Management Accounting Change and the Construction of Coherence in Organisations: a Case Study

This paper argues that organization change programmes are frequently backed by appeals to "coherence" – this understood as a harmonious fit between different variables (strategy, policies, management systems) conducive to better performance. In comparison recourse to psychological notions of coherence is far less widespread. The history of one such change programme in a large French firm is used to illustrate these ideas and highlights the tension between these two, quite different, notions of coherence.