The strategic competence of accountants and middle managers in budget making
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.
Year of publication: |
2011
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Authors: | Fauré, Bertrand ; Rouleau, Linda |
Published in: |
Accounting, Organizations and Society. - Elsevier, ISSN 0361-3682. - Vol. 36.2011, 3, p. 167-182
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Publisher: |
Elsevier |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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