A virtual integration—The management control system in a multinational enterprise

Abstract

This paper draws on actor-network-theory, especially Law and Hassard [Law, J., Hassard, J. (Eds.), 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. Blackwell, Malden, MA] and Latour [Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to the Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford] to investigate how a division-wide management control system was created in a multinational enterprise. The empirical findings were gathered from different actors involved in the implementation of enterprise's ABC and ERP projects. Our study focuses on the ontological politics [Mol, A.-M., 1999. Ontological politics. A word and some questions. In: Law, J., Hassard, J. (Eds.), Actor Network Theory and After. Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 74–89] required for the creation of a new management control reality, and also on the interaction between objects and subjects with potential for creating new agencies [Latour, B., 1999. On recalling ANT. In: Law, J., Hassard, J. (Eds.), Actor Network Theory and After. Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 14–25; Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social. An introduction to the Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford]. In our case unit (one division of the enterprise), the new agency was labelled ‘virtual integration’, its purpose being to enable a new vision of the profitability of the division's production chain. Our results highlight the unstable and complex nature of such systems, which no doubt impedes their use. We contribute to the understanding of such systems, with a special emphasis on the use of metaphors in the political process that accounting information systems must pass through in order to become established as an enterprise-wide management tool.