Tarek El Masri, Matthäus Tekathen, Michel Magnan and Emilio Boulianne
Family firms possess dual identities, being the family and the business, which can be segmented and integrated to various degrees. This study examines whether and how management…
Abstract
Purpose
Family firms possess dual identities, being the family and the business, which can be segmented and integrated to various degrees. This study examines whether and how management control technologies are calibrated to fit into the dual identities of family firms.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study of 20 family firms was conducted using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with owner-managers, drawings of mental maps and publicly available information. The notion of calibration was developed and used, with its three components of graduation, purpose and reference, as an organizing device for the interpretive understanding of the management control usage and its relation to family firms’ dual identities.
Findings
The study finds that the use of calculative, family-centric and procedural management controls – in sum the pervasive use of management control technologies – are associated with a professionalization of the family firm, a foregrounding of the business identity and a reduction of the disadvantageous side of familiness. In comparison, the pragmatic and minimal use of management control technologies are found to be associated with an emphasis on family identity. It transpires as liberating, engendering trust and unfolding a familial environment.
Research limitations/implications
Because results are derived from a qualitative approach, they are not generalizable at an empirical level. By showing how the use of management control technologies is calibrated with reference to family firms’ dual identities, the paper reveals the perceived potency of control technologies to affect the identity of firms.
Practical implications
The study reveals how family firms perceive management control technologies as strengthening their business identity while weakening their family identity. Thereby, this study provides an account of how management control technologies are expected to change the identity of firms.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the management control and family business literatures because it uncovers how management control technologies are calibrated in reference to family firms’ dual identities. It shows that calculative, family-centric and procedural management controls are used to professionalize the firm and strengthen its business identity as well as to reduce the negative effects of the family identity. The paper also illustrates how the liberating force of using pragmatic and minimal control technologies can serve to give prominence to the family identity.
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Binh Bui, Zichao (Alex) Wang and Matthäus Tekathen
This study examines how carbon tools, including carbon accounting and management tools, can be created, used, modified and linked with other traditional management controls to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how carbon tools, including carbon accounting and management tools, can be created, used, modified and linked with other traditional management controls to materialise and effectuate organisations’ response strategies to multiple interacting logics in carbon management and the role of sustainability managers in these processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilises the construct of accounting toolmaking, which refers to practices of adopting, adjusting and reconfiguring accounting tools to unfold how carbon tools are used as means to materialise responses to multiple interacting carbon management logics. It embraces a field study approach, whereby 38 sustainability managers and staff from 30 organisations in New Zealand were interviewed.
Findings
This study finds that carbon toolmaking is an important means to materialise and effectuate organisations’ response strategies to multiple interacting carbon management logics. Four response strategies are identified: separation, selective coupling, combination and hybridisation. Adopting activity involves considering the additionality, detailing, localising and cascading of carbon measures and targets and their linkage to the broader carbon management programme. In adjusting carbon tools, organisations adapt the frequency and orientation of carbon reporting, intensity of carbon monitoring and breadth of carbon information sharing. Through focusing on either procedural sequencing, assimilating, equating or integrating, toolmaking reconfigures the relationship between carbon tools and traditional management control systems. Together, these three toolmaking activities can be configured differently to construct carbon tools that are fit for purpose for each response strategy. These activities also enact certain roles on sustainability managers in the process of representing, communicating and/or transferring carbon information knowledge, which also facilitate different response strategies.
Practical implications
The study demonstrates the various carbon toolmaking practices that allow organisations to handle the multiple interacting logics in carbon management. The findings provide suggestions for organisations on how to adopt, adjust and reconfigure carbon tools to better embed the ecological logic in organisations’ strategies and operations.
Originality/value
The authors identify how carbon toolmaking materialises and effectuates organisations’ responses to multiple interacting logics in carbon management.
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This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussions surrounding the adoption of ethnographic approaches in accounting by undertaking a comparative analysis of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussions surrounding the adoption of ethnographic approaches in accounting by undertaking a comparative analysis of ethnography in anthropology and ethnography in qualitative accounting research. By doing so, it abductively speculates on the factors influencing the distinct characteristics of ethnography in accounting and explores their implications.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a comparative approach, organizing the comparison using Van Maanen’s (2011a, 2011b) framework of field-, head- and text-work phases in ethnography. Furthermore, it draws on the author’s experience as a qualitative researcher who has conducted ethnographic research for more than a decade across the disciplines of anthropology and accounting, as well as for non-academic organizations, to provide illustrative examples for the comparison.
Findings
This paper finds that ethnography in accounting, when compared to its counterpart in anthropology, demonstrates a stronger inclination towards scientific aspirations. This is evidenced by its prevalence of realist tales, a high emphasis on “methodological rigour”, a focus on high-level theorization and other similar characteristics. Furthermore, the scientific aspiration and hegemony of the positivist paradigm in accounting research, when leading to a change of the evaluation criteria of non-positivist research, generate an impoverishment of interpretive and ethnographic research in accounting.
Originality/value
This paper provides critical insights from a comparative perspective, highlighting the marginalized position of ethnography in accounting research. By understanding the mechanisms of marginalization, the paper commits to reflexivity and advocates for meaningful changes within the field.
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Nathalie Repenning and Kai DeMott
This study aims to better understand the emotional challenges that inexperienced accounting researchers may face in conducting ethnographies. To do so, the authors use Arlie…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to better understand the emotional challenges that inexperienced accounting researchers may face in conducting ethnographies. To do so, the authors use Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) notions of “feeling rules” and “emotion work” to shed light on the possible nature and impact of these challenges, and how her ideas may also become fruitful for academic purposes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors take a reflective approach in sharing the raw observation notes and research diaries as first-time ethnographers in the area of management accounting. The authors use these to analyze “unprocessed” experiences of emotional challenges from the fieldwork and how the authors learned to cope with them.
Findings
The authors illustrate how emotional challenges in conducting ethnographies can be rooted in a clash with prevalent feeling rules of certain study situations. The authors explore the conditions under which these clashes occur and how they may prompt researchers to respond through means of emotion work to (re-)stabilize those situations. Based on these insights, the authors also discuss how wider conventions of the accounting academy may contribute to emotional challenges as they stand in contrast to principles of ethnographic research.
Originality/value
There remains a tendency in the accounting domain to largely omit emotional challenges in the making of ethnographies, especially in writing up studies. In this paper, the authors are motivated to break this silence and openly embrace such challenges as an asset when the authors talk about the process of creating knowledge.
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Caecilia Drujon d’Astros, Camille Gaudy and Marianne Strauch
This paper aims to explore the role of the researcher’s emotions in ethnographic practice in accounting research. This paper focuses on shame as an emotion that lingers on…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the role of the researcher’s emotions in ethnographic practice in accounting research. This paper focuses on shame as an emotion that lingers on, despite the efforts to work through those emotions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a collective autoethnography to make sense of the fieldwork and after-fieldwork emotions and their consequences. This autoethnography began with the three authors discovering their shared feeling of shame.
Findings
Building on Hochschild’s theory (1979, 1983) on emotional labor, the authors demonstrate how shame emerged as a central and lingering emotion of the ethnographies beyond an emotional labor process. The authors show how a double shame appeared toward the field participants and the academic accounting community, affecting the writing and the work.
Originality/value
The authors demonstrate that the perception of the research community’s rules of feelings gives rise to emotions that ultimately change the work. The authors show how collective autoethnography can help accounting research to acknowledge and give room to emotions.
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Mohit Dar, Carolyn Cordery, Ivo De Loo and Melina Manochin
This paper aims to examine the lived experiences of a professional accountant, exploring how he navigated the complexity of change in specific accounting processes in the UK…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the lived experiences of a professional accountant, exploring how he navigated the complexity of change in specific accounting processes in the UK housing association (HA). Using an autoethnographic approach, the authors seek to relate individual and collective insights into the changing of social housing organisational processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This autoethnographic account draws on participant and participant-observer reflections, as well as several materials maintained by the professional accountant, from a turbulent period in UK social housing. These data are analysed abductively, where the HA was perceived to be a constellation of ritual activities that underpinned a working community.
Findings
The professional accountant, who is one of the authors, sought to transform HA’s finance function to be “World-class”. Among others, allegedly outdated accounting processes in the HA seemed to require radical change to enable quicker yet more financially substantiated decision-making. Office rituals facilitated the associated accounting process changes by drawing on camaraderie and team/family bonding, which became amenable to new (accounting) rituals. However, the change process was complex and may well have undermined the existing camaraderie in the finance team. The paper reflects on this, with the professional accountant looking back on his actions within the HA after he had left the HA and had entered academia.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates the potential of autoethnographic reflections in accounting research when accounting is seen as ritualised activity. Hence, abductively, the reflection is theorised through the notion of “ritual” and its antecedent, “liminality”. This autoethnographic narrative may serve as an aid for others who may also face turbulent periods which require navigating change, while they experience personal struggles relating to this change.
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Andreas Bühler, Carl Marcus Wallenburg and Andreas Wieland
This paper aims to investigate the role of upper management in designing performance measurement systems (PMS) that account for external turbulence of the organization and to show…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the role of upper management in designing performance measurement systems (PMS) that account for external turbulence of the organization and to show how this PMS design for turbulence impacts organizational resilience and distribution service performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Hypotheses are developed by integrating management accounting and strategic management perspectives into supply chain management and subsequently tested based on data from 431 logistics organizations (i.e. both logistics companies and internal logistics departments of manufacturing and retailing companies).
Findings
Attention focusing usage type of the PMS by the upper management fosters incorporating the element of risk into the PMS of the company. Further, PMS design for turbulence enhances organizational resilience, and, indirectly, this also leads to improved distribution service performance.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to introduce the concept of PMS design for turbulence to the literature and to show that it is relevant for supply chain risk management by fostering the capabilities and the performance of logistics organizations. Further, it is shown that a seemingly detached issue such as the general PMS use focus of the upper management impacts supply chain risk management.