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Management accounting and the construction of the legitimate manager

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate why managers use management accounting techniques. Therefore, a qualitative single case study was conducted in an innovative and product-driven firm in which management accounting is considered playing an important role for management and control. Taking a philosophical stance, the case study illustrates how managers use management accounting as a “technology of the self” by which means they reflect and act upon themselves in order to become legitimate actors within the firm. Accordingly, the study shows how management accounting can support managers’ activities of self-control and self-constitution in the context of an institutionalised “regime of truth”.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Kosmala and McKernan (2011) for a recent overview of Foucault’s later work and its potential relevance for management accounting research.

  2. CASEFIRM is a fictitious name that is used by the author to ensure anonymity of the firm studied.

  3. In Foucauldian research, the term subject has two different meanings: “There are two meanings of the word ‘subject’: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his [sic] own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to” (Foucault 1982, p. 781).

  4. The notation varies in different writings (i.e., subjectification, subjection, subjectivation, or subjectifation). In order to ensure coherence, in this paper the notation “subjectification” will be used.

  5. Foucault defined technologies of the self as “those reflective and voluntary practises by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria” (Foucault 1986, pp. 10–11).

  6. Because the case study was conducted in a German firm, both management accounting and management control are subsumed under the heading of “Controlling” as is mostly the case in the German-speaking business context.

  7. Differences between the managers interviewed have only been observed in terms of the respective operational issues or problems mentioned for which management accounting should provide a solution and that hence created the operational context for the use of these techniques.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Erik Strauß for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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  1. School of Management, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria

    Lukas Goretzki

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Appendix: Table 1

Appendix: Table 1

Table 1 List of interviewees
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Goretzki, L. Management accounting and the construction of the legitimate manager. J Manag Control 23, 319–344 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-012-0163-x

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