Lukas Goretzki, Martin Messner and Maria Wurm
Data science promises new opportunities for organizational decision-making. Data scientists arguably play an important role in this regard and one can even observe a certain…
Abstract
Purpose
Data science promises new opportunities for organizational decision-making. Data scientists arguably play an important role in this regard and one can even observe a certain “buzz” around this nascent occupation. This paper enquires into how data scientists construct their occupational identity and the challenges they experience when enacting it.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on semi-structured interviews with data scientists working in different industries, the authors explore how these actors draw on their educational background, work experiences and perception of the contemporary digitalization discourse to craft their occupational identities.
Findings
The authors identify three main components of data scientists’ occupational identity: a scientific mindset, an interest in sophisticated forms of data work and a problem-solving attitude. The authors demonstrate how enacting this identity is sometimes challenged through what data scientists perceive as either too low or too high expectations that managers form towards them. To address those expectations, they engage in outward-facing identity work by carrying out educational work within the organization and (paradoxically) stressing both prestigious and non-prestigious parts of their work to “tame” the ambiguity and hype they perceive in managers’ expectations. In addition, they act upon themselves to better appreciate managers’ perspectives and expectations.
Originality/value
This study contributes to research on data scientists as well as the accounting literature that often refers to data scientists as new competitors for accountants. It cautions scholars and practitioners alike to be careful when discussing the possibilities and limitations of data science concerning advancements in accounting and control.
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Simone Mack and Lukas Goretzki
This paper aims to examine how remote (i.e. global, regional or divisional) management accountants communicate in interpersonal contacts with operational managers when trying to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how remote (i.e. global, regional or divisional) management accountants communicate in interpersonal contacts with operational managers when trying to exert influence on them.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic field study focusing on budgetary control meetings between regional management accountants and operational managers is used as the basis for a micro-level analysis of situated face-to-face interactions and communicative influence tactics.
Findings
Remote management accountants mainly use soft rather than hard influence tactics. They, furthermore, employ what is referred to as “panoramic knowledge” gained explicitly from their structurally as well as physically removed “meta-positioning” to suggest certain measures to operational managers that have proved successful in other units and – by doing so – try to exert influence on these managers. Moreover, they use information that they gain in their position in between senior and operational managers by acting as “double agents” – that is, informing operational managers about senior managers’ focus as well as making transparent to operational managers that they will inform senior management about specific operational matters. By doing so, they try to prompt operational managers to address these issues. Additionally, strengthening their verbally articulated suggestions, as “minute takers” they are able to document their suggestions by moving from spoken to a more binding written text. Through these purposeful and rather unobtrusive tactics, remote management accountants try to take influence on operational managers without generating their resistance.
Originality/value
The paper shows how remote management accountants (as staff members) can skillfully turn their apparently powerless position within the organization into a source of strength to exert influence on operational managers.
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Lukas Goretzki and Martin Messner
This paper aims to examine how managers use planning meetings to coordinate their actions in light of an uncertain future. Existing literature suggests that coordination under…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how managers use planning meetings to coordinate their actions in light of an uncertain future. Existing literature suggests that coordination under uncertainty requires a “dynamic” approach to planning, which is often realized in the form of rolling forecasts and frequent cross-functional exchange. Not so much is known, however, about the micro-level process through which coordination is achieved. This paper suggests that a sensemaking perspective and a focus on “planning talk” are particularly helpful to understand how actors come to a shared understanding of an uncertain future, based upon which they can coordinate their actions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper builds upon a qualitative case study in the Austrian production site of an international manufacturing company. Drawing on a sensemaking perspective, the paper analyses monthly held “planning meetings” in which sales and production managers discuss sales forecasts for the coming months and talk about how to align demand and supply.
Findings
The authors show how collective sensemaking unfolds in planning meetings and highlight the role that “plausibilization” of expectations, “calculative reasoning” and “filtering” of information play in this process. This case analysis also sheds light on the challenges that such a sensemaking process may be subject to. In particular, this paper finds that competing hierarchical accountabilities may influence the collective sensemaking process and render coordination more challenging.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the hitherto limited management accounting and control literature on operational planning, especially its coordination function. It also extends the management accounting and control literature that draws on the concept of sensemaking. The study shows how actors involved in planning meetings create a common understanding of the current and future situation and what sensemaking mechanisms facilitate this process. In this respect, this paper is particularly interested in the role that accounting and other types of numbers can play in this context. Furthermore, it theorizes on the conditions that allow managers to overcome concerns with hierarchical accountabilities and enact socializing forms of accountability, which is often necessary to come to agreements on actions to be taken.
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Virpi Ala-Heikkilä and Marko Järvenpää
This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.
Findings
The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.
Research limitations/implications
Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.
Practical implications
The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.
Originality/value
This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.
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The purpose of this study is to briefly reflect on the continuing relevance of the arguments of “The Audit Society” thesis after 25 years and to consider whether they need to be…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to briefly reflect on the continuing relevance of the arguments of “The Audit Society” thesis after 25 years and to consider whether they need to be adapted in the face of advances in digitization.
Design/Methodology/approach
This essay develops a series of critical reflections on the main arguments in “The Audit Society” (Oxford University Press, 1997).
Findings
There is a need for critical accounting and management research to explore how audit society themes require adjustment in the face of “surveillance capitalism” and how the boundaries between accounting, security and surveillance are becoming blurred.
Originality/value
This essay is a personal and self-critical account of the genesis of The Audit Society thesis which looks forward to how this thesis can develop. It also offers a defence of the value of books in enabling the travelling of ideas across fields.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of IT systems on occupational identities of management accountants. The author highlights the pivotal role of the IT system…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of IT systems on occupational identities of management accountants. The author highlights the pivotal role of the IT system as a central reference point for organisational identity regulation and identity work.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a qualitative case study approach.
Findings
The IT system presents the central means of establishing appropriate behaviour in case organisation (“identity regulation”). At the same time, the IT system acts as a sense-giving device (“identity work”) – the central reference point for management accountants to make sense of their work. In addition, the system creates more dirty and unclean work (Morales and Lambert, 2013), producing dissonance between the business partner role and the organisational reality, which is resolved by relating dirty and unclean work through use of the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
Research limitations/implications
The paper suggests to understand IT systems as an important driver of the management accounting work shaping the occupational identity of management accountants.
Practical implications
The author aims to sensitise practitioners and organisations to the potential risks of relying too strongly on IT systems – a behaviour which can limit the professional judgement and business insight of management accountants.
Originality/value
The author contributes to the discussion on how technological disruptions, e.g. ERP implementation, Big Data, business analytics, digitalisation, change management accountants’ identity and management accounting work. The author shows how organisations establish appropriate behaviour and how management accountants make sense upon dissonances between the professional ideals exemplified by business partner role and the organisational realities.
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Lukas Löhlein and Christian Huber
A total of 25 years of research on the audit society has provided rich and engaging accounts of the ways in which rituals of verification have conditioned organizations and…
Abstract
Purpose
A total of 25 years of research on the audit society has provided rich and engaging accounts of the ways in which rituals of verification have conditioned organizations and individuals to think and act. In contrast, this paper aims to explore the possibility of conditions through which things and spaces are enacted to be non-auditable.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the concept of proliferation and rarefaction (Callon and Law, 2005), the paper adopts a case-comparison design to explore two empirical sites. The first investigates a vast excess of audit structures against the case of the biggest corporate fraud in German accounting history, the Wirecard scandal. The second discusses the configuration of Tinder, the most popular provider of mobile dating and the absence of visible verification mechanisms.
Findings
The paper argues that things can become non-auditable through two mechanisms. Based on the two empirical sites, non-auditability can happen through an overload of auditable resources or, through the withdrawal of required resources. The paper discusses the consequences of this finding and suggests avenues for future research on non-auditability.
Originality/value
While accounting scholars have extensively addressed the audit explosion and traced how audit practices have journeyed into ever more novel terrains, this paper discusses forms of escape from the value-subverting and reductive accounts incorporated in the audit society. It thereby points to conditions under which accounting ends.