Power and the Design and Implementation of Accounting and Control Systems

Abstract Although accounting and control systems have increased in both their sophistication and importance as resource allocation decisions have moved more within organizations, resistance and system failure are both common, and there is little evidence that system sophistication is associated with effective performance. Three consonance hypotheses are advanced to explain resistance and system difficulty: accounting and control systems will be implemented easily to the extent that they are (a) consistent with other sources of power in their implications for the distribution of power; (b) consistent with the dominant organizational culture and paradigm in their implications for values and beliefs; and (c) consistent with shared judgments about technical certainty and goal congruence in their assumptions about the degree of certainty about the organization's goals and technology. These sources of resistance are fundamentally structural, and process-based strategies (such as user involvement in design) are largely ineffective in overcoming these problems. This result suggests that power structures and organizational paradigms must be considered in both research and practice dealing with accounting and control systems.

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