Management accounting change and agency in embedded situations

Abstract

Focusing on internal micro-processes, this study contributes to the management accounting change literature showing what conditions allow agency in embedded situations. We analyse a family company in the period 1904–1969 in that, after more than 50 years of ongoing reproduction of highly institutionalised management practice, the chief executive officer (CEO) fostered a radical institutional transformation in whose process the implementation of a cost accounting system was driven. As main conclusions, first, we argue that management accounting change drivers are strongly influenced by actors’ interests and by the perception and interpretation that actors make about institutional contradictions or external critical events and their effects on the organisation. Second, we shed light about the interrelated influences that institutions and individuals exert on meanings and roles attributed to management accounting in institutional change, even impelling the implementation of a completely new system to support it. Finally, we illustrate that both process and content of accounting change are moulded by normative influences intertwined with the cognitive schemes of actors involved.