Marginalizing the customer: Customer orientation, quality and accounting performance

Customer orientation is often presented as a modus operandi whereby customers get from companies what they need and want, as it is a company strategy to address the customers' specific requirements. To support this strategy, companies have to align their resources laterally rather than hierarchically and empower employees to cooperate with one another to attend to the details of their customers' requirements. In this scenario, management accounting is rolled back and the consideration of quality is stressed. But this is not always a viable possibility. With the help of a case study this paper argues that customer orientation and quality may under certain organizational conditions reinforce, and perhaps even generate, their antithesis as hierarchical and budget-focused financial accountability. Customer orientation and quality programmes may marginalize the customer and weaken, if not destroy, relationships between employees.