Tidiness, muddle and things: Commonalities and divergencies in two approaches to management accounting research

Abstract

The paper aims to comment and encourage critical reflection on the state of management accounting research. The commonality of most research in management accounting is the emphasis on the orderliness of organisation activities and the role of management practices in tidying any muddle. The narrowness of the concern with stability, integration, co-ordination and consensus is examined by outlining common features of much research in management accounting and by indicating the lack of concern with history (what might have been), muddle (disorder) and potentiality (what might be). Several approaches to future research would seem to be particularly promising in breaking out of the dominant structural-functionalist orientation of current research. Studies of the development of accounting practices would aid an understanding of the logics of existing practices. Exploration of dysfunctions would facilitate an understanding of power and conflict and potential changes of accounting practice. Investigation of the roles of management accounting in labour markets and the labour process in general would yield historically informed, organisationally grounded studies of accounting in action. And, a concern with the meanings that permeate accounting practices would also encourage a critical and reflexive concern about the roles of accounting practices and ideas in designing effective information systems and organisations.