The Strategic Competence of Accountants and Middle Managers in Budget Making
Accounting, Organizations and Society 36 (2011) 167–182
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
The strategic competence of accountants and middle managers in budget making
Bertrand Fauré a,⇑, Linda Rouleau b,1 a b
University Toulouse III, LERASS, 115 Route de Narbonne, 31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7
a b s t r a c t
This paper aims to advance the notion of the ‘‘situated functionality of numbers’’ (Ahrens & Chapman, 2007) by investigating the practical knowledge of strategy which shapes the calculations performed by accountants and middle managers when they are making a budget. It proposes an in-depth investigation of the budgeting conversations collected during an extensive field study in a large construction firm that had undertaken a new partnership strategy. Drawing on a conversation analytical approach, it identifies three micro-practices of calculation constitutive of the accountants’ and middle managers’ strategic competence: invoking the usefulness of numbers to activate local projects; constructing the acceptability of numbers to report them to external partners; authorising the plausibility of numbers to reconcile local contingencies and global coherence. The paper then explores how accountants and middle managers come to a mutual understanding of their respective accountabilities when they perform their strategic competence. It ends by discussing the unintended consequences of these transformations in their professional roles. Ó 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction In recent decades organizations have undergone two significant and related changes. Firstly, corporate strategy has tended to become increasingly business and client-oriented, secondly performance measurement systems strongly related to accounting have become increasingly complicated. These evolutions
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
The strategic competence of accountants and middle managers in budget making
Bertrand Fauré a,⇑, Linda Rouleau b,1 a b
University Toulouse III, LERASS, 115 Route de Narbonne, 31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7
a b s t r a c t
This paper aims to advance the notion of the ‘‘situated functionality of numbers’’ (Ahrens & Chapman, 2007) by investigating the practical knowledge of strategy which shapes the calculations performed by accountants and middle managers when they are making a budget. It proposes an in-depth investigation of the budgeting conversations collected during an extensive field study in a large construction firm that had undertaken a new partnership strategy. Drawing on a conversation analytical approach, it identifies three micro-practices of calculation constitutive of the accountants’ and middle managers’ strategic competence: invoking the usefulness of numbers to activate local projects; constructing the acceptability of numbers to report them to external partners; authorising the plausibility of numbers to reconcile local contingencies and global coherence. The paper then explores how accountants and middle managers come to a mutual understanding of their respective accountabilities when they perform their strategic competence. It ends by discussing the unintended consequences of these transformations in their professional roles. Ó 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction In recent decades organizations have undergone two significant and related changes. Firstly, corporate strategy has tended to become increasingly business and client-oriented, secondly performance measurement systems strongly related to accounting have become increasingly complicated. These evolutions
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