Bourdieu's Logic of Practice Theory: Possibilities for Research on Management Accounting and Control

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential for expanding the domain of sociological-based studies in management accounting and control systems by drawing on Bourdieu's theory of the practical logic of everyday action especially its central habitus concept that he saw as the basic indispensable concept for understanding social action. However, as Emirbayer and Johnson [2005] observe in criticizing the use of his theory in organizational theory, almost complete inattention to habitus, the third of Bourdieu's major concepts, without which the concepts of field and capital make no sense, further attests to the misappropriation of his ideas and the lack of appreciation of their potential usefulness ... [thus] the full significance of his relational mode of thought has yet to be apprehended [p. 1]. This criticism seems equally applicable to the extant body of accounting studies drawing on some of Bourdieu's ideas but which have pretty much ignored both the habitus concept and the importance of his relational perspective whereby the various concepts in his theory are somewhat vacuous on their own. Given these lacunae, this paper presents a detailed exegesis Bourdieu's logic of social practice theory and mobilizes it to illuminate the collapse of Enron's management control and governance system and practices. The analysis indicates that Enron experienced a radical shift in its habitus from the Lay/Kinder era [1986-1996] to that of the Lay/Skilling era [1996-2001] and that the former was coherent with Enron's business model and its management control systems, while the latter vitiated the company's control mechanisms rendering them ineffective and playing a major role in Enron's demise. The paper concludes that Bourdieu's theory complements and supplements previous research mobilizing structuration theory and actor-network theory.