, such as societal-level and field-level institutions, filters organizational norms and practice and then blended into the organizational rules and routines formation process. This paper combines insights from the Old Institutional Economics (OIE) and Institutional Logics Perspectives (ILPs) of Neo-Institutional Sociology (NIS) of institutionalization with the emerging practice-based literature on organizational stability and change to offer a modified version of the institutional framework of management accounting change developed by Burns and Scapens (2000). This modified Burns and Scapens (2000) framework allows the future research in exploring the influence of the concurrent interplay mechanisms between the prevailing inter-institutional logic and dominant organizational logic in the process of management accounting practice stability and change.