Management Control of the Complex Organization: Relationships between Management Accounting and Information Technology

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter we discuss the relations between information technology, information systems and management control. We argue that important issues can be learned about management accounting and control as we study its relations to information technology. Such relations are many times not only complex but also problematic: information technology is simultaneously a challenge and a resource for management control. Being integral parts of the emergence of complex organizations, new information technologies also produce new images of what and how something can be modeled, and therefore also of how something can be calculated and accounted for. Management accounting/control can easily be seen to be dependent on information technology, but as we demonstrate information technology cannot present its own case. Accounting is a key metaphor in many applications, and distinctions between various kinds of performance relate back to prior discussions in the accounting field. The intermingling of information technology and accounting is therefore important. And yet, the benefits for accounting from information technology may materialise only in uncertain and surprising ways and typically only after long implementation barriers. There is thus a relationship but it is one to be untangled rather than to be assumed. The research needed to develop insights into this relationship is significant because it concerns the principles about how organizations choose to coordinate their increasingly complex activities.