Description
Cross-national studies of management control systems and internal accounting practices are suggestive of the exis-
tence of distinct national dierences. These studies are, however, methodologically partial, drawing upon contingency
theory rationales and culture based arguments in examining international management control variety. The purpose of
this essay is to review these perspectives critically and to consider other modes of analysis used by researchers investi-
gating diversity in the structuring of organisational arrangements and forms of management practices across dierent
contexts. Speci®cally, the essay discusses the societal eects approach, new institutionalism and ``new'' historical ana-
lyses. The paper also provides a tabular representation which classi®es and positions the alternative perspectives in
comparative management control research discussed in the paper along dierent conceptual dimensions.
Mapping methodological frontiers in cross-national
management control research
Alnoor Bhimani
Department of Accounting and Finance, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Abstract
Cross-national studies of management control systems and internal accounting practices are suggestive of the exis-
tence of distinct national di?erences. These studies are, however, methodologically partial, drawing upon contingency
theory rationales and culture based arguments in examining international management control variety. The purpose of
this essay is to review these perspectives critically and to consider other modes of analysis used by researchers investi-
gating diversity in the structuring of organisational arrangements and forms of management practices across di?erent
contexts. Speci®cally, the essay discusses the societal e?ects approach, new institutionalism and ``new'' historical ana-
lyses. The paper also provides a tabular representation which classi®es and positions the alternative perspectives in
comparative management control research discussed in the paper along di?erent conceptual dimensions. # 1999
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Scholars reviewing comparative management
studies have noted that over the past three dec-
ades, the ®eld has consistently remained prone to
simplistic discussions of empirical ®ndings (Adler,
1983; Boyacigiller & Adler, 1991; Schollhammer,
1969). Where theoretical development has been
made, it has been ``weak'' (Redding, 1994, p. 323)
and
. . . polluted by the axiom-based and positivist
paradigm espoused by Anglo-Saxon econom-
ics in its attempt to cope with its physics-envy
(Redding, 1994).
Although questions have been raised as to the
methodological appropriateness of cross-national
investigations of organisational characteristics, the
results of these studies suggest that organisations
within one national context can exhibit similarities
in their functioning not shared by enterprises in
other countries (see reviews by Adler, Doktor &
Redding, 1986; Eveleth, Cullen, Victor & Sakano,
1995; Ricks, Toyne & Martinez, 1990). Account-
ing techniques and management controls in parti-
cular have been found, in some contexts, to have
characteristics that are country-speci®c rather
than supra-national (see Harrison and McKin-
non, 1998). Whilst many investigations continue
simply to delineate di?erences across countries
and to describe variety, calls are being made for
greater explanatory content within comparative
studies of accounting practices and organisa-
tional control characteristics (Catturi, 1996;
Hopwood, 1996; Lachman, Nedd & Hinings,
1994; Shields, 1998). What is sought is that the
raisons d'eà tre for diversity across countries and
organisational commonalities within countries be
Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
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PII: S0361-3682(98)00068-3
more extensively assessed in scholarly compara-
tive research.
The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, it
critically examines two conceptual approaches
which researchers have adopted to explore the
basis for di?erences in cross-country management
control systems. One of these is premised on the
structural contingency argument, which considers
organisation structure relationships as dissipating
international di?erences, and thereby as conver-
ging over time. The other is the culture based
ideational perspective which sees culture as a
determinant of human action and hence of the
environment in explaining international variations
in management controls. The essay subsequently
identi®es possible avenues for comparative
research drawing upon perspectives identi®able in
the broader management literature concerned with
explaining diversity in organisational arrange-
ments and in management practices across di?er-
ent contexts.
The paper is structured as follows. Comparative
research based on the contingency argument is
considered prior to discussing the culture focused
perspective. The essay then examines the societal
e?ects approach, new institutionalism and the
``new'' stance to historical analysis as potential
research frames of reference for undertaking com-
parative investigations. In discussing these di?er-
ent perspectives, a tabular means of positioning
alternative frameworks is constructed as an aid to
researchers engaged in the study of cross-national
management control di?erences.
2. The convergence school
Early research in comparative management
viewed international variety as diminishing as
societies converge and become more alike over
time. Cross-national di?erences are seen in this
research as being suppressed as supranational for-
ces of change are considered to take hold.
Researchers belonging to the political-economy
school (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1980; Hill, 1981; Lit-
tler, 1982) for instance, suggest that contradictions
within capitalism generate broadly similar trends
in the management and structuring of the labour
process. Economic organisations across countries
under such circumstances are expected to exhibit
similar tendencies toward the encroachment of
managerial control over the conduct of work,
toward the de-skilling of workers through the
simpli®cation and standardisation of tasks, and
towards the displacement of labour. Adopting a
similarly deterministic conceptualisation of socie-
tal transformation, some scholars have argued
that broad environmental factors, such as the
process of structuring managerial hierarchies and
the degree to which a society ®nds itself in a
notional trajectory of industrialisation, induces
convergence in organisational structure and man-
agement practices (Dore, 1959; Dyas & Thanhei-
ser, 1976; Harbison & Myers, 1959; Haire, Ghizelli
& Porter, 1966; Inkeles, 1960). Such a character-
isation of societal transformation is underpinned
by the argument that contingencies of market
diversi®cation, technical adaptation and inter-
organisational dependencies compel organisations
to limit their internal administration and arrange-
ments to a small set of functional possibilities
enabling their survival. The argument that such
contingencies remain imperative across social,
economic or political systems whilst progressively
moulding organisational functioning, marginalises
the relevance of nation-speci®c in¯uences.
Harbison and Myers (1959, p. 44) argued that
. . . organization building has its logic which
rests on the development of management and
there is a general logic of management devel-
opment which has applicability both to
advanced and industrializing countries in the
modern world.
This ``logic'', it is argued, forces industrial
organisations to adopt greater specialism of func-
tion, which in turn enhances the level of manage-
rial decentralisation in organisations witnessing
increased growth and complexity of activities.
Ultimately, organisations manifest greater specia-
lisation and sophistication of managerial controls,
whilst managers become more ``professionalised''
(Harbison & Myers, 1959). Authority relation-
ships undergo a shift from being highly formal to
becoming more participative, with a concomitant
414 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
decentralisation of organisational structure over
the long term. Such a trajectory of
industrialisation downplays the e?ects of nation-
speci®c factors since the transformation associated
with ongoing industrialisation is seen as taking
place irrespective of national context. Any notion
that nationally speci®c characterising forces exert
any in¯uence is restricted to e?ects which alter the
pace rather than the direction or conditions of
change. Such an argument cannot a?ord the
plausibility that nationally rooted contextual ele-
ments could a?ect the genesis of organisational
forms to any signi®cant and sustained degree. The
argument that industrialism follows a ``logic'' thus
supports a macro-social ``culture-free'' (Lammers
& Hickson, 1979, p. 7) view of changes in organi-
sational structuring. In the main, this view
remains ahistorical and impervious to context.
Given that, in broad terms, industrialising nations
arguably witness comparable structural changes,
organisations accordingly exhibit corresponding
likeness.
Cross-national organisational di?erences within
the logic of industrialism perspective are thus
viewed as re¯ective of the extent of industrialisa-
tion, rather than of any deep-rooted element of
national distinctiveness. Indeed, over a period of
time, organisations across national boundaries are
seen as likely to become more alike. As Jamieson
(1983, p. 80) notes, early comparative manage-
ment scholars adopted a stance which inhibited
the explicit consideration of nation-speci®c forces
in explaining business behaviour:
. . . management theory maintained that all
the evidence pointed in the direction not of
cultural diversity, but of convergenceÐthat
the basic principles of management were uni-
versal.
If, indeed, industrialised nations exhibit conver-
ging in¯uences, then the argument might be taken
to also hold at the more micro-organisational level
in terms of technological, market, strategic and
other contextual variables' interdependencies with
organisational structuring (Hickson et al., 1974,
1979; Hickson and McMillan, 1981; Pugh, Hickson
& Hinings, 1969). Such is in e?ect the structural
contingency theorists' posture on the stability of
relationships between contextual elements and
organisational structure variables. As such,
``imperatives'' (Hickson, Hinings, McMillan &
Schwitter, 1974, p. 64) between contextual
variables and structural elements ``. . . take
e?ect whatever the surrounding societal di?er-
ences'' (Hickson, Hinings, McMillan & Schwitter,
1974).
The structural contingency view assumes that
those contextual factors, seen as a?ecting dimen-
sions of structure such as technology, dimensions
of task environment and organisational size, are
objectively di?erentiable from other elements of
the environment within which they exist. More-
over, knowledge of these contextual factors is
assumed to enable management controls to be
purposefully designed. The characterisation of
homogenising forces represented by structural lin-
kages that are context independent, and the con-
ception of management controls as being
instrumentally functional and technically purpo-
seful, form the basic premises of the contingency
perspective. Fig. 1 categorises the structural con-
tingency view as presupposing that homogenising
forces are universal, and that management con-
trols can accordingly be purposefully constructed.
The relationships between organisations and their
environments are seen in terms of the need to sur-
vive whereby certain functional imperatives
underlie the functioning of organisations and
in¯uence the structuring of systems of manage-
ment control. Such a view assumes instrumental
rationality and management control essence (see
Alvesson & Willmott, 1996; Burrell & Morgan,
1979; Hopper & Powell, 1985). This stance also
presumes that organisational elements possess
objective characteristics that may be studied by
methods that ``deny the distinctive nature of the
social in contrast to natural phenomena''
(Knights, 1994, p. 514). Methodologically, struc-
tural contingency is nomothetic in that it relies on
the systematic analysis of data in seeking to
establish generalisable relationships.
The contingency literature in management con-
trol research is at a stage where broad preliminary
observations have been made by reviewers on its
results and implications (Covaleski, Dirsmith &
Samuels, 1996; Dent, 1990; Macintosh, 1994;
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 415
Macy & Arunachalam, 1995; Otley, 1980).
Chapman (1997, p. 189) notes that
Such reviews are largely negative . . . pro-
claiming the lack of an overall framework for
the analysis of the relationship between con-
tingent factors and accounting leaving no
obvious starting point for an explanation of
an increasing body of often contradictory
results.
Conceptually, the underpinnings upon which
the contingency argument has been founded have
been viewed as ``largely discredited'' (Child, 1981,
p. 319). Donaldson (1995, p. 230) however,
remarks that ``structural contingency theory is far
from a ®nished intellectual programme''. He notes
that
. . . several newer theories have arisen as rival
accounts of organisation structure, challen-
ging the explanation o?ered by structural
contingency theory (Donaldson, 1995, p. 230).
Donaldson (1995) argues for a new synthesis to
reintegrate the ®eld of organisation theory taking
structural contingency theory as the core theory
onto which selective propositions from other con-
ceptual perspectives can be mounted. In the face
of extensive critiques of structural contingency
theory (Kimberly, 1976; Mayhew, Levinger,
Macpherson & James, 1972; McKelvey & Aldrick,
1983; Pennings, 1975; Starbuck, 1981) and the
contrasting epistemological and ontological basis
of rival research perspectives, the potential con-
tribution which such a new synthesis could make
remains unclear.
Contingency based studies generally focus on
broad features of organisational structure and
control. Organisational characteristics such as the
degree of centralisation, formalisation, and spe-
cialisation and relationships between these char-
acteristics and other contextual elements have only
been considered macroscopically, thereby reveal-
ing little of the ways in which structure becomes
operationalised. Nath (1986, p. 25) notes that
``contingency theorists have generally ignored the
role of culture in cross-national research''. Yet,
relationships between organisational participants,
processes of mutual accommodation, and modes
of behaviour are widely argued to underlie the
development of formal organisational structuring
(see Puxty, 1993; Roslender, 1992). Disregarding
whether or how such factors might a?ect for-
malised dimensions of organisations reduces the
signi®cance of explanations resting on socio-his-
torical factors in comparative research.
The relative determinism assumed by con-
tingency theorists in investigating organisational
arrangements is dicult to justify in that desired
Fig. 1. Di?erentiating features of alternative research perpsectives.
416 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
levels of performance can be achieved in di?er-
entiated spheres deploying alternative forms of
management controls (see Lane, 1989 and Sher-
idan, 1995 for instance). Giving precedence to
deterministic functional relationships between
structural elements and organisational e?ective-
ness does not allow due consideration of the
in¯uence of nationally rooted preferences on
observed organisational forms and practices.
However, a body of research which counters the
contingency theorists' context-free posture by
assuming a more direct role for notions of cultural
variation in explaining organisational diversity is
now well documented. This is discussed below.
3. The cultural contingency of management con-
trol systems
Appeals to notions of nationally-rooted cultural
forces (the ``culturalist'' perspective) have been
made in the management control literature, in an
attempt to explain detectable regularities of struc-
turation in organisational phenomena. There is
much systematic evidence suggesting that the pur-
suit of formally identical tasks or goals takes place
in dissimilar ways from one national society to
another (Archer, 1994; Erez & Earley, 1993; Har-
ris & Moran, 1987; Heller, Drenth, Koopman &
Rut, 1988; Hickson, 1993). Ascribing such varia-
tions to di?erences in the modal personality
structure or to the play of dissimilar sets of core
values which are thought to a?ect work motiva-
tion and propensity to favour one method of con-
trol over another are seen to o?er the potential of
developing nationally speci®c solutions to pro-
blems of management control design. Such a per-
spective assumes that individuals a?ect and are
in¯uenced by control structures in similar ways
because they have internalised core cultural values
which are shared extensively enough by virtue of
their membership in a wider national society.
Researchers exploring international management
control variety have in the recent past adopted
notions of cultural values which emphasize mental
programmes, ®lters and mindsets underlying
motives, beliefs, goals, traits and social ideals.
Such interpretations of culture convey the same
general sense of meaning as the following de®ni-
tion of culture advanced by Tylor (1871, p. 1):
. . . that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom
and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.
In addition to conceiving of culture in terms of
mental attributes, researchers interested in explor-
ing the interrelationships between organisational
control systems and culture have also tended to
view culture in ideational terms as opposed to
seeing culture as being environment-dependent
(the ``adaptive'' view). For instance, in their ®eld
study of control and culture in the USA and
Japan, Birnberg and Snodgrass (1988) and Snod-
grass (1984) see culture as a ®lter for perceiving
the environment which sets the decision premises
for individuals within cultural groups and which
therefore, a?ects human decision making. They
give primacy to the assumption that human action
is guided by culture and that the environment
. . . does not so much shape values and beliefs
as values and beliefs shape human perception
or the structuring of the environment (Snod-
grass, 1984, p. 28).
This perspective enables the identi®cation of an
observable and measurable in¯uence of culture
along a dimension that is seen as meaningful to
organisations:
The ideationist approach to culture takes us
from a speci®c concern for what culture is to
a concern for what culture does . . . this posi-
tion gives us an indication of how a cultural
in¯uence may become manifest in an organi-
zational process (Snodgrass, 1984).
The notion that human action and the environ-
ment is determined by culture values also provides
the basic proposition underpinning comparative
management control research resting on Hof-
stede's (1980) cross-national study results. Hof-
stede's (1980) questionnaire-based study of
employee values and perceptions of the work
situation within one large multinational organisa-
tion is among the most extensive of its type, cov-
ering 40 countries (later extended to 64).
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 417
Although Hofstede notes that the use of ques-
tionnaire data ``. . . for studying di?erences in
national cultures was an unintended, serendipitous
by-product'' (Hofstede, Neuigen, Ohayre & San-
ders, 1990, p. 287), he sees the results of his study
as having signi®cance for accounting control
research:
The less an activity is technically de®ned, the
more it is ruled by values, and thus in¯uenced
by cultural di?erences. . . Accounting is a ®eld
in which the technical imperatives are weak. . .
so we can expect accounting systems to vary
along national cultural lines (Hofstede, 1987,
p. 8).
The results of his study have been used by var-
ious researchers as a basis for undertaking cross-
cultural comparative analyses of management
control practices (see Harrison and McKinnon, in
press, for a review of these studies). Such analyses
adopt a stance akin to that taken in early cross-
national studies of management practices (Eng-
land, 1978; Granick, 1978; Graves, 1972; Ouchi
1981; Tannenbaum, Kavcic, Rosner, Vianello &
Wieser, 1974) which have treated culture idea-
tionally, attributing to it the reason for the di?er-
ences identi®ed.
The culturalist perspective considers the analy-
sis of social values as relevant. It assumes that the
social world and its alleged structures can be ver-
i®ed empirically (Gibson, 1994). Methodological
instruments which presume the universality of
prede®ned cultural dimensions are seen as
enabling researchers to locate, explain and predict
social regularities and patterns and their e?ects on
management control structuring. Hence, Fig. 1
situates the culturalist perspective as universalist
rather than contextual in its view of homogenising
forces. Culturalist studies of organisational con-
trols emphasize the systematic collection and ana-
lysis of quanti®ed data so as to con®rm
hypothesised relationships. They also tend to
depict their results in a technically functional light
in discussing their implications for the design of
management control systems.
The ideational perspective adopted by research-
ers interested in the role of culture in in¯uencing
management control practices su?ers from certain
methodological and conceptual problems. Swidler
(1986, p. 273) for instance remarks that to assume
that culture shapes action by supplying ultimate
ends or values toward which action is directed is
``fundamentally misleading''. In part, this is
because of the ``loose coupling between culture
and action'' (Swidler, 1986, p. 281) caused by the
``great discontinuity between talk and action''
(Swidler, 1986). Diculties also arise in that the
de®nition of culture must be suciently precise to
allow a delineation of the elements of national
culture which are seen to in¯uence aspects of the
functioning of organisations. A particular de®ni-
tion of culture must be speci®c enough to enable
empirical investigation, and yet must also remain
suciently general as to retain cross-national
relevance. Attaining an appropriate balance
between speci®city and generality in de®ning cul-
tural elements is a dicult task. Elaborations of
cultural characteristics face the risk of being too
limiting to allow an explanation of the full com-
plexity of culture's role in the shaping of particular
practices or of being too broad. Moreover, a pre-
cise characterisation of features taken to con-
stitute culture runs the danger of becoming
ethnocentric in that pre-specifying explicit cultural
dimensions may enable empirical veri®cation but
may also culturally bias a research study. Con-
versely, identifying broader dimensions of culture
may yield an excessively general appreciation of
cultural presence within enterprise activities.
Schench (1989, p. 149) notes that these problems
have, in part,led to a recurring ``reinvention of the
wheel'' of cross-national research methodology by
di?erent researchers.
One signi®cant criticism levelled at comparative
empirical investigations of management practices
and organisational features centres around the
relativistic position that a common observation
language is not possible to achieve in the study of
social phenomena. D'Iribarne (1989, p. 273) thus
remarks in relation to Hofstede's prede®ned value
dimensions that:
A national culture just cannot be reduced to a
collection of independent dimensions but
corresponds rather, to an array of traits
revealing a measure of coherence. Some being
418 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
more fundamental and stable. . . others more
susceptible to change.
The tension between the general and the speci®c
can lead to a polarisation of methodology with
nomothetic approaches at one end and ideo-
graphic features at the other. Whereas nomothetic
research emphasises systematic protocol and tech-
nique in gaining knowledge of the social world by
combining raw observations, ideographic studies
focus on subjective and individual accounts of
actions and events. In an ideographic study, one
tries to make sense of a single chain of events or
phenomenon without seeking a solution that repre-
sents a general or causal law. Geertz (1973, p. 5)
accords with this view in his de®nition of culture:
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an
animal suspended in webs of signi®cance he
himself has spun, I take culture to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not
an experimental science in search of law but
an interpretive one in search of meaning.
This polarisation is one which has raised issues
germane to the study of both accounting controls
(Dillard & Becker, 1997; Hopwood, 1987a; Miller
& Napier, 1993) and of other socio-structural
phenomena (Abrams, 1982; Burke, 1980; Giddens,
1979; Kiser & Hechter, 1991; Whitley, 1984).
A further diculty arises in that the salience of
designated elements seen as central to culture at
the time of the study must be established. Mea-
sures of pre-identi®ed dimensions obtained from
one study and applied to another face the risk of
temporal anachronism as social changes over pro-
tracted periods of time arguably will alter cultural
pro®les along the prede®ned dimensions. Perhaps
more importantly, the ideational perspective as
adopted by management control researchers only
probes the existence of prede®ned cultural ele-
ments, without examining whether these elements
also inhabit other social processes, institutional
systems and aspects of societal change. Moreover,
the absence of any analysis of interactive e?ects
between presumed cultural forces and control
structures seems to be justi®ed only on the
grounds that this would be methodologically di-
cult to undertake (Snodgrass, 1984). Questions
must justi®ably be posed as to how far ideational
notions of cultural in¯uence can be conceptually
upheld in the absence of counter-analysis of
adaptive e?ects.
Studies which seek to explore the cultural
embeddedness of organisational structural con-
trols tend to disregard di?erences in the levels of
in¯uence which cultural elements may exert. The
plausibility that some alleged cultural tendencies
have a core in¯uence in some national contexts
whilst being more peripheral in others is however
being documented in the emerging comparative
management literatures (Bates, Amundson,
Schroder & Morris, 1995; Sa?old, 1988). Lach-
man et al. (1994, p. 41) note that:
The impact cultural values have is determined
by their centrality within the value system of
a cultural setting more than by their pre-
valence in this setting.
These authors suggest that congruence between
core (as opposed to peripheral) values governing
modes of organising in a cultural setting, and the
value assumptions underlying the structure and
processes of cross-national organisations operat-
ing within that setting, can be of critical impor-
tance to organisational e?ectiveness. For example,
Lincoln, Hanada and Olsen (1981) study of
employee satisfaction with decision making pro-
cesses reports that in Japanese organisations
operating in the US, Japanese employees were the
most satis®ed with consensual methods of decision
making. Consensual decision making was for these
workers a core value which was an important ele-
ment of organisational practices. Japanese-Amer-
ican workers in this setting were less satis®ed and
non-Japanese Americans were the least satis®ed
with consensual decision making. This is attrib-
uted to individualism being a core value among
US employees which is more compatible with
contentious rather than consensual methods of
decision making.
Likewise, an investigation of public organisa-
tions in Egypt carried out by Hinings and Badran
(1981) reports that the high degree of participation
required by a newly prescribed structure for such
organisations was dicult to implement because
core cultural values emphasized social and hier-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 419
archical distance in interpersonal relationships.
Birnbaum and Wong's (1985) study of multi-
national banks in Hong Kong posited that where
the cultural emphasis is on high power distance,
the structure of organisations will tend to be cen-
tralized and local Chinese employees will be more
satis®ed working in a centralised rather than
decentralised structure. Their study results sup-
port this hypothesis but fail to support similar
hypotheses concerning satisfaction with di?er-
entiation and formalization. Lachman et al. (1994,
p. 49) explain this by suggesting that the value
governing hierarchical power relations is core to
the Chinese culture in Hong Kong whereas those
governing formalization and di?erentiation are
not. They note that:
When a core value is concerned, value incon-
gruency can explain employees' dissatisfaction.
But when variances in practices (di?erentia-
tion and formalisation) among the multi-
national organisations were incongruent with
values that were not core, work satisfaction of
local employees was not a?ected.
The relationships between core and peripheral
values and management controls have not to date
been investigated to any appreciable degree in
research adopting a culturalist stance.
Very little documentation as to the origins of
assumed cultural rootedness and the historical
in¯uences which might set one society apart from
another is o?ered by scholars adopting a cultural-
ist perspective (Hopwood, 1987b, 1996; Shields,
1998). Value systems in modern societies tend to
be distinguishable into those that are long-stand-
ing and others which are of a more recent vintage
(see Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983). The culturalist
perspective pays little heed to the heterogeneity of
values which tends to be a feature of many mod-
ern industrialised societies. Persistent hetero-
geneity between business systems is characteristic
of some advanced societies (Whitley, 1990; Whit-
ley, 1992; Whitley & Czaban, 1998). Enz (1986, p.
174) observes that ``. . . some societies may be
monocultural while others are multicultural''
whilst Tayeb (1994, p. 432) remarks that indivi-
dual nations are ``. . . usually very far from homo-
geneous''. Similarly, Schneider (1989, p. 157)
develops the argument that ``. . . many nations are
multicultural and many cultures are multi-
national''. Arguably, corporate culture can also
have a ``. . . unifying e?ect across borders by
means of the expanding role of multinational cor-
porations in the global economy'' (Mueller, 1994,
p. 409). What seems plausible is that collective
groupings develop within nations which inter-
nalise and recon®gure forces of change such that a
speci®c ethos of dynamism becomes more central
to one region than to another. Splinter cultures
within one society may ultimately undermine any
notion of a geographically and/or nationally
de®nable set of core cultural values (Child &
Tayeb, 1981; Garreau, 1981; Scott, 1992). The
possibility that ``. . . societal heterogeneity drama-
tically in¯uences the viability of cross-national
comparisons'' (Enz, 1986, p. 187) cannot therefore
be ignored. Equally so, di?erent cultural in¯u-
ences emerging from institutional forces and
structural di?erences recur across speci®c locales
within di?erent nation states and lead collective
groupings of regions or industries to become more
prone to exhibiting close resemblances (Lane,
1995). Transborder con®gurations ultimately may
share signi®cant values setting them apart from
other possible strata within national societies but
uniting them across frontiers (Wright, 1998).
The above issues remain to be addressed in
cross-national management control research
informed by the culturalist perspective. Whilst
studies within the culturalist genre have posited
relationships between culture and management
control systems, this has been achieved only
within a highly focused and notably limited theo-
retical frame of reference. Within the management
literature generally, very little has been docu-
mented about the causes of observed similarities
and di?erences in practices across nations (Adler,
1983; Kelley & Worthley, 1981; Miller, 1984;
Nath, 1986; Negandhi, 1983; Sekaran, 1983). As
Lachman et al. (1994, p. 40) observe, studies
which attribute country di?erences in organisation
practices to cultural di?erences ``provide neither
sucient theoretical nor empirical indications of
how culture causes such di?erences''. Culturalist
explanations for international variety in manage-
ment controls remain largely speculative and
420 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
atheoretical (Camino & Verna, 1997; Horovitz,
1980; Sheridan, 1995).
For comparative management control research
to advance, it is currently recognised that more
attention needs to be given to ``. . . the greater
complexity and diversity of culture'' (Harrison &
McKinnon, in press). In this light, calls have been
made for ``. . .a multiple methods approach to and
perspective on, research into culture and manage-
ment accounting'' (Harrison & McKinnon, 1998,
p.115; see also Shields, 1997). Such exhortations
have been made recurringly by researchers inter-
ested in the study of organisations (see Astley &
Van de Ven, 1983; Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Rose,
1985; Scott, 1992) since ``any one school of
thought invariably o?ers only a partial account of
reality'' (Gibson, 1994, p. 29). In this light, this
essay turns now to a perspective adopted in the
study of cross-national organisational arrange-
ments which addresses many of the issues seen as
problematic within the culturalist perspective.
4. National speci®city and societal e?ects
Methodological diculties and conceptual
obstacles abound in research which posits a cul-
tural conditioning e?ect on management control
systems. An alternative conceptual approach to
investigating relatively enduring systemic features
embedded in industrial organisations is the ``soci-
etal e?ects'' approach (Maurice, Sorge & Warner,
1980; Sorge & Maurice, 1993; Sorge & Warner,
1986). In the face of evidence which suggests that
characteristic patterns prevail across organisations
within one country in relation to another, this
view recasts substantive theories of the evolution
of advanced industrialism in terms of society-spe-
ci®c features underpinning organisational speci®-
cities. It does so without appeal to universal
in¯uences and relationships posited by con-
vergence theorists and without giving precedence
to culturalist explanations of organisational
arrangements and authority structures.
Contextual factors such as the variables posited
by structural contingency based explanations and
the ideational literature are not seen as suciently
explanatory within the societal e?ects view. The
societal e?ects perspective abandons the search for
forces external to speci®c societies which purport-
edly a?ect organisational forms and practices.
Rather it concerns itself with
. . . how the nature of organisations re¯ects
the institutional features of the society in
which they are located (Lane, 1989, p. 28).
The approach gives primacy to the idea that
relatively permanent societal features in¯uence
organisational forms and practices. It accepts that
cultural factors may have a ``mediating in¯uence''
(Maurice, 1979, p. 46), but focuses on the e?ects
of societal features such as the educational system,
the forms of social strati®cation, the vocational
training programmes in place, and the division of
labour on the internal structuring of organisa-
tions.
The societal e?ects approach recognises the
existence within workplaces of extensive networks
of highly speci®c relationships in¯uencing the
pursuit of formal goals (Brossard & Maurice,
1974). It considers values and dispositions as
a?ecting di?erent individuals' behaviour in di?er-
ent ways. It argues, however, that the development
of societally speci®c institutionalised populations
of organisational forms and practices is linked to
the pre-eminence of particular economic niches.
Cross-national comparisons of societal factors and
systems of control activities in organisations
within this perspective search for evidence of
structural elements underlying the interaction of
people at work, systems of recruitment, the nature
of quali®cations, levels of supervision, and the
extent of hierarchization (Maurice et al., 1980;
Maurice, Sellier & Silvestre, 1986; Sorge & War-
ner, 1986).
The societal e?ects view overcomes some of the
problems presented by the ideational perspective
of culture. It recognises that institutions in¯uence
the behaviour of organisational actors, and that
actors can also modify institutions through their
actions. As such, the societal e?ects perspective
assumes the existence of interdependencies
between the two. Rather than surmise about cul-
ture on the basis of value orientations, the societal
perspective focuses on examining and di?erentiat-
ing between organisational actions and work
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 421
activities in di?erent national contexts. Lane
(1989, p. 36) takes this to suggest that the societal
e?ects approach ``. . . taps culture relative to
actions''. This approach thus attempts to over-
come the diculties entailed in positing a priori,
cultural value orientations among individuals, and
then seeking to establish the form and extent of
their existence in organisational practices.
The societal e?ects approach presupposes the
existence of linkages between organisational ele-
ments and extraorganisational factors. For
instance, the complexity of control systems is seen
to be associated with ``. . . the mix of quali®ca-
tions, skills and training available to designers of
control systems'' (Rose, 1985, p. 69). Limits are set
on how work-tasks can be designed, supervised
and executed given that, for example, a low skill
workforce might be perceived to require more
elaborate and rationalised sets of work tasks and
more systematic supervision. Control practices
might thereby be seen to be in¯uenced by the
availability of suitable recruits which in turn is
in¯uenced by external institutional systems of
education and training. Such a view leads to at
least a partial erasure of the conceptual boundary
line between organisations and their environment.
If a degree of stability is a characteristic of wider
institutions, then such a characterisation might
also be taken to infuse ``solutions'' to enterprise
features. Ultimately, organisations within com-
mon groupings can be argued to exhibit similar
key structural properties. Just as national labour
force characteristics might shape organisational
controls, so might the role of bodies such as trade
unions and training agencies. Thus, behind a gen-
eral correspondence between, say, pay-levels and
quali®cations might reign a consistent societal
e?ect. Ultimately, what is sought is the identi®ca-
tion of stable features of the social and organisa-
tional environment which underlie and shape the
overall strategies of organisational actors or which
a?ect the content of organisational controls.
Methodologically, the societal e?ects approach
requires the systematic analysis of matched data
across organisations in di?erent countries as well
as societal context background information. The
approach explores the existence of societally spe-
ci®c forms and organisational structures in terms
of how far the resolution of common problems
takes place through di?erentiated and societally
speci®c forms across di?erent nations.
Societal e?ects researchers have, to date, only
documented indirect empirical evidence of the
in¯uence of social institutions upon management
control systems in a systematic way such that
companies' structures and processes are seen to
re¯ect typical national patterns (see Campbell et
al., 1989; Whitley, 1991, 1992; Whitley & Czaban,
1998). The types of observations that this research
perspective is able to make are broad. For
instance, comparative research on management
practices in Germany, France and Britain by soci-
etal e?ects researchers suggests the following
characterising di?erences: The German style of
organising and creating human resources tends to
have ``blurred organisation boundaries; less seg-
mentation; fewer line-sta?; management execu-
tion, technical work-shop-¯oor work and
generalism-specialism distinctions'' (Sorge, 1991,
p. 166). Conversely, the French type of organisa-
tion may be characterised by greater hierarchical
and lateral segmentation. It de-emphasises craft
training and craft worker role-sets, using career
progression and the combination of school and
college education with job-speci®c training in the
enterprise as more important mechanisms gen-
erating competence (Sorge & Warner, 1986). Dis-
tinctions between generalist engineering and
management on the one hand and specialism on
the other, and between strata of engineers, techni-
cians and workers, are more in evidence. Greater
di?erentiation between management, conception,
design or planning, and execution exists. Con-
versely, the British organisation is more ``equivo-
cal'' according to Sorge (1991, p. 167) in that
functional segmentation between production and
maintenance, management and engineering,
supervision and technical work is pronounced.
Yet, the management hierarchy is less technical
and more subject to ®nancial controls vis-aÁ -vis
German and French enterprises (see also Lane,
1989; Loveridge, 1990; Carr & Tomkins, 1998;
Sheridan, 1995).
Societal e?ects studies suggest that a variety of
patterns are to be found in societies rather than a
single one. Dominant patterns exist within a band
422 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
of variety. Performance is associated not with
notional correlations between speci®c task con-
tingencies, strategies, organisation and human
resources, but with the capacity to integrate con-
ceptually distinct and opposed task contingencies
and strategy elements. Thus, performance arises
from the combination of what has been conceived
of as distinct alternatives: cost leadership and dif-
ferentiation in the product range; production e-
ciency and product quality; ¯exibility and
productivity improvement; economies of scale and
scope; mechanistic and organic forms. Sorge
(1991, p. 184) argues that ``wider societal arrange-
ments have an important function within this
framework. . . they allow actors to combine see-
mingly contradictory or con¯icting elements''. As
such, economically central organisational patterns
vary in structurally signi®cant detail between
mature industrialised countries. Beyond this, it is
not evident along any conventional measure of
economic eciency or e?ectiveness that one parti-
cular national pattern is more viable than another.
The societal e?ects perspective is concerned
more with the systematic analysis of ``choice-con-
straint dialectics'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 13)
than with notions of unidirectional causation sub-
scribed to by the structural contingency and cul-
turalist frameworks discussed above. It does not
presuppose the notion that goal de®nition must
precede means selection, nor that choice is in
practice legitimated ex-ante rather than ex-post.
Under conditions of social change, organisational
structuring is seen as emergent and analysed in the
context of societal, economic and institutional
in¯uences which form a ``complex tangle of
impacts'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986). This is relevant
in the context of comparative management control
research as it is recognised that control systems
designers within organisations do not simply cre-
ate systems of control which are fully re¯ective of
their intended ideal in practice (Hopwood, 1987b).
Rather, planned structures have both intended
and unintended e?ects upon the perspectives and
expectations of organisational actors (Green &
Murphy, 1996; see also Hopwood & Miller, 1994).
The focus of interest of the societal e?ects
approach is on correspondences between organi-
sation structure and societal context, whilst
acknowledging that ``evolution not only brings
forth novel phenomena, but continues along a line
which is already established'' (Sorge & Warner,
1986, p. 16).
The societal e?ects perspective takes a half-way
stance between unidirectional determinism and
total constructivism. It does not appeal to decon-
textualised structural relationships nor does it see
human creativity as unbounded and organisa-
tional arrangements as unconstrained. In this
light, the societal e?ects approach is situated mid-
way within the universalism-contextual spectrum
in Fig. 1. It stresses both the partial autonomy of
the human mind, as well as partial dependence on
the objectivised world. Correspondences between
organisational phenomena and societal structur-
ing exist within a complex set of contingencies that
re¯ect emergent patterns. Problem solving in
organisations is seen as ``non-rational'' and as
entailing a level of ``unawareness or forgetfulness''
(Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 44) about all the cir-
cumstances relevant to a decision. Organisations
might thus be seen as arising from a ``technology
of foolishness'' (March & Olsen, 1976, p. 42). Fig.
1 situates the societal e?ects approach halfway in
the purposeful-emergent continuum. This re¯ects
the notion that organisations draw on elements of
formal knowledges that are selected, rearranged
and implemented in a ``non-rationally unpredict-
able way'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 35). Conse-
quently, the functional purposefulness of
management controls might be regarded as some-
what di?use and inchoate.
Although conceptually broader in scope, the
societal e?ects approach su?ers certain problems.
Lane (1989, p. 37), for instance, objects to the
. . . the tacit assumption that the institutional
arrangements of capitalist societies embody
the values of all social classes and does not
consider that institutions are predominantly
shaped by the powerful in society.
To overcome this problem, Lane suggests that
interviews ought to be carried out by researchers
adopting the societal perspective to classify how
organisational structures are viewed by employees
at di?erent levels of the hierarchy. Another di-
culty with the approach is that societal studies are
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 423
based on the comparison of matched pairs of
organisations which makes it possible that one
type of plant is typical in one country but tends to
be an exception in another. Heidenreich (1991,
p. 184) refers to this problem as the ``non-com-
parability of comparable plants''. Moreover, in
rejecting the de®ning elements of organisational
universalism and in refuting the convergence the-
sis, the societal e?ects approach sides, sometimes
explicitly, with the hypothesis of divergence
between capitalistic countries. Ultimately, such a
stance borders on having to confront the Mal-
inowskian dilemma: can a test for the convergence
of societies be had in the face of the theoretical
posture that societies are non-comparable? (see
Malinowski, 1944). Doubt has also been cast over
whether organisational processes and structures
can be considered to be subject to a powerful
structural isomorphism between ®rms and social
institutions. Mueller (1994, p. 422) notes that ``. . .
organisational and globalisation e?ects may com-
plement or even counteract the societal e?ect''.
His concern is that some companies are ``part of
larger institutions'' (Mueller, 1994) and are sub-
jected to world market conditions to which they
have to adapt or they may be part of multi-
national organisational groups. In so far as these
companies draw on resources from these larger
institutions, their internal structures and processes
are likely to be substantially in¯uenced and
shaped by them.
D'Iribarne (1991, p. 603) expresses the view that
by ``. . . purging itself of all cultural elements'', the
societal approach leaves behind certain ``unre-
solved diculties'' (D'Iribarne, 1991). One such
problem is that although Sorge and Warner (1986,
p. 44) take pains to stress that
. . . the value of the approach resides in the
theoretical engineering of correspondences,
including dialectical linkages, of reciprocal
conditions which overarch di?erentiated
functional spheres,
the antecedent nature of any such relationships
remains unexplored. Additionally, although the
``central object'' (Maurice, Sellier & Silvestre,
1992, p. 77) of the societal e?ects approach has
been said to be the identi®cation and analysis of
``. . . the enterprise and its actors within society''
(Maurice et al., 1992). and the ``social embedded-
ness of its object of analysis'' (Maurice et al.,
1992), little light is in e?ect shed on the social or
historical roots of observed di?erences. Given
these limitations, Rose (1985, p. 81) notes that:
``There is no shortage of questions which the body
of ``societal'' analysis raises''. In spite of the con-
ceptual and methodological diculties which
ideational-based studies and societal e?ects ana-
lyses raise, they no doubt increase our under-
standing of some of the possible forces underlying
diversity in organisational arrangements and con-
trol structures in di?erent national contexts. Both
perspectives, however, fail to address certain
important questions about the interplay between
control systems and the homogenising e?ects pos-
ited. Montagna (1980, p. 27) comments in relation
to accounting research that draws on Hofstede's
(1980) quanti®cation of cultural value dimensions
as follows:
The lack of emphasis on the social dynamics
of culture limits the utility of their analysis
of the relationship between culture and
accounting.
This represents a common problem with the
majority of existing comparative studies of man-
agement control systems and organisational
arrangements. These studies do not, for instance,
heighten our appreciation of the processes by
which wider social phenomena become embedded
in control practices, nor do they shed light on the
manner in which organisational controls come to
exhibit speci®cities and characteristics discernible
in their broader social context. Likewise, questions
about the inertia and dynamism of homogenising
forces in altering, shaping, and mobilising parti-
cular organisational practices, and about the nat-
ure of particularisms underlying the existence of
de®ned control mechanisms, remain largely unan-
swered. In e?ect, these studies fail to explore the
roots of national distinctiveness within types of
managerial controls, systems of organisational
arrangements, and styles of enterprise government.
The societal e?ects approach paves the way for
institutional, explanations of societally shaped
control structures. It points to the plausibility of
424 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
considering organisations as capable of reprodu-
cing by ``enactment and continuous re-enactment''
(Sorge, 1991, p. 186) structures and response pat-
terns which forms a coherent societally-speci®c
whole. The following section considers the possi-
bilities for comparative management control
research within a new institutionalism frame of
reference.
5. Management control and new institutionalism
Scholars interested in the study of organisa-
tional activities and structure have posited that
habit and premises structure the activities and
perceptions of organisational actors (Simon,
1957), and that decision making is often more
indicative of rule following than the calculative
analysis of possible consequences of action
(March & Simon, 1958). In other words, they
suggest that actions may be understood by exam-
ining their cognitive rather than their normative
basis. Moreover, the manner in which social order
is constituted as a practical activity as individuals
interact may be understood in terms of how cog-
nition is tied to routine, convention, and the logic
of institutional rules (Gar®nkel, 1967; Go?man,
1967; Silverman, 1970). In this regard, institutions
are seen not as the product of deliberate design
and the outcome of purposive action, but rather in
terms of the persistence of practices in both their
taken-for-granted quality and their reproduction
in structures that are partially self-sustaining
(Zucker, 1991). This perspective in organisational
analysis has been termed the ``new institutional-
ism'' (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The approach
emphasises the ways in which action is structured
and order made possible by shared systems of
rules that condition the inclinations and capacities
of individuals and in¯uence the di?usion of orga-
nisational operating procedures. It seeks to
explore how organisational ideals become embed-
ded in language and symbols and how states of
a?airs are produced and constructed. It is thus,
partly concerned with the manner in which social
and symbolic order is maintained by means of
rituals. The general focus of new institutionalism
is on
. . . organizational sectors or ®elds roughly co-
terminous with the boundaries of industries,
professions, or national societies (Scott &
Meyer, 1991, p. 112).
The notion that structure results from pre-
de®ned design and intended action is less tenable
within the new institutionalism frame of reference
as organisational actors are viewed as making
assumptions that remain semi-conscious and
which in¯uence how they perceive, think and feel
as part of groups (Schein, 1985, 1996). Patterns
of judgement become aligned with actors
0
sub-
jective interpretation schemes and certain percep-
tive repertoires of cognition remain whereas
others are eschewed (Weick, 1977, 1979). Rather
than consider organisational arrangements as
adaptive solutions to problems of utility max-
imisation and opportunism, the repetitive ele-
ments of organisational structures are sought to
be explained by reference to their taken for gran-
ted nature and their perpetuation in structures
that are to some extent self-sustaining. Although
individuals within organisations make an array of
choices on an ongoing basis, they also con-
tinuously seek guidance from the experiences of
others in comparable situations and by reference
to standards of obligation (Smircich, 1983). Indi-
viduals ``associate certain actions with certain
situations by rules of appropriateness'' (March &
Olsen, 1984, p. 741). Such rules arise from the
process of socialisation, on-the-job training, edu-
cation and observed norms of deference to
convention.
The role of conscious management decision
making in producing outcomes regarding organi-
sational control systems is thus limited. The pro-
position that organisational structures can be
emergent and enacted appeals to a position
whereby human behaviour might be seen to derive
sense and meaning from the interaction between
actors and their social context. In contrast to pla-
cing emphasis on the plausibility that management
controls can be shaped deterministically, such a
stance ``. . . makes it possible to avoid the `rei®ca-
tion fallacy' of orthodox economic thought'' (Zan,
1995, p. 270). Social understandings derived from
interplay between organisational actors in¯uence
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 425
formal elements of management controls in impli-
cit ways (Meyer, 1992). Choices are made, but
derive from intuition and semi-conscious norms of
obligations and preferences (Smircich, 1985).
Cross-national studies of management systems
cannot, in this light, appeal to a decontextualised
and mechanical imagery of causality which pre-
sumes purpose and predictability as given. The
comparative analysis of social systems, institutions,
and organisations entails developing an under-
standing of context-speci®c meanings and priorities.
If it is accepted that meaning is contextually
determined, and that the meaning of the phenom-
ena under study are contingent on interactions
between organisational actors and their inter-
relationship, then ascribing universal relevance to
control categories across nations must be ques-
tioned. Viewing management control systems as
enacted o?ers a way of exploring how they might
be embedded in collective systems of thought,
rather than as emerging from a process of rational
adoption of core normative values that are
deemed pervasive. In this light, the structuring of
management control systems cannot arise purely
from purposive actions or conscious design, but
rather may be viewed as re¯ective of wider social
elements whilst being deeply embedded in them
(Ansari & Bell, 1990).
Whilst, at the level of structural con®gurations,
cross-national investigations may suggest simila-
rities for instance, in relation to task-environments
(Tayeb, 1988), human resource allocations (Smith,
1992), and levels of decentralisation (Lincoln and
Kalleberg, 1990), their modes of realisation may
di?er ``. . . depending on the particular socio-cul-
tural characteristics of the society'' (Tayeb, 1994,
p. 440). The new institutionalism perspective sug-
gests that the legitimacy of particular organisa-
tional structures is not predicated on notions of
rational adaptation to organisational contingencies
in the ``technical-instrumentalities mode'' (Donald-
son, 1995, p. 80). Standard operating procedures
become institutionalised through law, custom,
professional ideologies or doctrines on e?ective
management. Speci®c practices may ¯ow from
``. . .organisation to organisation, sector to
sector and even country to country. . . Ulti-
mately, they are taken for granted by indivi-
duals and organisations as the right way to do
things'' (Meyer & Scott, 1992, p. 2).
The notion that control systems arise from
``technical-rational'' (Ansari & Bell, 1990) con-
cerns has been questioned by scholars interested in
exploring the role of symbolic, ceremonial and
ritualistic in¯uences on the structuring of man-
agement control systems (see Ansari & Bell, 1990;
Boland & Pondy, 1983; Burchell, Clubb, Hop-
wood, Hughes & Napapiet, 1980). For instance,
Berry et al.'s (1985, p. 4), examination of man-
agement control in an Area of the National Coal
Board in the UK relies on investigating ``the
rationales for practice o?ered by the participants''
and leads them to observe that organisational
changes
. . . re¯ect not so much the needs of internal
organisational management, but instead
external pressures on the organisation to
appear ecient and responsive to apparent
®nancial constraint (Berry et al., 1985).
They emphasise the signi®cance of ``tradition
and culture'' (Berry et al., 1985, p. 24) for an
understanding of management controls.
Ansari & Euske's (1987, p. 564) longitudinal
investigation of accounting information use by US
military repair facilities leads them to conclude
that:
The technical-rational uses are overshadowed
by the rationalising and reifying uses of
accounting.
They suggest that accounting systems play a
``highly symbolic'' (Ansari & Euske's, 1987) func-
tion which represents an alternate form of ration-
ality to the tenets of economic rationality.
Similarly, Czarniawska-Joerges' (1988, p. 4) study
of a Swedish organisation suggests that changes in
control can be seen as a ``symbolic reaction'' to
societal and organisational level transformations.
Covaleski and Dirsmith's (1988) investigation of
the budgetary process between a US university
and its state government leads them to view the
budgetary dialogue as one manner in which socie-
tal expectations are expressed. They argue that an
426 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
organisation's practices must embody and repro-
duce such societal expectations to ensure its con-
tinued viability. Consequently, ``. . .accounting
may be more of a social invention complicit in the
construction of a social reality than a ``rational''
re¯ection of a technical reality'' (Covaleski &
Dirsmith, 1988, p. 20). Likewise, Czarniawska-
Joerges and Jacobson's (1989) analysis of budget
processes within Swedish public sector organisa-
tions leads them to depict budgeting as playing a
symbolic rather than a decision-making role. They
suggest that
. . .linking budgeting to a cultural context
means looking at which symbols, what lan-
guage and which values are represented in
particular budget processes (Czarniawska-
Joerges & Jacobson, 1989, p. 29).
In their longitudinal study, Ansari and Bell
(1994) discuss how the values and meaning frames
of organisational participants within a Pakistani
company provide them with interpretive schemes
for processing experiences. They examine how
such interpretive schema a?ect the organisation's
accounting and control practices. They view their
research as a study of ``. . . the symbolic processes
through which people produce and reproduce
social order'' (Ansari & Bell, 1994, p. 27) and
place emphasis on the ``native's viewpoint''
(Ansari & Bell, 1994) in the linguistic categories
that are used to organise experience and give
meaning to it. They explain that this is necessary
to:
. . . explain how and why certain types of
accounting/control systems existed in the
organisation under consideration at various
stages of its life (Ansari and Bell, 1994, p. 29).
A number of cross-national comparisons of
management control systems suggest that focusing
on the universal aspects of organisational struc-
turing (the etic view) such as the degree of decen-
tralisation, formalisation, standardisation of
procedures etc. reveals little of the underlying
causes and consequences of observed di?erences
and similarities (see Child, 1981). Conversely, a
concern with locally meaningful elements and ``. . .
emphasising the insider's view and interpretation
of the world'' (Punnett & Shenkar, 1994) (the emic
perspective) is more conducive to delineating a
role for semi-conscious, unarticulated rationales
whereby management controls are seen as enacted
rather than purposefully structured. The new
institutionalism perspective stresses an ideo-
graphic mode of analysing the basis of manage-
ment practices. Fig. 1 situates this perspective as
placing stress on the emergent nature of manage-
ment controls rather than their technical purpose-
fulness, and emphasises the contextual focus of the
research methods it implicates. The ideographic
emphasis placed in particular on exploring the role
of ritual and symbol in in¯uencing organisational
practices has been the subject of some criticism.
For instance, Perrow (1985) suggests that this
form of enquiry does not give sucient regard to
organisational and social realities. Donaldson
(1995, p. 83) takes this line of critique further by
noting that this literature ``. . . repeatedly fails to
make analyses of objective e?ectiveness"'' He rai-
ses the concern that if in¯uential ideas become
institutionalised and are accorded legitimacy by
the State, the profession etc. . ., then ``what is
described as legitimate may be successful and
legitimate because it is successful'' (Donaldson,
1995, p. 63). His critique ``. . .comes from the
functionalist contingency theory direction''
(Donaldson, 1995, p. 79) and calls for ``scienti®c
proof rather than rhetorical means of depicting
organizations as ritualistic and irrational''
(Donaldson, 1995, p. 63). Donaldson (1995, p.
114) notes however that ``. . . the theory can never
be logically veri®ed. . . the concept of taken-for-
granted is . . . incapable of empirical test and
therefore unscienti®c''.
Whilst the body of management control
research which appeals to the new institutionalism
frame of reference is small, it is indicative of the
potential role of institutional in¯uences at the level
of industries, professions or nation-states in the
shaping of organisational structure (Lane, 1995).
Studies of management control systems within
speci®c contexts have posited cognitive bases to
explain the structuring of organisational practices
(Ansari & Bell, 1994; Berry et al., 1985; Colignon
& Covaleski, 1988; Cziarniawska-Joerges &
Jacobson, 1989; Meyer, 1983), and have articu-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 427
lated rationales for the status quo by assessing the
impact of institutional forces (Covaleski, Dirsmith
& Michelman, 1993; Hogler & Hunt, 1993;
Mezias, 1994). Comparative research concerned
with institutinal in¯uences is now beginning to
emerge. Ahrens (1996, 1997) and Ahrens and
Chapman (in press), for instance, adopt an ethno-
graphic methodological stance in their studies of
accountability and conceptualisation of account-
ing expertise within British and German breweries.
These explorations suggests that there are national
di?erences in the perceived ``reality of accounting
information'' (Ahrens, 1996, p. 139) in represent-
ing operational context. Also, LoÈ ning's (1994)
examination of di?erences in styles of commu-
nication and information exchange among man-
agers in French and British service sector
enterprises leads her to posit associations with
national variations in internal accounting practices.
Although these early e?orts are laudable, they
o?er limited insight into the historical rootedness
of observed control practices. In part, this is
because carrying out investigations that are con-
cerned with how shared typi®cations and standard
cognitive models vary across societies, but are
shared within nations, requires relatively sig-
ni®cant research resources. There is nevertheless
little doubt as to the potential that new institu-
tionalism research o?ers to explain the basis of
organisational structures or practices across dif-
ferent contexts. Its ability to explicate change is,
however, less evident.
1
If relationships exist
between cognitive e?ects and organisational
structure, one might ask by what mechanism can
alterations in systems of control be explained?
How can the dynamic between interaction among
organisational actors and structural features of
their organisations be understood? If taken-for-
granted beliefs and widely promulgated rules serve
as templates for organising, what ensues when
di?ering institutional logics challenge one-
another? How do strong local logics of cognition
interfere with those that are more widely dis-
persed? Powell and DiMaggio (1991) suggest that
the new institutionalism perspective can shed sig-
ni®cant light on the existence of semi-conscious
cognitive in¯uences on organisational structuring,
but that a clearer understanding of how changes in
organisational structures take e?ect can be derived
by investigating the historical origins of institu-
tional in¯uences. The next part of this essay con-
siders a particular historico-theoretical perspective
which enables present day structures to be
explained in terms of the past.
6. History and management control speci®city
To understand how and why organisations
across nations are similar and di?erent, an expla-
nation for the ``processes whereby organisations
might be infused with national distinctiveness''
(Child, 1981, p. 305) would seem desirable.
National distinctiveness must be demonstrable,
and if it is deemed to stem from a society's past,
then links must be shown between historical
events and social e?ects. Establishing such links
with the past is not unproblematic (Hopwood &
Johnson, 1987; Loft, 1995, 1997; Miller & Napier,
1993), though an examination of the dominant
values and enduring normative attitudes as they
are shaped historically by social, political and
economic changes might be considered a necessary
ingredient of any claim about the existence of
national speci®city resulting in management con-
trol distinctiveness. But di?erent approaches to
the historical endeavour exist. Historicists for
instance appeal to
. . . careful historical narrative, attempting to
establish ``what happened next'' to see if it
has the ``feel'' of a pattern, a process, or a
series of accidents and contingencies (Mann,
1986, p. 503)
Their interpretations stress the complexity,
uniqueness, and contingency of historical events.
The position might be taken that it is more
appropriate to determine ``. . . how this man, this
people or this state became what it is'' (Gadamer,
1972, p. 116) as opposed to ``. . . how men, people
or states develop in general'' (Gadamer, 1972).
Such a view might then be extended to consider
1
See Scapens (1994) for a discussion of evolutionary versus
revolutionary change processes within an ``institutional eco-
nomics'' framework.
428 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
whether one can go beyond seeking to explicate
how ``this organisation'' or ``this management
control system'' came to be what it is. Seeking a
more generalist explanation for perceived col-
lectivities must ®rst come to terms with whether
the speci®city of an organisational context can
embed elements of commonality with other orga-
nisations which do not carry across borders. His-
toricists would suggest that parts cannot be
analytically removed from wholes, and that his-
torical events being complex and unique cannot
support a role for general theorising about causal
e?ects. Such a view is reminiscent of Malinowski's
dilemma, and is inimical to the enterprise of com-
paring di?erent societies. Comparative history has
in e?ect, been said to be ``. . . an oxymoron to a
true historicist'' (Kiser & Hechter, 1991, p. 12).
Yet, it must be recognised that di?usion and
imitation connect societies across time and space
(Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The problem of
``connection'' is not limited to ``contamination''
across time, but also across contexts, and needs to
be addressed in cross-national analyses seeking to
be historically informed. The French historian
Braudel (1977, p. 46) argues for the recognition
and investigation of such links. He considers
action as having a connection with the past, and as
providing a basis for that which follows:
. . . there has never been a total breach, an
absolute discontinuity . . . or a non-con-
tamination. . . between the past, even the very
distant past and the present. Past experiences
continue into the present, adding to it.
Similarly, social anthropologists support a role for
history in understanding the present. Sahlins
(1985, p. 34), for instance, states that ``. . . di?erent
cultural orders have their own modes of historical
action, consciousness, and determination-their
own historical practice'' and that ``. . . culture is
precisely the organisation of the current situation
in the terms of a past'' (Sahlins, 1985, p. 155).
Evans-Pritchard (1956, p. 59) also makes the point
that
. . . to know a society's past gives one a deeper
understanding of the nature of its social life at
the present time.
Foucault's (1961, 1966, 1975) works on the history
of systems of thought have also been concerned to
``. . . understand the present as a product of the
past and as a seedbed for the new'' (Sheridan,
1980. p. 82). The view that history can be drawn
upon to explain the present has been the basis for
pioneering studies of the national rootedness of
management practices and organisational forms
(Abegglen, 1958; Crozier, 1964; D'Iribarne, 1989;
Locke, 1996), and is supported in the conclusions
of a number of recent cross-national research stu-
dies of organisations. For instance, Gallie's (1978,
p. 318) investigation of the implications of
advanced automation on di?erent facets of activ-
ities in a set of British and French organisations
leads him to conclude that:
We will need to. . . examine the ways in which
di?erent historical experiences have generated
distinctive cultural and social structural pat-
terns.
Child (1981, p. 329) also stresses that
. . . the pattern of past action within a nation,
particularly as re¯ected in its institutional
development, should draw attention to con-
temporary cultural products which are likely
to be relatively persistent in nature (Child,
1981).
and notes that:
The optimum might appear to combine his-
torical and institutional insight with a careful
sampling of values among present-day popu-
lations of the nations in which organisations
are to be compared (Child, 1981).
In this light, it might be held that in order to
gain an appreciation of the homogenising factors
in¯uencing systems of management control across
organisations, an historical analysis of their
national context would be appropriate. Such an
analysis would permit the identi®cation of endur-
ing forces which become manifest in political,
economic and institutional events and changes. It
would thereby provide a means of identifying
dominant conditioning in¯uences whilst also per-
mitting a deeper understanding of their institu-
tional origins and source of sustenance.
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 429
If organisational change and therefore structure
is considered to be immanent within a wider pro-
cess of social change, and to be involved in both
constructing and in being created by its broader
environment, then understanding organisations
must involve, at least in part, an exploration of the
nature of broader economic transformations,
social processes and political shifts. Questions
must be asked about conditions and mechanisms
of continuity, disruption and change of the social
order. But such an analysis raises questions about
the time period over which an examination of
transformations in organisational controls must
extend.
If the view is taken that an organisation's mode
of functioning, at any point in time, stems both
from present forces as well as from its past, then
the period over which the structure of the organi-
sation is studied cannot exist in a vacuum. No
choice of time frame is likely comprehensively to
encompass all that may have a bearing on a
management control system's structure. In the
context of cross-national studies in particular, a
composite of di?erent times moving at di?erent
speeds may be seen to prevail across societies
essentially constituting a ``diachronic assemblage''
(Lucas, 1985, p. 7). The past may not simply be
narrated as a series of synchronic events which can
be conceived within a linear time frame whereby
each development is seen as identi®able through
chronological links with a beginning and an end.
Rather, history may be assumed to transpire at
varying speeds in di?erent contexts over any one
period of time. This renders problematic the
choice of a time frame for undertaking an
historical explanation of the provenance of man-
agement control systems across di?erent national
contexts.
One approach to historical study has been to
supplement the examination of short sequences
(courte dure e) of heterogeneous events with the
investigation of the emergence of practices over
long periods of time (longue dure e) whilst bridging
the two with medium length units of time (con-
joncture). The object of such temporal partition-
ing is to compile a ``total history'' (La Capra,
1985, p. 117).
2
An alternative methodological
approach has been adopted by ``new'' historians.
3
interested in the history of mentalities (see for
instance, ArieÁ s, 1962; Darnton, 1984; Duby, 1980;
Schorske, 1980). Rather than to delineate a
chronology of historical events, certain historians
of mentality are concerned to reconstruct beliefs
and value systems by examining rituals and cere-
mony under an ethnological perspective. The his-
torian of mentality
. . . presupposes that in principle every society
possesses simultaneously diverse cultural
milieus which are juxtaposed and interlocking
and transmitted by language, myth and
upbringing (Glenisson, France, Iggers & Par-
ker, 1980, p. 182).
Rather than explain the actions of particular indi-
viduals, such an history aims to examine what
these particular individuals shared with others of
their time. What is sought is to investigate the
origins of modes of consciousness, the condition-
ing elements of human subjectivity, and the reg-
ularity of forms of thought in particular contexts.
The concern is to understand
2
This view has been adopted by the Annales school which
emerged in France during the 1930's and which departed from
the traditions of historiography privileging the ``event''. (On the
history of history-making in France see Burke, 1980; Hay,
1990; Lucas, 1985; Stoianovich, 1976; and Stone, 1977).
3
Whereas the ``old'' school; has viewed the ``natural'' mode
of historical writing as essentially narrative'' (Himmelfarb,
1987, p. 3) and has placed particular importance on delineating
sequences of heterogeneous events, the emerging ``new'' history
perspective was initially, more analytic, relying on statistical
tables, oral interviews, sociological models and psychoanalytic
theories. Tensions between the two schools centred on the jud-
gement by the new breed of historians that history could not be
value-free and that historical facts were in e?ect constructs. The
view that historical events represent individual moments which
can be gleaned through examining documents without regard
for the broader context were questioned. The new school until
the 1960's, sought to create a
. . . historical discipline that would bring together geo-
graphy, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology,
philology, and any other relevant human or natural sci-
ence in order to produce a total picture of past societies
(Lucas, 1985, p. 4)
Subsequently, historiography which had been influenced
primarily by economic and sociological methods, was in the
1970's, affected by social and cultural anthropology giving rise
to the writings on the history of mentality.
430 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
. . . the collective mentality that regulates,
without their knowing it, the representations
and judgements of social subjects (Chartier,
1982, p. 23).
Such a view is also evident in the works of
Foucault (1961, 1966, 1975). In order to under-
stand systems of thought and ``. . . long-range
trends in the alteration of the structure of the
psyche'' (Hunt, 1986, p. 217), Foucault focused on
the network of institutions and practices which
have imposed speci®c forms of subjectivity on
individuals. He sought to shed light on how and
why a practice is constructed in its speci®city and
how that speci®city is anchored to other social
practices. Moreover, he attempted to excavate the
hidden forms of regularity not accessible to con-
sciousness, but which have made particular prac-
tices possible objects of knowledge:
. . . what I am trying to do is to grasp the
implicit systems which determine our own
most familiar behaviour without knowing it
(Foucault cited in Megill, 1979, p. 492).
Broadly, ``new'' historians have been concerned to
investigate the internalised conditionings that
escape conscious knowledge, and that cause a
group or a society to share a system of repre-
sentation and a system of values without the need
to make them explicit. Such history ``. . . takes as
its object the collective, the automatic and the
repetitive'' (Chartier, 1988, p. 29), and deals with
the collective mentality that regulates the percep-
tions and judgements of social agents without
their knowledge. Its starting point is that:
Automatic gestures, spontaneous words,
which seem to lack any origins and to be the
fruits of improvisation and re¯ex, in fact
possess deep roots in the long reverberations
of systems of thought (Le Go?, 1985, p. 170).
Linked to his distinctive conception of the
historical enterprise, Foucault has put forth a
speci®c view of the subjecti®cation of the
individual:
Foucault de®ned the essence of the civilizing
process as one of increasing discipline. Spon-
taneous behaviour was tolerated in the Mid-
dle Ages; in the early modern period
increasingly sophisticated systems of external
restraints were imposed in the name of mor-
ality; and in the modern era, the external
constraints were internalised (Hunt, 1986,
p. 217).
Grumley (1989, p. 196) suggests that Foucault saw
individuals as ``conditionable beings'' whose
socialisation takes place in an array of institutions
and within a set of practices which impart parti-
cular norms, values and ideals and which shape
emotions, commitments and attitudes. The social
creation of the tractable being is not the result of a
guided exercise of power, but is a?ected by the
existence of parameters constraining the indivi-
dual's scope of actions. Practices are informed by
a movement to discipline and amplify the powers
of the human body, to maximise its utility and to
produce its ``willing'' and ``automatic'' docility
(Foucault, 1961, p. 169). They delimit the doable,
the knowable and the sayable, and the individual
therefore becomes ``bound to invisible rules in
everything he says and does'' (BurguieÁ re, 1990,
p. 133).
The social creation and conditioning of the
individual brings into existence and helps sustain
what Miller (1987, p. 1) has referred to as ``reg-
ulatory practices of the self'' which act as norms of
discipline based on notions of truth which are
speci®c to a certain space and time. The study of
power relations in this light is one of historically
and regionally speci®c practices that may subse-
quently become generalised and di?used. Wright
(1998, p. 9) notes that Foucault has
. . . documented how knowledge about mental
health, sexuality and criminality in the 18th
and 19th centuries became the basis of new
practices on which institutions were built.
These institutional practices shaped percep-
tions, categories, values and behaviour.
For instance, in his early works on madness,
Foucault (1961) examined a point in history where
reason and madness were undi?erentiated and
traced the subsequent emergence of a conception
of mental illness. He sought to
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 431
. . . retrace in time that constant verticality
which confronts European culture with that
which is not (Foucault, 1961, p.10).
Foucault considered the great con®nement period
as a phenomenon of late seventeenth century Eur-
opean society where those who were mad, unable
or unwilling to work, as well as other ``immoral or
unreasonable people were enclosed'' (O'Farrell,
1989, p. 75). The construction of madness as a
di?erentiable category was not independent of the
political pursuit of enhanced work output in Eur-
opean states over the eighteenth century. Follow-
ing developments in clinical practices, ``. . . reason
ceased to be for man an ethic and became a nat-
ure'' (Foucault, 1966, p. 103) by the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The conceptualisation of
madness as a clinical state of nature is to Foucault
(1966) a ``local'' and historically speci®c concept of
knowledge. Its emergence is contextual (Eur-
opean) and seen as tied to circumstantial condi-
tions of possibility (principally the State's pursuit
of economic growth and the proliferation of insti-
tutionalised knowledges). What may be seen as
``fundamental'' (Bernstein, 1983, p. 9). (such as
reason as a state of nature) is in e?ect, ``culturally
and historically speci®c'' (Bernstein, 1983, p. 9).
Foucault's (1975) work on the prison and the
emergence of the modern penal system also points
to the contextual and circumstantial nature of
knowledge production. Here his concern was to
depict discipline as a particular technique for the
organisation and regulation of individuals that has
become widespread in modern European societies.
He saw this as having been made possible by a
signi®cant increase in economic production at the
beginning of the eighteenth century concomitantly
with the harnessing of labour power. In delimiting
the context within which disciplinary transforma-
tion took place, Falzon (1998, p. 48) argues that
Foucault's works on the prison and disciplinary
practices suggest that ``being shaped and directed
in accordance with cultural forms is part of the
process by which human beings are historically
constituted''. In other words, alterations in sys-
tems of penal reform were bound up with shifting
conceptions of normative selfhood in Europe over
the period in question.
Broadly, Foucault's (1961, 1975) works on
madness and criminality are suggestive of social
orders which are contextually speci®c, and which
``come to be set in place, without the need for any
overall controlling plan or project'' (Falzon, 1998,
p. 47). Historical events are not teleologically
governed. Historical processes give rise to the
emergence of events that are ``discontinuous,
divergent and governed by chance'' (McNay,
1994, p. 89). It is chance in this light which prof-
fers time and space speci®city to practices, and
which opens up the possibility of investigating the
antecedents of organisational arrangements, and
the variations in such arrangements across di?er-
ent national contexts.
Foucault's work as part of the ``new'' history is
relevant to cross national management control
research in terms of his critique of the notion of
the ``foundational subject'' (Falzon, 1998, p. 3)
and his rejection of absolute, overarching, unify-
ing standpoints. Concepts of knowledge, truth and
ethics are seen as local and historically speci®c.
Human nature and personal creativity are viewed
as consequences of forms of knowledge, social
formations and political practices which are time
and space dependent. Even the notion of justice is,
to Foucault, (cited in Barker, 1998, p. 74)
. . . an idea which in e?ect has been invented
and put to work in di?erent types of societies
as an instrument of a certain political or eco-
nomic power.
It is this skepticism concerning the existence of
any universal, permanent, ahistorical standpoint,
framework or essence to which appeal can be
made in determining what may count as reason or
knowledge, which is conducive to the notion of
contextualized rationality:
There are in fact many rationalities, all of
them the product of very concrete historical
practices (Foucault cited in O'Farrell, 1989,
p. 125)
This anti-foundational stance furthers the
notion that organisational practices are ultimately
socially rooted and devoid of essence. Although
Foulcauldian and other postmodern interpreta-
tions of organisational control and accounting
432 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
practices have been the subject of critiques (Arm-
strong, 1994; Arnold, 1998; Neimark, 1994; see
also Grey, 1994; and Hoskins, 1994), the ``new''
history perspective o?ers a means of exploring the
antecedents and the basis of the ``many rational-
ities'' (Foucault cited in O'Farrell, 1989, p. 125)
underlying management practices across di?erent
contexts.
The ``new'' stance to history which rests on
particular historiographical assumptions posits a
particular conceptualisation of control. In exam-
ining historical trajectories in given contexts, the
notion of a total ``reality of the past'' (Foucault,
1981, p. 14) is eschewed in favour of investigating
the ``discourse of true and false'' (Foucault, 1981).
Conceptions of truth and notions of propriety
determine propensities, attitudes and predisposi-
tions which, in turn, can be taken to condition
forms of control. To understand the structuring of
management control systems, it is necessary to
examine conditions generating truth and to inves-
tigate the history of the ``objecti®cation'' (Fou-
cault, 1981, p. 5) of elements which come to be
taken as axiomatic within the domain of manage-
ment practice in a given context (a de®ned col-
lectivity or a nation say). The espousal of
particular truths creates invisible self-willed con-
trols within individuals, and thereby renders pos-
sible the existence of particular and compatible
management controls. Within this perspective,
management controls may be said to be operative
within a framework of individual subjectivity act-
ing as ``. . . systems that quietly order us about''
(Foucault cited in Megill, 1979, p. 493). The func-
tioning of speci®c forms of management controls
within the organisation may be viewed as being
co-terminus with the socially constructed make-up
of the individual.
Organisations structure management controls
to e?ect possibilities for their governance by
exerting constraints on the behaviour of indivi-
duals and imposing limits on their actions (Miller
& O'Leary, 1987). Certain controls may comple-
ment an individual's subjective predisposition
without subverting his or her will. They may
embody that which the individual is subjectively
predisposed to, and arm his or her conditioned
expectations or, in contrast, they may constrain
his or her will by establishing parameters of action
compatible primarily with the pursuit of emergent
organisational priorities. The characteristic speci-
®city of an organisation's mode of management
control is thus determined both by that which
accords with the subjective orientation of the
individual and that which corresponds to the
organisation's socially constructed role, both of
which are linked to historical antecedents and
contemporary rationalisations.
Within this perspective, the peculiarities and
characteristic speci®cities of particular manage-
ment controls are not seen as deviations from a
correct universal form. Rather, management con-
trols are taken to be contextually determined by
the nature of the individual's subjectivity and the
speci®c social conditioning of the organisation.
Ultimately, a particular mode of organisational
functioning and regulation is in¯uenced by e?ects
shaping the social nature of both the individual
and that of the organisation. The emergence of
self-controls among individuals, and the historical
process underlying the social construction of the
normative organisation, have to be appreciated
contextually before an understanding of interna-
tional variety in management controls can be
developed.
The positioning of the ``new'' history frame of
reference to cross-national research in Fig. 1 is
re¯ective of the socio-contextualized notion of
``subjective-expressive'' (Wuthnow, Hunter, Ber-
gesen & Karzweil, 1984, p. 3) human predisposi-
tion, and the concomitant emergence of
management controls. If internalised condition-
ings are seen as escaping conscious knowledge and
enabling a group or a society to share a system of
representation and values without needing to
make these explicit, then knowledge of cultural
attributes cannot be mobilised to construct parti-
cular forms of management controls re¯ective of
subjective predisposition. Management controls
are in this sense emergent rather than purposefully
designed a priori.
In the context of the ``new'' historical perspec-
tive, homogenising forces within a collectivity are
seen as arising from the division between true and
false which gives rise to ``programmings of beha-
viour'' (Foucault, 1981, p. 10). Where such con-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 433
ditioning is seen as immanent in organisations
within a nation, management control systems
evolve characteristic features which re¯ect endur-
ing propensities consistent with those found in
their broader national setting. If the discourse of
the true and false can be equated with a homo-
genising order, then the subjectivity of the indivi-
dual and the social conditioning of the
organisation will be informed such as to enable
particular forms of management controls to exist.
As such, the historical contingency of forms of
management control is demarcated within the
perspective of regimes of truth which direct the
subject's, as well as the organisation's existence. In
this light, the collective or national speci®city of
management controls may be discerned by exam-
ining the genesis of conceptualisations of truth
which alter, a?ect, and in¯uence the social space
within which subjects and organisations exist.
7. Discussion
Cross-national research in management control
is methodologically at a stage of infancy. Whilst a
body of comparative research has been docu-
mented, it has largely been undertaken in the wake
of methodological frames of reference existing in
other areas of management research which have
been subject to heavy criticism for at least three
decades. The contingency view stems from the-
ories of universalism and functionalism which are
increasingly deemed to be conceptually untenable.
The culturalist perspective, whilst appealing to
notions of the social dependency of management
controls, also ®nds its roots within a deterministic
frame of logic. Studies of these two genres have
sought to establish signi®cant statistical infer-
ences, whilst disregarding methodological precepts
deemed important in more established social sci-
ence disciplines.
Early e?orts within the ``societal e?ects'' per-
spectives have produced fruitful comparative
results in terms both of substantive methodologi-
cal underpinnings as well as potential depth of
analysis. This stance is rigorously grounded within
a body of theoretical propositions lending focus
and analysability. Its advocates make explicit,
however, the desirability of extending the frame of
reference to encompass institutionalist under-
standings of the provenance of forms of organisa-
tional structuring and management controls.
New institutionalism has emerged from estab-
lished research traditions within the organisational
sociology discipline. Its focus on the analysis of
organisational actors
0
subjectivities, and their
contextualized conceptions of social reality and
the attendant enactment of management controls,
enriches the potential conceptualisation within
which cross-national research can be framed.
Although little comparative management control
research has been guided by the new institutional-
ism perspective to date, our understanding of how
organisational practices can be explained by ana-
lysing collective-subjective elements is increasing.
The potential for cross-national research in man-
agement control remains extensive within this
frame of reference.
This paper has suggested that the ``new'' history
frame of reference opens up the possibility for a
conceptually substantive approach to comparative
cross-national management control research. This
particular view which is concerned with the
exploration of the conditions which may underlie
management control speci®city at the level of col-
lectivities draws upon rich descriptions of context
complemented by historical analysis of observed
practices (Miller, Hopper & Laughlin, 1991).
Moreover, this perspective theoretically encapsu-
lates a notional frame of reference for under-
standing control within the context of human
subjectivity. This lends plausibility to comparative
research which can position itself alongside a
growingly established body of accounting control
research that attempts to o?er an understanding
of present con®gurations in terms of the past (see
Covaleski, Dirsmith & Samuels, 1996; Dillard &
Becker, 1997; Hopwood & Miller, 1994; Luft,
1997).
The methodological approaches to cross-
national management control research discussed
here do not delimit a comprehensive locus of pos-
sibilities. Nor is the representation developed in
Fig. 1 implied to encompass all such loci or indeed
to be conceptually chaste in its own terms. The
present discussion should only be seen as o?ering
434 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
a tentative starting point for debating about and
engaging in further comparative research along
new agendas. Moreover, it is understood that the
various perspectives presented here may be seen
by some as complementary, and by others as
alternatives, given that they span di?erentiated
epistemological and ontological research assump-
tions. It is believed that such di?erentiation can
only be of value in a domain which, by de®nition,
presumes scholarship predisposed to unravelling
diversity, multiplicity and plurality.
Acknowledgements
This paper has greatly bene®ted from comments
on an earlier draft by Thomas Ahrens, Markus
Granlund, Graeme Harrison, Anthony Hopwood,
Kari Lukka, Peter Miller, Michael Power, Carlos
Ramirez, Michael Shields and two anonymous
reviewers. The views of participants at the Map-
ping Diversity in Management Control Research
Conference held in Palermo, December 1997 are
gratefully acknowledged.
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doc_598424197.pdf
Cross-national studies of management control systems and internal accounting practices are suggestive of the exis-
tence of distinct national dierences. These studies are, however, methodologically partial, drawing upon contingency
theory rationales and culture based arguments in examining international management control variety. The purpose of
this essay is to review these perspectives critically and to consider other modes of analysis used by researchers investi-
gating diversity in the structuring of organisational arrangements and forms of management practices across dierent
contexts. Speci®cally, the essay discusses the societal eects approach, new institutionalism and ``new'' historical ana-
lyses. The paper also provides a tabular representation which classi®es and positions the alternative perspectives in
comparative management control research discussed in the paper along dierent conceptual dimensions.
Mapping methodological frontiers in cross-national
management control research
Alnoor Bhimani
Department of Accounting and Finance, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Abstract
Cross-national studies of management control systems and internal accounting practices are suggestive of the exis-
tence of distinct national di?erences. These studies are, however, methodologically partial, drawing upon contingency
theory rationales and culture based arguments in examining international management control variety. The purpose of
this essay is to review these perspectives critically and to consider other modes of analysis used by researchers investi-
gating diversity in the structuring of organisational arrangements and forms of management practices across di?erent
contexts. Speci®cally, the essay discusses the societal e?ects approach, new institutionalism and ``new'' historical ana-
lyses. The paper also provides a tabular representation which classi®es and positions the alternative perspectives in
comparative management control research discussed in the paper along di?erent conceptual dimensions. # 1999
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Scholars reviewing comparative management
studies have noted that over the past three dec-
ades, the ®eld has consistently remained prone to
simplistic discussions of empirical ®ndings (Adler,
1983; Boyacigiller & Adler, 1991; Schollhammer,
1969). Where theoretical development has been
made, it has been ``weak'' (Redding, 1994, p. 323)
and
. . . polluted by the axiom-based and positivist
paradigm espoused by Anglo-Saxon econom-
ics in its attempt to cope with its physics-envy
(Redding, 1994).
Although questions have been raised as to the
methodological appropriateness of cross-national
investigations of organisational characteristics, the
results of these studies suggest that organisations
within one national context can exhibit similarities
in their functioning not shared by enterprises in
other countries (see reviews by Adler, Doktor &
Redding, 1986; Eveleth, Cullen, Victor & Sakano,
1995; Ricks, Toyne & Martinez, 1990). Account-
ing techniques and management controls in parti-
cular have been found, in some contexts, to have
characteristics that are country-speci®c rather
than supra-national (see Harrison and McKin-
non, 1998). Whilst many investigations continue
simply to delineate di?erences across countries
and to describe variety, calls are being made for
greater explanatory content within comparative
studies of accounting practices and organisa-
tional control characteristics (Catturi, 1996;
Hopwood, 1996; Lachman, Nedd & Hinings,
1994; Shields, 1998). What is sought is that the
raisons d'eà tre for diversity across countries and
organisational commonalities within countries be
Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
0361-3682/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0361-3682(98)00068-3
more extensively assessed in scholarly compara-
tive research.
The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, it
critically examines two conceptual approaches
which researchers have adopted to explore the
basis for di?erences in cross-country management
control systems. One of these is premised on the
structural contingency argument, which considers
organisation structure relationships as dissipating
international di?erences, and thereby as conver-
ging over time. The other is the culture based
ideational perspective which sees culture as a
determinant of human action and hence of the
environment in explaining international variations
in management controls. The essay subsequently
identi®es possible avenues for comparative
research drawing upon perspectives identi®able in
the broader management literature concerned with
explaining diversity in organisational arrange-
ments and in management practices across di?er-
ent contexts.
The paper is structured as follows. Comparative
research based on the contingency argument is
considered prior to discussing the culture focused
perspective. The essay then examines the societal
e?ects approach, new institutionalism and the
``new'' stance to historical analysis as potential
research frames of reference for undertaking com-
parative investigations. In discussing these di?er-
ent perspectives, a tabular means of positioning
alternative frameworks is constructed as an aid to
researchers engaged in the study of cross-national
management control di?erences.
2. The convergence school
Early research in comparative management
viewed international variety as diminishing as
societies converge and become more alike over
time. Cross-national di?erences are seen in this
research as being suppressed as supranational for-
ces of change are considered to take hold.
Researchers belonging to the political-economy
school (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1980; Hill, 1981; Lit-
tler, 1982) for instance, suggest that contradictions
within capitalism generate broadly similar trends
in the management and structuring of the labour
process. Economic organisations across countries
under such circumstances are expected to exhibit
similar tendencies toward the encroachment of
managerial control over the conduct of work,
toward the de-skilling of workers through the
simpli®cation and standardisation of tasks, and
towards the displacement of labour. Adopting a
similarly deterministic conceptualisation of socie-
tal transformation, some scholars have argued
that broad environmental factors, such as the
process of structuring managerial hierarchies and
the degree to which a society ®nds itself in a
notional trajectory of industrialisation, induces
convergence in organisational structure and man-
agement practices (Dore, 1959; Dyas & Thanhei-
ser, 1976; Harbison & Myers, 1959; Haire, Ghizelli
& Porter, 1966; Inkeles, 1960). Such a character-
isation of societal transformation is underpinned
by the argument that contingencies of market
diversi®cation, technical adaptation and inter-
organisational dependencies compel organisations
to limit their internal administration and arrange-
ments to a small set of functional possibilities
enabling their survival. The argument that such
contingencies remain imperative across social,
economic or political systems whilst progressively
moulding organisational functioning, marginalises
the relevance of nation-speci®c in¯uences.
Harbison and Myers (1959, p. 44) argued that
. . . organization building has its logic which
rests on the development of management and
there is a general logic of management devel-
opment which has applicability both to
advanced and industrializing countries in the
modern world.
This ``logic'', it is argued, forces industrial
organisations to adopt greater specialism of func-
tion, which in turn enhances the level of manage-
rial decentralisation in organisations witnessing
increased growth and complexity of activities.
Ultimately, organisations manifest greater specia-
lisation and sophistication of managerial controls,
whilst managers become more ``professionalised''
(Harbison & Myers, 1959). Authority relation-
ships undergo a shift from being highly formal to
becoming more participative, with a concomitant
414 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
decentralisation of organisational structure over
the long term. Such a trajectory of
industrialisation downplays the e?ects of nation-
speci®c factors since the transformation associated
with ongoing industrialisation is seen as taking
place irrespective of national context. Any notion
that nationally speci®c characterising forces exert
any in¯uence is restricted to e?ects which alter the
pace rather than the direction or conditions of
change. Such an argument cannot a?ord the
plausibility that nationally rooted contextual ele-
ments could a?ect the genesis of organisational
forms to any signi®cant and sustained degree. The
argument that industrialism follows a ``logic'' thus
supports a macro-social ``culture-free'' (Lammers
& Hickson, 1979, p. 7) view of changes in organi-
sational structuring. In the main, this view
remains ahistorical and impervious to context.
Given that, in broad terms, industrialising nations
arguably witness comparable structural changes,
organisations accordingly exhibit corresponding
likeness.
Cross-national organisational di?erences within
the logic of industrialism perspective are thus
viewed as re¯ective of the extent of industrialisa-
tion, rather than of any deep-rooted element of
national distinctiveness. Indeed, over a period of
time, organisations across national boundaries are
seen as likely to become more alike. As Jamieson
(1983, p. 80) notes, early comparative manage-
ment scholars adopted a stance which inhibited
the explicit consideration of nation-speci®c forces
in explaining business behaviour:
. . . management theory maintained that all
the evidence pointed in the direction not of
cultural diversity, but of convergenceÐthat
the basic principles of management were uni-
versal.
If, indeed, industrialised nations exhibit conver-
ging in¯uences, then the argument might be taken
to also hold at the more micro-organisational level
in terms of technological, market, strategic and
other contextual variables' interdependencies with
organisational structuring (Hickson et al., 1974,
1979; Hickson and McMillan, 1981; Pugh, Hickson
& Hinings, 1969). Such is in e?ect the structural
contingency theorists' posture on the stability of
relationships between contextual elements and
organisational structure variables. As such,
``imperatives'' (Hickson, Hinings, McMillan &
Schwitter, 1974, p. 64) between contextual
variables and structural elements ``. . . take
e?ect whatever the surrounding societal di?er-
ences'' (Hickson, Hinings, McMillan & Schwitter,
1974).
The structural contingency view assumes that
those contextual factors, seen as a?ecting dimen-
sions of structure such as technology, dimensions
of task environment and organisational size, are
objectively di?erentiable from other elements of
the environment within which they exist. More-
over, knowledge of these contextual factors is
assumed to enable management controls to be
purposefully designed. The characterisation of
homogenising forces represented by structural lin-
kages that are context independent, and the con-
ception of management controls as being
instrumentally functional and technically purpo-
seful, form the basic premises of the contingency
perspective. Fig. 1 categorises the structural con-
tingency view as presupposing that homogenising
forces are universal, and that management con-
trols can accordingly be purposefully constructed.
The relationships between organisations and their
environments are seen in terms of the need to sur-
vive whereby certain functional imperatives
underlie the functioning of organisations and
in¯uence the structuring of systems of manage-
ment control. Such a view assumes instrumental
rationality and management control essence (see
Alvesson & Willmott, 1996; Burrell & Morgan,
1979; Hopper & Powell, 1985). This stance also
presumes that organisational elements possess
objective characteristics that may be studied by
methods that ``deny the distinctive nature of the
social in contrast to natural phenomena''
(Knights, 1994, p. 514). Methodologically, struc-
tural contingency is nomothetic in that it relies on
the systematic analysis of data in seeking to
establish generalisable relationships.
The contingency literature in management con-
trol research is at a stage where broad preliminary
observations have been made by reviewers on its
results and implications (Covaleski, Dirsmith &
Samuels, 1996; Dent, 1990; Macintosh, 1994;
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 415
Macy & Arunachalam, 1995; Otley, 1980).
Chapman (1997, p. 189) notes that
Such reviews are largely negative . . . pro-
claiming the lack of an overall framework for
the analysis of the relationship between con-
tingent factors and accounting leaving no
obvious starting point for an explanation of
an increasing body of often contradictory
results.
Conceptually, the underpinnings upon which
the contingency argument has been founded have
been viewed as ``largely discredited'' (Child, 1981,
p. 319). Donaldson (1995, p. 230) however,
remarks that ``structural contingency theory is far
from a ®nished intellectual programme''. He notes
that
. . . several newer theories have arisen as rival
accounts of organisation structure, challen-
ging the explanation o?ered by structural
contingency theory (Donaldson, 1995, p. 230).
Donaldson (1995) argues for a new synthesis to
reintegrate the ®eld of organisation theory taking
structural contingency theory as the core theory
onto which selective propositions from other con-
ceptual perspectives can be mounted. In the face
of extensive critiques of structural contingency
theory (Kimberly, 1976; Mayhew, Levinger,
Macpherson & James, 1972; McKelvey & Aldrick,
1983; Pennings, 1975; Starbuck, 1981) and the
contrasting epistemological and ontological basis
of rival research perspectives, the potential con-
tribution which such a new synthesis could make
remains unclear.
Contingency based studies generally focus on
broad features of organisational structure and
control. Organisational characteristics such as the
degree of centralisation, formalisation, and spe-
cialisation and relationships between these char-
acteristics and other contextual elements have only
been considered macroscopically, thereby reveal-
ing little of the ways in which structure becomes
operationalised. Nath (1986, p. 25) notes that
``contingency theorists have generally ignored the
role of culture in cross-national research''. Yet,
relationships between organisational participants,
processes of mutual accommodation, and modes
of behaviour are widely argued to underlie the
development of formal organisational structuring
(see Puxty, 1993; Roslender, 1992). Disregarding
whether or how such factors might a?ect for-
malised dimensions of organisations reduces the
signi®cance of explanations resting on socio-his-
torical factors in comparative research.
The relative determinism assumed by con-
tingency theorists in investigating organisational
arrangements is dicult to justify in that desired
Fig. 1. Di?erentiating features of alternative research perpsectives.
416 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
levels of performance can be achieved in di?er-
entiated spheres deploying alternative forms of
management controls (see Lane, 1989 and Sher-
idan, 1995 for instance). Giving precedence to
deterministic functional relationships between
structural elements and organisational e?ective-
ness does not allow due consideration of the
in¯uence of nationally rooted preferences on
observed organisational forms and practices.
However, a body of research which counters the
contingency theorists' context-free posture by
assuming a more direct role for notions of cultural
variation in explaining organisational diversity is
now well documented. This is discussed below.
3. The cultural contingency of management con-
trol systems
Appeals to notions of nationally-rooted cultural
forces (the ``culturalist'' perspective) have been
made in the management control literature, in an
attempt to explain detectable regularities of struc-
turation in organisational phenomena. There is
much systematic evidence suggesting that the pur-
suit of formally identical tasks or goals takes place
in dissimilar ways from one national society to
another (Archer, 1994; Erez & Earley, 1993; Har-
ris & Moran, 1987; Heller, Drenth, Koopman &
Rut, 1988; Hickson, 1993). Ascribing such varia-
tions to di?erences in the modal personality
structure or to the play of dissimilar sets of core
values which are thought to a?ect work motiva-
tion and propensity to favour one method of con-
trol over another are seen to o?er the potential of
developing nationally speci®c solutions to pro-
blems of management control design. Such a per-
spective assumes that individuals a?ect and are
in¯uenced by control structures in similar ways
because they have internalised core cultural values
which are shared extensively enough by virtue of
their membership in a wider national society.
Researchers exploring international management
control variety have in the recent past adopted
notions of cultural values which emphasize mental
programmes, ®lters and mindsets underlying
motives, beliefs, goals, traits and social ideals.
Such interpretations of culture convey the same
general sense of meaning as the following de®ni-
tion of culture advanced by Tylor (1871, p. 1):
. . . that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom
and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.
In addition to conceiving of culture in terms of
mental attributes, researchers interested in explor-
ing the interrelationships between organisational
control systems and culture have also tended to
view culture in ideational terms as opposed to
seeing culture as being environment-dependent
(the ``adaptive'' view). For instance, in their ®eld
study of control and culture in the USA and
Japan, Birnberg and Snodgrass (1988) and Snod-
grass (1984) see culture as a ®lter for perceiving
the environment which sets the decision premises
for individuals within cultural groups and which
therefore, a?ects human decision making. They
give primacy to the assumption that human action
is guided by culture and that the environment
. . . does not so much shape values and beliefs
as values and beliefs shape human perception
or the structuring of the environment (Snod-
grass, 1984, p. 28).
This perspective enables the identi®cation of an
observable and measurable in¯uence of culture
along a dimension that is seen as meaningful to
organisations:
The ideationist approach to culture takes us
from a speci®c concern for what culture is to
a concern for what culture does . . . this posi-
tion gives us an indication of how a cultural
in¯uence may become manifest in an organi-
zational process (Snodgrass, 1984).
The notion that human action and the environ-
ment is determined by culture values also provides
the basic proposition underpinning comparative
management control research resting on Hof-
stede's (1980) cross-national study results. Hof-
stede's (1980) questionnaire-based study of
employee values and perceptions of the work
situation within one large multinational organisa-
tion is among the most extensive of its type, cov-
ering 40 countries (later extended to 64).
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 417
Although Hofstede notes that the use of ques-
tionnaire data ``. . . for studying di?erences in
national cultures was an unintended, serendipitous
by-product'' (Hofstede, Neuigen, Ohayre & San-
ders, 1990, p. 287), he sees the results of his study
as having signi®cance for accounting control
research:
The less an activity is technically de®ned, the
more it is ruled by values, and thus in¯uenced
by cultural di?erences. . . Accounting is a ®eld
in which the technical imperatives are weak. . .
so we can expect accounting systems to vary
along national cultural lines (Hofstede, 1987,
p. 8).
The results of his study have been used by var-
ious researchers as a basis for undertaking cross-
cultural comparative analyses of management
control practices (see Harrison and McKinnon, in
press, for a review of these studies). Such analyses
adopt a stance akin to that taken in early cross-
national studies of management practices (Eng-
land, 1978; Granick, 1978; Graves, 1972; Ouchi
1981; Tannenbaum, Kavcic, Rosner, Vianello &
Wieser, 1974) which have treated culture idea-
tionally, attributing to it the reason for the di?er-
ences identi®ed.
The culturalist perspective considers the analy-
sis of social values as relevant. It assumes that the
social world and its alleged structures can be ver-
i®ed empirically (Gibson, 1994). Methodological
instruments which presume the universality of
prede®ned cultural dimensions are seen as
enabling researchers to locate, explain and predict
social regularities and patterns and their e?ects on
management control structuring. Hence, Fig. 1
situates the culturalist perspective as universalist
rather than contextual in its view of homogenising
forces. Culturalist studies of organisational con-
trols emphasize the systematic collection and ana-
lysis of quanti®ed data so as to con®rm
hypothesised relationships. They also tend to
depict their results in a technically functional light
in discussing their implications for the design of
management control systems.
The ideational perspective adopted by research-
ers interested in the role of culture in in¯uencing
management control practices su?ers from certain
methodological and conceptual problems. Swidler
(1986, p. 273) for instance remarks that to assume
that culture shapes action by supplying ultimate
ends or values toward which action is directed is
``fundamentally misleading''. In part, this is
because of the ``loose coupling between culture
and action'' (Swidler, 1986, p. 281) caused by the
``great discontinuity between talk and action''
(Swidler, 1986). Diculties also arise in that the
de®nition of culture must be suciently precise to
allow a delineation of the elements of national
culture which are seen to in¯uence aspects of the
functioning of organisations. A particular de®ni-
tion of culture must be speci®c enough to enable
empirical investigation, and yet must also remain
suciently general as to retain cross-national
relevance. Attaining an appropriate balance
between speci®city and generality in de®ning cul-
tural elements is a dicult task. Elaborations of
cultural characteristics face the risk of being too
limiting to allow an explanation of the full com-
plexity of culture's role in the shaping of particular
practices or of being too broad. Moreover, a pre-
cise characterisation of features taken to con-
stitute culture runs the danger of becoming
ethnocentric in that pre-specifying explicit cultural
dimensions may enable empirical veri®cation but
may also culturally bias a research study. Con-
versely, identifying broader dimensions of culture
may yield an excessively general appreciation of
cultural presence within enterprise activities.
Schench (1989, p. 149) notes that these problems
have, in part,led to a recurring ``reinvention of the
wheel'' of cross-national research methodology by
di?erent researchers.
One signi®cant criticism levelled at comparative
empirical investigations of management practices
and organisational features centres around the
relativistic position that a common observation
language is not possible to achieve in the study of
social phenomena. D'Iribarne (1989, p. 273) thus
remarks in relation to Hofstede's prede®ned value
dimensions that:
A national culture just cannot be reduced to a
collection of independent dimensions but
corresponds rather, to an array of traits
revealing a measure of coherence. Some being
418 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
more fundamental and stable. . . others more
susceptible to change.
The tension between the general and the speci®c
can lead to a polarisation of methodology with
nomothetic approaches at one end and ideo-
graphic features at the other. Whereas nomothetic
research emphasises systematic protocol and tech-
nique in gaining knowledge of the social world by
combining raw observations, ideographic studies
focus on subjective and individual accounts of
actions and events. In an ideographic study, one
tries to make sense of a single chain of events or
phenomenon without seeking a solution that repre-
sents a general or causal law. Geertz (1973, p. 5)
accords with this view in his de®nition of culture:
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an
animal suspended in webs of signi®cance he
himself has spun, I take culture to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not
an experimental science in search of law but
an interpretive one in search of meaning.
This polarisation is one which has raised issues
germane to the study of both accounting controls
(Dillard & Becker, 1997; Hopwood, 1987a; Miller
& Napier, 1993) and of other socio-structural
phenomena (Abrams, 1982; Burke, 1980; Giddens,
1979; Kiser & Hechter, 1991; Whitley, 1984).
A further diculty arises in that the salience of
designated elements seen as central to culture at
the time of the study must be established. Mea-
sures of pre-identi®ed dimensions obtained from
one study and applied to another face the risk of
temporal anachronism as social changes over pro-
tracted periods of time arguably will alter cultural
pro®les along the prede®ned dimensions. Perhaps
more importantly, the ideational perspective as
adopted by management control researchers only
probes the existence of prede®ned cultural ele-
ments, without examining whether these elements
also inhabit other social processes, institutional
systems and aspects of societal change. Moreover,
the absence of any analysis of interactive e?ects
between presumed cultural forces and control
structures seems to be justi®ed only on the
grounds that this would be methodologically di-
cult to undertake (Snodgrass, 1984). Questions
must justi®ably be posed as to how far ideational
notions of cultural in¯uence can be conceptually
upheld in the absence of counter-analysis of
adaptive e?ects.
Studies which seek to explore the cultural
embeddedness of organisational structural con-
trols tend to disregard di?erences in the levels of
in¯uence which cultural elements may exert. The
plausibility that some alleged cultural tendencies
have a core in¯uence in some national contexts
whilst being more peripheral in others is however
being documented in the emerging comparative
management literatures (Bates, Amundson,
Schroder & Morris, 1995; Sa?old, 1988). Lach-
man et al. (1994, p. 41) note that:
The impact cultural values have is determined
by their centrality within the value system of
a cultural setting more than by their pre-
valence in this setting.
These authors suggest that congruence between
core (as opposed to peripheral) values governing
modes of organising in a cultural setting, and the
value assumptions underlying the structure and
processes of cross-national organisations operat-
ing within that setting, can be of critical impor-
tance to organisational e?ectiveness. For example,
Lincoln, Hanada and Olsen (1981) study of
employee satisfaction with decision making pro-
cesses reports that in Japanese organisations
operating in the US, Japanese employees were the
most satis®ed with consensual methods of decision
making. Consensual decision making was for these
workers a core value which was an important ele-
ment of organisational practices. Japanese-Amer-
ican workers in this setting were less satis®ed and
non-Japanese Americans were the least satis®ed
with consensual decision making. This is attrib-
uted to individualism being a core value among
US employees which is more compatible with
contentious rather than consensual methods of
decision making.
Likewise, an investigation of public organisa-
tions in Egypt carried out by Hinings and Badran
(1981) reports that the high degree of participation
required by a newly prescribed structure for such
organisations was dicult to implement because
core cultural values emphasized social and hier-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 419
archical distance in interpersonal relationships.
Birnbaum and Wong's (1985) study of multi-
national banks in Hong Kong posited that where
the cultural emphasis is on high power distance,
the structure of organisations will tend to be cen-
tralized and local Chinese employees will be more
satis®ed working in a centralised rather than
decentralised structure. Their study results sup-
port this hypothesis but fail to support similar
hypotheses concerning satisfaction with di?er-
entiation and formalization. Lachman et al. (1994,
p. 49) explain this by suggesting that the value
governing hierarchical power relations is core to
the Chinese culture in Hong Kong whereas those
governing formalization and di?erentiation are
not. They note that:
When a core value is concerned, value incon-
gruency can explain employees' dissatisfaction.
But when variances in practices (di?erentia-
tion and formalisation) among the multi-
national organisations were incongruent with
values that were not core, work satisfaction of
local employees was not a?ected.
The relationships between core and peripheral
values and management controls have not to date
been investigated to any appreciable degree in
research adopting a culturalist stance.
Very little documentation as to the origins of
assumed cultural rootedness and the historical
in¯uences which might set one society apart from
another is o?ered by scholars adopting a cultural-
ist perspective (Hopwood, 1987b, 1996; Shields,
1998). Value systems in modern societies tend to
be distinguishable into those that are long-stand-
ing and others which are of a more recent vintage
(see Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983). The culturalist
perspective pays little heed to the heterogeneity of
values which tends to be a feature of many mod-
ern industrialised societies. Persistent hetero-
geneity between business systems is characteristic
of some advanced societies (Whitley, 1990; Whit-
ley, 1992; Whitley & Czaban, 1998). Enz (1986, p.
174) observes that ``. . . some societies may be
monocultural while others are multicultural''
whilst Tayeb (1994, p. 432) remarks that indivi-
dual nations are ``. . . usually very far from homo-
geneous''. Similarly, Schneider (1989, p. 157)
develops the argument that ``. . . many nations are
multicultural and many cultures are multi-
national''. Arguably, corporate culture can also
have a ``. . . unifying e?ect across borders by
means of the expanding role of multinational cor-
porations in the global economy'' (Mueller, 1994,
p. 409). What seems plausible is that collective
groupings develop within nations which inter-
nalise and recon®gure forces of change such that a
speci®c ethos of dynamism becomes more central
to one region than to another. Splinter cultures
within one society may ultimately undermine any
notion of a geographically and/or nationally
de®nable set of core cultural values (Child &
Tayeb, 1981; Garreau, 1981; Scott, 1992). The
possibility that ``. . . societal heterogeneity drama-
tically in¯uences the viability of cross-national
comparisons'' (Enz, 1986, p. 187) cannot therefore
be ignored. Equally so, di?erent cultural in¯u-
ences emerging from institutional forces and
structural di?erences recur across speci®c locales
within di?erent nation states and lead collective
groupings of regions or industries to become more
prone to exhibiting close resemblances (Lane,
1995). Transborder con®gurations ultimately may
share signi®cant values setting them apart from
other possible strata within national societies but
uniting them across frontiers (Wright, 1998).
The above issues remain to be addressed in
cross-national management control research
informed by the culturalist perspective. Whilst
studies within the culturalist genre have posited
relationships between culture and management
control systems, this has been achieved only
within a highly focused and notably limited theo-
retical frame of reference. Within the management
literature generally, very little has been docu-
mented about the causes of observed similarities
and di?erences in practices across nations (Adler,
1983; Kelley & Worthley, 1981; Miller, 1984;
Nath, 1986; Negandhi, 1983; Sekaran, 1983). As
Lachman et al. (1994, p. 40) observe, studies
which attribute country di?erences in organisation
practices to cultural di?erences ``provide neither
sucient theoretical nor empirical indications of
how culture causes such di?erences''. Culturalist
explanations for international variety in manage-
ment controls remain largely speculative and
420 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
atheoretical (Camino & Verna, 1997; Horovitz,
1980; Sheridan, 1995).
For comparative management control research
to advance, it is currently recognised that more
attention needs to be given to ``. . . the greater
complexity and diversity of culture'' (Harrison &
McKinnon, in press). In this light, calls have been
made for ``. . .a multiple methods approach to and
perspective on, research into culture and manage-
ment accounting'' (Harrison & McKinnon, 1998,
p.115; see also Shields, 1997). Such exhortations
have been made recurringly by researchers inter-
ested in the study of organisations (see Astley &
Van de Ven, 1983; Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Rose,
1985; Scott, 1992) since ``any one school of
thought invariably o?ers only a partial account of
reality'' (Gibson, 1994, p. 29). In this light, this
essay turns now to a perspective adopted in the
study of cross-national organisational arrange-
ments which addresses many of the issues seen as
problematic within the culturalist perspective.
4. National speci®city and societal e?ects
Methodological diculties and conceptual
obstacles abound in research which posits a cul-
tural conditioning e?ect on management control
systems. An alternative conceptual approach to
investigating relatively enduring systemic features
embedded in industrial organisations is the ``soci-
etal e?ects'' approach (Maurice, Sorge & Warner,
1980; Sorge & Maurice, 1993; Sorge & Warner,
1986). In the face of evidence which suggests that
characteristic patterns prevail across organisations
within one country in relation to another, this
view recasts substantive theories of the evolution
of advanced industrialism in terms of society-spe-
ci®c features underpinning organisational speci®-
cities. It does so without appeal to universal
in¯uences and relationships posited by con-
vergence theorists and without giving precedence
to culturalist explanations of organisational
arrangements and authority structures.
Contextual factors such as the variables posited
by structural contingency based explanations and
the ideational literature are not seen as suciently
explanatory within the societal e?ects view. The
societal e?ects perspective abandons the search for
forces external to speci®c societies which purport-
edly a?ect organisational forms and practices.
Rather it concerns itself with
. . . how the nature of organisations re¯ects
the institutional features of the society in
which they are located (Lane, 1989, p. 28).
The approach gives primacy to the idea that
relatively permanent societal features in¯uence
organisational forms and practices. It accepts that
cultural factors may have a ``mediating in¯uence''
(Maurice, 1979, p. 46), but focuses on the e?ects
of societal features such as the educational system,
the forms of social strati®cation, the vocational
training programmes in place, and the division of
labour on the internal structuring of organisa-
tions.
The societal e?ects approach recognises the
existence within workplaces of extensive networks
of highly speci®c relationships in¯uencing the
pursuit of formal goals (Brossard & Maurice,
1974). It considers values and dispositions as
a?ecting di?erent individuals' behaviour in di?er-
ent ways. It argues, however, that the development
of societally speci®c institutionalised populations
of organisational forms and practices is linked to
the pre-eminence of particular economic niches.
Cross-national comparisons of societal factors and
systems of control activities in organisations
within this perspective search for evidence of
structural elements underlying the interaction of
people at work, systems of recruitment, the nature
of quali®cations, levels of supervision, and the
extent of hierarchization (Maurice et al., 1980;
Maurice, Sellier & Silvestre, 1986; Sorge & War-
ner, 1986).
The societal e?ects view overcomes some of the
problems presented by the ideational perspective
of culture. It recognises that institutions in¯uence
the behaviour of organisational actors, and that
actors can also modify institutions through their
actions. As such, the societal e?ects perspective
assumes the existence of interdependencies
between the two. Rather than surmise about cul-
ture on the basis of value orientations, the societal
perspective focuses on examining and di?erentiat-
ing between organisational actions and work
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 421
activities in di?erent national contexts. Lane
(1989, p. 36) takes this to suggest that the societal
e?ects approach ``. . . taps culture relative to
actions''. This approach thus attempts to over-
come the diculties entailed in positing a priori,
cultural value orientations among individuals, and
then seeking to establish the form and extent of
their existence in organisational practices.
The societal e?ects approach presupposes the
existence of linkages between organisational ele-
ments and extraorganisational factors. For
instance, the complexity of control systems is seen
to be associated with ``. . . the mix of quali®ca-
tions, skills and training available to designers of
control systems'' (Rose, 1985, p. 69). Limits are set
on how work-tasks can be designed, supervised
and executed given that, for example, a low skill
workforce might be perceived to require more
elaborate and rationalised sets of work tasks and
more systematic supervision. Control practices
might thereby be seen to be in¯uenced by the
availability of suitable recruits which in turn is
in¯uenced by external institutional systems of
education and training. Such a view leads to at
least a partial erasure of the conceptual boundary
line between organisations and their environment.
If a degree of stability is a characteristic of wider
institutions, then such a characterisation might
also be taken to infuse ``solutions'' to enterprise
features. Ultimately, organisations within com-
mon groupings can be argued to exhibit similar
key structural properties. Just as national labour
force characteristics might shape organisational
controls, so might the role of bodies such as trade
unions and training agencies. Thus, behind a gen-
eral correspondence between, say, pay-levels and
quali®cations might reign a consistent societal
e?ect. Ultimately, what is sought is the identi®ca-
tion of stable features of the social and organisa-
tional environment which underlie and shape the
overall strategies of organisational actors or which
a?ect the content of organisational controls.
Methodologically, the societal e?ects approach
requires the systematic analysis of matched data
across organisations in di?erent countries as well
as societal context background information. The
approach explores the existence of societally spe-
ci®c forms and organisational structures in terms
of how far the resolution of common problems
takes place through di?erentiated and societally
speci®c forms across di?erent nations.
Societal e?ects researchers have, to date, only
documented indirect empirical evidence of the
in¯uence of social institutions upon management
control systems in a systematic way such that
companies' structures and processes are seen to
re¯ect typical national patterns (see Campbell et
al., 1989; Whitley, 1991, 1992; Whitley & Czaban,
1998). The types of observations that this research
perspective is able to make are broad. For
instance, comparative research on management
practices in Germany, France and Britain by soci-
etal e?ects researchers suggests the following
characterising di?erences: The German style of
organising and creating human resources tends to
have ``blurred organisation boundaries; less seg-
mentation; fewer line-sta?; management execu-
tion, technical work-shop-¯oor work and
generalism-specialism distinctions'' (Sorge, 1991,
p. 166). Conversely, the French type of organisa-
tion may be characterised by greater hierarchical
and lateral segmentation. It de-emphasises craft
training and craft worker role-sets, using career
progression and the combination of school and
college education with job-speci®c training in the
enterprise as more important mechanisms gen-
erating competence (Sorge & Warner, 1986). Dis-
tinctions between generalist engineering and
management on the one hand and specialism on
the other, and between strata of engineers, techni-
cians and workers, are more in evidence. Greater
di?erentiation between management, conception,
design or planning, and execution exists. Con-
versely, the British organisation is more ``equivo-
cal'' according to Sorge (1991, p. 167) in that
functional segmentation between production and
maintenance, management and engineering,
supervision and technical work is pronounced.
Yet, the management hierarchy is less technical
and more subject to ®nancial controls vis-aÁ -vis
German and French enterprises (see also Lane,
1989; Loveridge, 1990; Carr & Tomkins, 1998;
Sheridan, 1995).
Societal e?ects studies suggest that a variety of
patterns are to be found in societies rather than a
single one. Dominant patterns exist within a band
422 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
of variety. Performance is associated not with
notional correlations between speci®c task con-
tingencies, strategies, organisation and human
resources, but with the capacity to integrate con-
ceptually distinct and opposed task contingencies
and strategy elements. Thus, performance arises
from the combination of what has been conceived
of as distinct alternatives: cost leadership and dif-
ferentiation in the product range; production e-
ciency and product quality; ¯exibility and
productivity improvement; economies of scale and
scope; mechanistic and organic forms. Sorge
(1991, p. 184) argues that ``wider societal arrange-
ments have an important function within this
framework. . . they allow actors to combine see-
mingly contradictory or con¯icting elements''. As
such, economically central organisational patterns
vary in structurally signi®cant detail between
mature industrialised countries. Beyond this, it is
not evident along any conventional measure of
economic eciency or e?ectiveness that one parti-
cular national pattern is more viable than another.
The societal e?ects perspective is concerned
more with the systematic analysis of ``choice-con-
straint dialectics'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 13)
than with notions of unidirectional causation sub-
scribed to by the structural contingency and cul-
turalist frameworks discussed above. It does not
presuppose the notion that goal de®nition must
precede means selection, nor that choice is in
practice legitimated ex-ante rather than ex-post.
Under conditions of social change, organisational
structuring is seen as emergent and analysed in the
context of societal, economic and institutional
in¯uences which form a ``complex tangle of
impacts'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986). This is relevant
in the context of comparative management control
research as it is recognised that control systems
designers within organisations do not simply cre-
ate systems of control which are fully re¯ective of
their intended ideal in practice (Hopwood, 1987b).
Rather, planned structures have both intended
and unintended e?ects upon the perspectives and
expectations of organisational actors (Green &
Murphy, 1996; see also Hopwood & Miller, 1994).
The focus of interest of the societal e?ects
approach is on correspondences between organi-
sation structure and societal context, whilst
acknowledging that ``evolution not only brings
forth novel phenomena, but continues along a line
which is already established'' (Sorge & Warner,
1986, p. 16).
The societal e?ects perspective takes a half-way
stance between unidirectional determinism and
total constructivism. It does not appeal to decon-
textualised structural relationships nor does it see
human creativity as unbounded and organisa-
tional arrangements as unconstrained. In this
light, the societal e?ects approach is situated mid-
way within the universalism-contextual spectrum
in Fig. 1. It stresses both the partial autonomy of
the human mind, as well as partial dependence on
the objectivised world. Correspondences between
organisational phenomena and societal structur-
ing exist within a complex set of contingencies that
re¯ect emergent patterns. Problem solving in
organisations is seen as ``non-rational'' and as
entailing a level of ``unawareness or forgetfulness''
(Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 44) about all the cir-
cumstances relevant to a decision. Organisations
might thus be seen as arising from a ``technology
of foolishness'' (March & Olsen, 1976, p. 42). Fig.
1 situates the societal e?ects approach halfway in
the purposeful-emergent continuum. This re¯ects
the notion that organisations draw on elements of
formal knowledges that are selected, rearranged
and implemented in a ``non-rationally unpredict-
able way'' (Sorge & Warner, 1986, p. 35). Conse-
quently, the functional purposefulness of
management controls might be regarded as some-
what di?use and inchoate.
Although conceptually broader in scope, the
societal e?ects approach su?ers certain problems.
Lane (1989, p. 37), for instance, objects to the
. . . the tacit assumption that the institutional
arrangements of capitalist societies embody
the values of all social classes and does not
consider that institutions are predominantly
shaped by the powerful in society.
To overcome this problem, Lane suggests that
interviews ought to be carried out by researchers
adopting the societal perspective to classify how
organisational structures are viewed by employees
at di?erent levels of the hierarchy. Another di-
culty with the approach is that societal studies are
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 423
based on the comparison of matched pairs of
organisations which makes it possible that one
type of plant is typical in one country but tends to
be an exception in another. Heidenreich (1991,
p. 184) refers to this problem as the ``non-com-
parability of comparable plants''. Moreover, in
rejecting the de®ning elements of organisational
universalism and in refuting the convergence the-
sis, the societal e?ects approach sides, sometimes
explicitly, with the hypothesis of divergence
between capitalistic countries. Ultimately, such a
stance borders on having to confront the Mal-
inowskian dilemma: can a test for the convergence
of societies be had in the face of the theoretical
posture that societies are non-comparable? (see
Malinowski, 1944). Doubt has also been cast over
whether organisational processes and structures
can be considered to be subject to a powerful
structural isomorphism between ®rms and social
institutions. Mueller (1994, p. 422) notes that ``. . .
organisational and globalisation e?ects may com-
plement or even counteract the societal e?ect''.
His concern is that some companies are ``part of
larger institutions'' (Mueller, 1994) and are sub-
jected to world market conditions to which they
have to adapt or they may be part of multi-
national organisational groups. In so far as these
companies draw on resources from these larger
institutions, their internal structures and processes
are likely to be substantially in¯uenced and
shaped by them.
D'Iribarne (1991, p. 603) expresses the view that
by ``. . . purging itself of all cultural elements'', the
societal approach leaves behind certain ``unre-
solved diculties'' (D'Iribarne, 1991). One such
problem is that although Sorge and Warner (1986,
p. 44) take pains to stress that
. . . the value of the approach resides in the
theoretical engineering of correspondences,
including dialectical linkages, of reciprocal
conditions which overarch di?erentiated
functional spheres,
the antecedent nature of any such relationships
remains unexplored. Additionally, although the
``central object'' (Maurice, Sellier & Silvestre,
1992, p. 77) of the societal e?ects approach has
been said to be the identi®cation and analysis of
``. . . the enterprise and its actors within society''
(Maurice et al., 1992). and the ``social embedded-
ness of its object of analysis'' (Maurice et al.,
1992), little light is in e?ect shed on the social or
historical roots of observed di?erences. Given
these limitations, Rose (1985, p. 81) notes that:
``There is no shortage of questions which the body
of ``societal'' analysis raises''. In spite of the con-
ceptual and methodological diculties which
ideational-based studies and societal e?ects ana-
lyses raise, they no doubt increase our under-
standing of some of the possible forces underlying
diversity in organisational arrangements and con-
trol structures in di?erent national contexts. Both
perspectives, however, fail to address certain
important questions about the interplay between
control systems and the homogenising e?ects pos-
ited. Montagna (1980, p. 27) comments in relation
to accounting research that draws on Hofstede's
(1980) quanti®cation of cultural value dimensions
as follows:
The lack of emphasis on the social dynamics
of culture limits the utility of their analysis
of the relationship between culture and
accounting.
This represents a common problem with the
majority of existing comparative studies of man-
agement control systems and organisational
arrangements. These studies do not, for instance,
heighten our appreciation of the processes by
which wider social phenomena become embedded
in control practices, nor do they shed light on the
manner in which organisational controls come to
exhibit speci®cities and characteristics discernible
in their broader social context. Likewise, questions
about the inertia and dynamism of homogenising
forces in altering, shaping, and mobilising parti-
cular organisational practices, and about the nat-
ure of particularisms underlying the existence of
de®ned control mechanisms, remain largely unan-
swered. In e?ect, these studies fail to explore the
roots of national distinctiveness within types of
managerial controls, systems of organisational
arrangements, and styles of enterprise government.
The societal e?ects approach paves the way for
institutional, explanations of societally shaped
control structures. It points to the plausibility of
424 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
considering organisations as capable of reprodu-
cing by ``enactment and continuous re-enactment''
(Sorge, 1991, p. 186) structures and response pat-
terns which forms a coherent societally-speci®c
whole. The following section considers the possi-
bilities for comparative management control
research within a new institutionalism frame of
reference.
5. Management control and new institutionalism
Scholars interested in the study of organisa-
tional activities and structure have posited that
habit and premises structure the activities and
perceptions of organisational actors (Simon,
1957), and that decision making is often more
indicative of rule following than the calculative
analysis of possible consequences of action
(March & Simon, 1958). In other words, they
suggest that actions may be understood by exam-
ining their cognitive rather than their normative
basis. Moreover, the manner in which social order
is constituted as a practical activity as individuals
interact may be understood in terms of how cog-
nition is tied to routine, convention, and the logic
of institutional rules (Gar®nkel, 1967; Go?man,
1967; Silverman, 1970). In this regard, institutions
are seen not as the product of deliberate design
and the outcome of purposive action, but rather in
terms of the persistence of practices in both their
taken-for-granted quality and their reproduction
in structures that are partially self-sustaining
(Zucker, 1991). This perspective in organisational
analysis has been termed the ``new institutional-
ism'' (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The approach
emphasises the ways in which action is structured
and order made possible by shared systems of
rules that condition the inclinations and capacities
of individuals and in¯uence the di?usion of orga-
nisational operating procedures. It seeks to
explore how organisational ideals become embed-
ded in language and symbols and how states of
a?airs are produced and constructed. It is thus,
partly concerned with the manner in which social
and symbolic order is maintained by means of
rituals. The general focus of new institutionalism
is on
. . . organizational sectors or ®elds roughly co-
terminous with the boundaries of industries,
professions, or national societies (Scott &
Meyer, 1991, p. 112).
The notion that structure results from pre-
de®ned design and intended action is less tenable
within the new institutionalism frame of reference
as organisational actors are viewed as making
assumptions that remain semi-conscious and
which in¯uence how they perceive, think and feel
as part of groups (Schein, 1985, 1996). Patterns
of judgement become aligned with actors
0
sub-
jective interpretation schemes and certain percep-
tive repertoires of cognition remain whereas
others are eschewed (Weick, 1977, 1979). Rather
than consider organisational arrangements as
adaptive solutions to problems of utility max-
imisation and opportunism, the repetitive ele-
ments of organisational structures are sought to
be explained by reference to their taken for gran-
ted nature and their perpetuation in structures
that are to some extent self-sustaining. Although
individuals within organisations make an array of
choices on an ongoing basis, they also con-
tinuously seek guidance from the experiences of
others in comparable situations and by reference
to standards of obligation (Smircich, 1983). Indi-
viduals ``associate certain actions with certain
situations by rules of appropriateness'' (March &
Olsen, 1984, p. 741). Such rules arise from the
process of socialisation, on-the-job training, edu-
cation and observed norms of deference to
convention.
The role of conscious management decision
making in producing outcomes regarding organi-
sational control systems is thus limited. The pro-
position that organisational structures can be
emergent and enacted appeals to a position
whereby human behaviour might be seen to derive
sense and meaning from the interaction between
actors and their social context. In contrast to pla-
cing emphasis on the plausibility that management
controls can be shaped deterministically, such a
stance ``. . . makes it possible to avoid the `rei®ca-
tion fallacy' of orthodox economic thought'' (Zan,
1995, p. 270). Social understandings derived from
interplay between organisational actors in¯uence
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 425
formal elements of management controls in impli-
cit ways (Meyer, 1992). Choices are made, but
derive from intuition and semi-conscious norms of
obligations and preferences (Smircich, 1985).
Cross-national studies of management systems
cannot, in this light, appeal to a decontextualised
and mechanical imagery of causality which pre-
sumes purpose and predictability as given. The
comparative analysis of social systems, institutions,
and organisations entails developing an under-
standing of context-speci®c meanings and priorities.
If it is accepted that meaning is contextually
determined, and that the meaning of the phenom-
ena under study are contingent on interactions
between organisational actors and their inter-
relationship, then ascribing universal relevance to
control categories across nations must be ques-
tioned. Viewing management control systems as
enacted o?ers a way of exploring how they might
be embedded in collective systems of thought,
rather than as emerging from a process of rational
adoption of core normative values that are
deemed pervasive. In this light, the structuring of
management control systems cannot arise purely
from purposive actions or conscious design, but
rather may be viewed as re¯ective of wider social
elements whilst being deeply embedded in them
(Ansari & Bell, 1990).
Whilst, at the level of structural con®gurations,
cross-national investigations may suggest simila-
rities for instance, in relation to task-environments
(Tayeb, 1988), human resource allocations (Smith,
1992), and levels of decentralisation (Lincoln and
Kalleberg, 1990), their modes of realisation may
di?er ``. . . depending on the particular socio-cul-
tural characteristics of the society'' (Tayeb, 1994,
p. 440). The new institutionalism perspective sug-
gests that the legitimacy of particular organisa-
tional structures is not predicated on notions of
rational adaptation to organisational contingencies
in the ``technical-instrumentalities mode'' (Donald-
son, 1995, p. 80). Standard operating procedures
become institutionalised through law, custom,
professional ideologies or doctrines on e?ective
management. Speci®c practices may ¯ow from
``. . .organisation to organisation, sector to
sector and even country to country. . . Ulti-
mately, they are taken for granted by indivi-
duals and organisations as the right way to do
things'' (Meyer & Scott, 1992, p. 2).
The notion that control systems arise from
``technical-rational'' (Ansari & Bell, 1990) con-
cerns has been questioned by scholars interested in
exploring the role of symbolic, ceremonial and
ritualistic in¯uences on the structuring of man-
agement control systems (see Ansari & Bell, 1990;
Boland & Pondy, 1983; Burchell, Clubb, Hop-
wood, Hughes & Napapiet, 1980). For instance,
Berry et al.'s (1985, p. 4), examination of man-
agement control in an Area of the National Coal
Board in the UK relies on investigating ``the
rationales for practice o?ered by the participants''
and leads them to observe that organisational
changes
. . . re¯ect not so much the needs of internal
organisational management, but instead
external pressures on the organisation to
appear ecient and responsive to apparent
®nancial constraint (Berry et al., 1985).
They emphasise the signi®cance of ``tradition
and culture'' (Berry et al., 1985, p. 24) for an
understanding of management controls.
Ansari & Euske's (1987, p. 564) longitudinal
investigation of accounting information use by US
military repair facilities leads them to conclude
that:
The technical-rational uses are overshadowed
by the rationalising and reifying uses of
accounting.
They suggest that accounting systems play a
``highly symbolic'' (Ansari & Euske's, 1987) func-
tion which represents an alternate form of ration-
ality to the tenets of economic rationality.
Similarly, Czarniawska-Joerges' (1988, p. 4) study
of a Swedish organisation suggests that changes in
control can be seen as a ``symbolic reaction'' to
societal and organisational level transformations.
Covaleski and Dirsmith's (1988) investigation of
the budgetary process between a US university
and its state government leads them to view the
budgetary dialogue as one manner in which socie-
tal expectations are expressed. They argue that an
426 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
organisation's practices must embody and repro-
duce such societal expectations to ensure its con-
tinued viability. Consequently, ``. . .accounting
may be more of a social invention complicit in the
construction of a social reality than a ``rational''
re¯ection of a technical reality'' (Covaleski &
Dirsmith, 1988, p. 20). Likewise, Czarniawska-
Joerges and Jacobson's (1989) analysis of budget
processes within Swedish public sector organisa-
tions leads them to depict budgeting as playing a
symbolic rather than a decision-making role. They
suggest that
. . .linking budgeting to a cultural context
means looking at which symbols, what lan-
guage and which values are represented in
particular budget processes (Czarniawska-
Joerges & Jacobson, 1989, p. 29).
In their longitudinal study, Ansari and Bell
(1994) discuss how the values and meaning frames
of organisational participants within a Pakistani
company provide them with interpretive schemes
for processing experiences. They examine how
such interpretive schema a?ect the organisation's
accounting and control practices. They view their
research as a study of ``. . . the symbolic processes
through which people produce and reproduce
social order'' (Ansari & Bell, 1994, p. 27) and
place emphasis on the ``native's viewpoint''
(Ansari & Bell, 1994) in the linguistic categories
that are used to organise experience and give
meaning to it. They explain that this is necessary
to:
. . . explain how and why certain types of
accounting/control systems existed in the
organisation under consideration at various
stages of its life (Ansari and Bell, 1994, p. 29).
A number of cross-national comparisons of
management control systems suggest that focusing
on the universal aspects of organisational struc-
turing (the etic view) such as the degree of decen-
tralisation, formalisation, standardisation of
procedures etc. reveals little of the underlying
causes and consequences of observed di?erences
and similarities (see Child, 1981). Conversely, a
concern with locally meaningful elements and ``. . .
emphasising the insider's view and interpretation
of the world'' (Punnett & Shenkar, 1994) (the emic
perspective) is more conducive to delineating a
role for semi-conscious, unarticulated rationales
whereby management controls are seen as enacted
rather than purposefully structured. The new
institutionalism perspective stresses an ideo-
graphic mode of analysing the basis of manage-
ment practices. Fig. 1 situates this perspective as
placing stress on the emergent nature of manage-
ment controls rather than their technical purpose-
fulness, and emphasises the contextual focus of the
research methods it implicates. The ideographic
emphasis placed in particular on exploring the role
of ritual and symbol in in¯uencing organisational
practices has been the subject of some criticism.
For instance, Perrow (1985) suggests that this
form of enquiry does not give sucient regard to
organisational and social realities. Donaldson
(1995, p. 83) takes this line of critique further by
noting that this literature ``. . . repeatedly fails to
make analyses of objective e?ectiveness"'' He rai-
ses the concern that if in¯uential ideas become
institutionalised and are accorded legitimacy by
the State, the profession etc. . ., then ``what is
described as legitimate may be successful and
legitimate because it is successful'' (Donaldson,
1995, p. 63). His critique ``. . .comes from the
functionalist contingency theory direction''
(Donaldson, 1995, p. 79) and calls for ``scienti®c
proof rather than rhetorical means of depicting
organizations as ritualistic and irrational''
(Donaldson, 1995, p. 63). Donaldson (1995, p.
114) notes however that ``. . . the theory can never
be logically veri®ed. . . the concept of taken-for-
granted is . . . incapable of empirical test and
therefore unscienti®c''.
Whilst the body of management control
research which appeals to the new institutionalism
frame of reference is small, it is indicative of the
potential role of institutional in¯uences at the level
of industries, professions or nation-states in the
shaping of organisational structure (Lane, 1995).
Studies of management control systems within
speci®c contexts have posited cognitive bases to
explain the structuring of organisational practices
(Ansari & Bell, 1994; Berry et al., 1985; Colignon
& Covaleski, 1988; Cziarniawska-Joerges &
Jacobson, 1989; Meyer, 1983), and have articu-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 427
lated rationales for the status quo by assessing the
impact of institutional forces (Covaleski, Dirsmith
& Michelman, 1993; Hogler & Hunt, 1993;
Mezias, 1994). Comparative research concerned
with institutinal in¯uences is now beginning to
emerge. Ahrens (1996, 1997) and Ahrens and
Chapman (in press), for instance, adopt an ethno-
graphic methodological stance in their studies of
accountability and conceptualisation of account-
ing expertise within British and German breweries.
These explorations suggests that there are national
di?erences in the perceived ``reality of accounting
information'' (Ahrens, 1996, p. 139) in represent-
ing operational context. Also, LoÈ ning's (1994)
examination of di?erences in styles of commu-
nication and information exchange among man-
agers in French and British service sector
enterprises leads her to posit associations with
national variations in internal accounting practices.
Although these early e?orts are laudable, they
o?er limited insight into the historical rootedness
of observed control practices. In part, this is
because carrying out investigations that are con-
cerned with how shared typi®cations and standard
cognitive models vary across societies, but are
shared within nations, requires relatively sig-
ni®cant research resources. There is nevertheless
little doubt as to the potential that new institu-
tionalism research o?ers to explain the basis of
organisational structures or practices across dif-
ferent contexts. Its ability to explicate change is,
however, less evident.
1
If relationships exist
between cognitive e?ects and organisational
structure, one might ask by what mechanism can
alterations in systems of control be explained?
How can the dynamic between interaction among
organisational actors and structural features of
their organisations be understood? If taken-for-
granted beliefs and widely promulgated rules serve
as templates for organising, what ensues when
di?ering institutional logics challenge one-
another? How do strong local logics of cognition
interfere with those that are more widely dis-
persed? Powell and DiMaggio (1991) suggest that
the new institutionalism perspective can shed sig-
ni®cant light on the existence of semi-conscious
cognitive in¯uences on organisational structuring,
but that a clearer understanding of how changes in
organisational structures take e?ect can be derived
by investigating the historical origins of institu-
tional in¯uences. The next part of this essay con-
siders a particular historico-theoretical perspective
which enables present day structures to be
explained in terms of the past.
6. History and management control speci®city
To understand how and why organisations
across nations are similar and di?erent, an expla-
nation for the ``processes whereby organisations
might be infused with national distinctiveness''
(Child, 1981, p. 305) would seem desirable.
National distinctiveness must be demonstrable,
and if it is deemed to stem from a society's past,
then links must be shown between historical
events and social e?ects. Establishing such links
with the past is not unproblematic (Hopwood &
Johnson, 1987; Loft, 1995, 1997; Miller & Napier,
1993), though an examination of the dominant
values and enduring normative attitudes as they
are shaped historically by social, political and
economic changes might be considered a necessary
ingredient of any claim about the existence of
national speci®city resulting in management con-
trol distinctiveness. But di?erent approaches to
the historical endeavour exist. Historicists for
instance appeal to
. . . careful historical narrative, attempting to
establish ``what happened next'' to see if it
has the ``feel'' of a pattern, a process, or a
series of accidents and contingencies (Mann,
1986, p. 503)
Their interpretations stress the complexity,
uniqueness, and contingency of historical events.
The position might be taken that it is more
appropriate to determine ``. . . how this man, this
people or this state became what it is'' (Gadamer,
1972, p. 116) as opposed to ``. . . how men, people
or states develop in general'' (Gadamer, 1972).
Such a view might then be extended to consider
1
See Scapens (1994) for a discussion of evolutionary versus
revolutionary change processes within an ``institutional eco-
nomics'' framework.
428 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
whether one can go beyond seeking to explicate
how ``this organisation'' or ``this management
control system'' came to be what it is. Seeking a
more generalist explanation for perceived col-
lectivities must ®rst come to terms with whether
the speci®city of an organisational context can
embed elements of commonality with other orga-
nisations which do not carry across borders. His-
toricists would suggest that parts cannot be
analytically removed from wholes, and that his-
torical events being complex and unique cannot
support a role for general theorising about causal
e?ects. Such a view is reminiscent of Malinowski's
dilemma, and is inimical to the enterprise of com-
paring di?erent societies. Comparative history has
in e?ect, been said to be ``. . . an oxymoron to a
true historicist'' (Kiser & Hechter, 1991, p. 12).
Yet, it must be recognised that di?usion and
imitation connect societies across time and space
(Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The problem of
``connection'' is not limited to ``contamination''
across time, but also across contexts, and needs to
be addressed in cross-national analyses seeking to
be historically informed. The French historian
Braudel (1977, p. 46) argues for the recognition
and investigation of such links. He considers
action as having a connection with the past, and as
providing a basis for that which follows:
. . . there has never been a total breach, an
absolute discontinuity . . . or a non-con-
tamination. . . between the past, even the very
distant past and the present. Past experiences
continue into the present, adding to it.
Similarly, social anthropologists support a role for
history in understanding the present. Sahlins
(1985, p. 34), for instance, states that ``. . . di?erent
cultural orders have their own modes of historical
action, consciousness, and determination-their
own historical practice'' and that ``. . . culture is
precisely the organisation of the current situation
in the terms of a past'' (Sahlins, 1985, p. 155).
Evans-Pritchard (1956, p. 59) also makes the point
that
. . . to know a society's past gives one a deeper
understanding of the nature of its social life at
the present time.
Foucault's (1961, 1966, 1975) works on the history
of systems of thought have also been concerned to
``. . . understand the present as a product of the
past and as a seedbed for the new'' (Sheridan,
1980. p. 82). The view that history can be drawn
upon to explain the present has been the basis for
pioneering studies of the national rootedness of
management practices and organisational forms
(Abegglen, 1958; Crozier, 1964; D'Iribarne, 1989;
Locke, 1996), and is supported in the conclusions
of a number of recent cross-national research stu-
dies of organisations. For instance, Gallie's (1978,
p. 318) investigation of the implications of
advanced automation on di?erent facets of activ-
ities in a set of British and French organisations
leads him to conclude that:
We will need to. . . examine the ways in which
di?erent historical experiences have generated
distinctive cultural and social structural pat-
terns.
Child (1981, p. 329) also stresses that
. . . the pattern of past action within a nation,
particularly as re¯ected in its institutional
development, should draw attention to con-
temporary cultural products which are likely
to be relatively persistent in nature (Child,
1981).
and notes that:
The optimum might appear to combine his-
torical and institutional insight with a careful
sampling of values among present-day popu-
lations of the nations in which organisations
are to be compared (Child, 1981).
In this light, it might be held that in order to
gain an appreciation of the homogenising factors
in¯uencing systems of management control across
organisations, an historical analysis of their
national context would be appropriate. Such an
analysis would permit the identi®cation of endur-
ing forces which become manifest in political,
economic and institutional events and changes. It
would thereby provide a means of identifying
dominant conditioning in¯uences whilst also per-
mitting a deeper understanding of their institu-
tional origins and source of sustenance.
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 429
If organisational change and therefore structure
is considered to be immanent within a wider pro-
cess of social change, and to be involved in both
constructing and in being created by its broader
environment, then understanding organisations
must involve, at least in part, an exploration of the
nature of broader economic transformations,
social processes and political shifts. Questions
must be asked about conditions and mechanisms
of continuity, disruption and change of the social
order. But such an analysis raises questions about
the time period over which an examination of
transformations in organisational controls must
extend.
If the view is taken that an organisation's mode
of functioning, at any point in time, stems both
from present forces as well as from its past, then
the period over which the structure of the organi-
sation is studied cannot exist in a vacuum. No
choice of time frame is likely comprehensively to
encompass all that may have a bearing on a
management control system's structure. In the
context of cross-national studies in particular, a
composite of di?erent times moving at di?erent
speeds may be seen to prevail across societies
essentially constituting a ``diachronic assemblage''
(Lucas, 1985, p. 7). The past may not simply be
narrated as a series of synchronic events which can
be conceived within a linear time frame whereby
each development is seen as identi®able through
chronological links with a beginning and an end.
Rather, history may be assumed to transpire at
varying speeds in di?erent contexts over any one
period of time. This renders problematic the
choice of a time frame for undertaking an
historical explanation of the provenance of man-
agement control systems across di?erent national
contexts.
One approach to historical study has been to
supplement the examination of short sequences
(courte dure e) of heterogeneous events with the
investigation of the emergence of practices over
long periods of time (longue dure e) whilst bridging
the two with medium length units of time (con-
joncture). The object of such temporal partition-
ing is to compile a ``total history'' (La Capra,
1985, p. 117).
2
An alternative methodological
approach has been adopted by ``new'' historians.
3
interested in the history of mentalities (see for
instance, ArieÁ s, 1962; Darnton, 1984; Duby, 1980;
Schorske, 1980). Rather than to delineate a
chronology of historical events, certain historians
of mentality are concerned to reconstruct beliefs
and value systems by examining rituals and cere-
mony under an ethnological perspective. The his-
torian of mentality
. . . presupposes that in principle every society
possesses simultaneously diverse cultural
milieus which are juxtaposed and interlocking
and transmitted by language, myth and
upbringing (Glenisson, France, Iggers & Par-
ker, 1980, p. 182).
Rather than explain the actions of particular indi-
viduals, such an history aims to examine what
these particular individuals shared with others of
their time. What is sought is to investigate the
origins of modes of consciousness, the condition-
ing elements of human subjectivity, and the reg-
ularity of forms of thought in particular contexts.
The concern is to understand
2
This view has been adopted by the Annales school which
emerged in France during the 1930's and which departed from
the traditions of historiography privileging the ``event''. (On the
history of history-making in France see Burke, 1980; Hay,
1990; Lucas, 1985; Stoianovich, 1976; and Stone, 1977).
3
Whereas the ``old'' school; has viewed the ``natural'' mode
of historical writing as essentially narrative'' (Himmelfarb,
1987, p. 3) and has placed particular importance on delineating
sequences of heterogeneous events, the emerging ``new'' history
perspective was initially, more analytic, relying on statistical
tables, oral interviews, sociological models and psychoanalytic
theories. Tensions between the two schools centred on the jud-
gement by the new breed of historians that history could not be
value-free and that historical facts were in e?ect constructs. The
view that historical events represent individual moments which
can be gleaned through examining documents without regard
for the broader context were questioned. The new school until
the 1960's, sought to create a
. . . historical discipline that would bring together geo-
graphy, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology,
philology, and any other relevant human or natural sci-
ence in order to produce a total picture of past societies
(Lucas, 1985, p. 4)
Subsequently, historiography which had been influenced
primarily by economic and sociological methods, was in the
1970's, affected by social and cultural anthropology giving rise
to the writings on the history of mentality.
430 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
. . . the collective mentality that regulates,
without their knowing it, the representations
and judgements of social subjects (Chartier,
1982, p. 23).
Such a view is also evident in the works of
Foucault (1961, 1966, 1975). In order to under-
stand systems of thought and ``. . . long-range
trends in the alteration of the structure of the
psyche'' (Hunt, 1986, p. 217), Foucault focused on
the network of institutions and practices which
have imposed speci®c forms of subjectivity on
individuals. He sought to shed light on how and
why a practice is constructed in its speci®city and
how that speci®city is anchored to other social
practices. Moreover, he attempted to excavate the
hidden forms of regularity not accessible to con-
sciousness, but which have made particular prac-
tices possible objects of knowledge:
. . . what I am trying to do is to grasp the
implicit systems which determine our own
most familiar behaviour without knowing it
(Foucault cited in Megill, 1979, p. 492).
Broadly, ``new'' historians have been concerned to
investigate the internalised conditionings that
escape conscious knowledge, and that cause a
group or a society to share a system of repre-
sentation and a system of values without the need
to make them explicit. Such history ``. . . takes as
its object the collective, the automatic and the
repetitive'' (Chartier, 1988, p. 29), and deals with
the collective mentality that regulates the percep-
tions and judgements of social agents without
their knowledge. Its starting point is that:
Automatic gestures, spontaneous words,
which seem to lack any origins and to be the
fruits of improvisation and re¯ex, in fact
possess deep roots in the long reverberations
of systems of thought (Le Go?, 1985, p. 170).
Linked to his distinctive conception of the
historical enterprise, Foucault has put forth a
speci®c view of the subjecti®cation of the
individual:
Foucault de®ned the essence of the civilizing
process as one of increasing discipline. Spon-
taneous behaviour was tolerated in the Mid-
dle Ages; in the early modern period
increasingly sophisticated systems of external
restraints were imposed in the name of mor-
ality; and in the modern era, the external
constraints were internalised (Hunt, 1986,
p. 217).
Grumley (1989, p. 196) suggests that Foucault saw
individuals as ``conditionable beings'' whose
socialisation takes place in an array of institutions
and within a set of practices which impart parti-
cular norms, values and ideals and which shape
emotions, commitments and attitudes. The social
creation of the tractable being is not the result of a
guided exercise of power, but is a?ected by the
existence of parameters constraining the indivi-
dual's scope of actions. Practices are informed by
a movement to discipline and amplify the powers
of the human body, to maximise its utility and to
produce its ``willing'' and ``automatic'' docility
(Foucault, 1961, p. 169). They delimit the doable,
the knowable and the sayable, and the individual
therefore becomes ``bound to invisible rules in
everything he says and does'' (BurguieÁ re, 1990,
p. 133).
The social creation and conditioning of the
individual brings into existence and helps sustain
what Miller (1987, p. 1) has referred to as ``reg-
ulatory practices of the self'' which act as norms of
discipline based on notions of truth which are
speci®c to a certain space and time. The study of
power relations in this light is one of historically
and regionally speci®c practices that may subse-
quently become generalised and di?used. Wright
(1998, p. 9) notes that Foucault has
. . . documented how knowledge about mental
health, sexuality and criminality in the 18th
and 19th centuries became the basis of new
practices on which institutions were built.
These institutional practices shaped percep-
tions, categories, values and behaviour.
For instance, in his early works on madness,
Foucault (1961) examined a point in history where
reason and madness were undi?erentiated and
traced the subsequent emergence of a conception
of mental illness. He sought to
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 431
. . . retrace in time that constant verticality
which confronts European culture with that
which is not (Foucault, 1961, p.10).
Foucault considered the great con®nement period
as a phenomenon of late seventeenth century Eur-
opean society where those who were mad, unable
or unwilling to work, as well as other ``immoral or
unreasonable people were enclosed'' (O'Farrell,
1989, p. 75). The construction of madness as a
di?erentiable category was not independent of the
political pursuit of enhanced work output in Eur-
opean states over the eighteenth century. Follow-
ing developments in clinical practices, ``. . . reason
ceased to be for man an ethic and became a nat-
ure'' (Foucault, 1966, p. 103) by the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The conceptualisation of
madness as a clinical state of nature is to Foucault
(1966) a ``local'' and historically speci®c concept of
knowledge. Its emergence is contextual (Eur-
opean) and seen as tied to circumstantial condi-
tions of possibility (principally the State's pursuit
of economic growth and the proliferation of insti-
tutionalised knowledges). What may be seen as
``fundamental'' (Bernstein, 1983, p. 9). (such as
reason as a state of nature) is in e?ect, ``culturally
and historically speci®c'' (Bernstein, 1983, p. 9).
Foucault's (1975) work on the prison and the
emergence of the modern penal system also points
to the contextual and circumstantial nature of
knowledge production. Here his concern was to
depict discipline as a particular technique for the
organisation and regulation of individuals that has
become widespread in modern European societies.
He saw this as having been made possible by a
signi®cant increase in economic production at the
beginning of the eighteenth century concomitantly
with the harnessing of labour power. In delimiting
the context within which disciplinary transforma-
tion took place, Falzon (1998, p. 48) argues that
Foucault's works on the prison and disciplinary
practices suggest that ``being shaped and directed
in accordance with cultural forms is part of the
process by which human beings are historically
constituted''. In other words, alterations in sys-
tems of penal reform were bound up with shifting
conceptions of normative selfhood in Europe over
the period in question.
Broadly, Foucault's (1961, 1975) works on
madness and criminality are suggestive of social
orders which are contextually speci®c, and which
``come to be set in place, without the need for any
overall controlling plan or project'' (Falzon, 1998,
p. 47). Historical events are not teleologically
governed. Historical processes give rise to the
emergence of events that are ``discontinuous,
divergent and governed by chance'' (McNay,
1994, p. 89). It is chance in this light which prof-
fers time and space speci®city to practices, and
which opens up the possibility of investigating the
antecedents of organisational arrangements, and
the variations in such arrangements across di?er-
ent national contexts.
Foucault's work as part of the ``new'' history is
relevant to cross national management control
research in terms of his critique of the notion of
the ``foundational subject'' (Falzon, 1998, p. 3)
and his rejection of absolute, overarching, unify-
ing standpoints. Concepts of knowledge, truth and
ethics are seen as local and historically speci®c.
Human nature and personal creativity are viewed
as consequences of forms of knowledge, social
formations and political practices which are time
and space dependent. Even the notion of justice is,
to Foucault, (cited in Barker, 1998, p. 74)
. . . an idea which in e?ect has been invented
and put to work in di?erent types of societies
as an instrument of a certain political or eco-
nomic power.
It is this skepticism concerning the existence of
any universal, permanent, ahistorical standpoint,
framework or essence to which appeal can be
made in determining what may count as reason or
knowledge, which is conducive to the notion of
contextualized rationality:
There are in fact many rationalities, all of
them the product of very concrete historical
practices (Foucault cited in O'Farrell, 1989,
p. 125)
This anti-foundational stance furthers the
notion that organisational practices are ultimately
socially rooted and devoid of essence. Although
Foulcauldian and other postmodern interpreta-
tions of organisational control and accounting
432 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
practices have been the subject of critiques (Arm-
strong, 1994; Arnold, 1998; Neimark, 1994; see
also Grey, 1994; and Hoskins, 1994), the ``new''
history perspective o?ers a means of exploring the
antecedents and the basis of the ``many rational-
ities'' (Foucault cited in O'Farrell, 1989, p. 125)
underlying management practices across di?erent
contexts.
The ``new'' stance to history which rests on
particular historiographical assumptions posits a
particular conceptualisation of control. In exam-
ining historical trajectories in given contexts, the
notion of a total ``reality of the past'' (Foucault,
1981, p. 14) is eschewed in favour of investigating
the ``discourse of true and false'' (Foucault, 1981).
Conceptions of truth and notions of propriety
determine propensities, attitudes and predisposi-
tions which, in turn, can be taken to condition
forms of control. To understand the structuring of
management control systems, it is necessary to
examine conditions generating truth and to inves-
tigate the history of the ``objecti®cation'' (Fou-
cault, 1981, p. 5) of elements which come to be
taken as axiomatic within the domain of manage-
ment practice in a given context (a de®ned col-
lectivity or a nation say). The espousal of
particular truths creates invisible self-willed con-
trols within individuals, and thereby renders pos-
sible the existence of particular and compatible
management controls. Within this perspective,
management controls may be said to be operative
within a framework of individual subjectivity act-
ing as ``. . . systems that quietly order us about''
(Foucault cited in Megill, 1979, p. 493). The func-
tioning of speci®c forms of management controls
within the organisation may be viewed as being
co-terminus with the socially constructed make-up
of the individual.
Organisations structure management controls
to e?ect possibilities for their governance by
exerting constraints on the behaviour of indivi-
duals and imposing limits on their actions (Miller
& O'Leary, 1987). Certain controls may comple-
ment an individual's subjective predisposition
without subverting his or her will. They may
embody that which the individual is subjectively
predisposed to, and arm his or her conditioned
expectations or, in contrast, they may constrain
his or her will by establishing parameters of action
compatible primarily with the pursuit of emergent
organisational priorities. The characteristic speci-
®city of an organisation's mode of management
control is thus determined both by that which
accords with the subjective orientation of the
individual and that which corresponds to the
organisation's socially constructed role, both of
which are linked to historical antecedents and
contemporary rationalisations.
Within this perspective, the peculiarities and
characteristic speci®cities of particular manage-
ment controls are not seen as deviations from a
correct universal form. Rather, management con-
trols are taken to be contextually determined by
the nature of the individual's subjectivity and the
speci®c social conditioning of the organisation.
Ultimately, a particular mode of organisational
functioning and regulation is in¯uenced by e?ects
shaping the social nature of both the individual
and that of the organisation. The emergence of
self-controls among individuals, and the historical
process underlying the social construction of the
normative organisation, have to be appreciated
contextually before an understanding of interna-
tional variety in management controls can be
developed.
The positioning of the ``new'' history frame of
reference to cross-national research in Fig. 1 is
re¯ective of the socio-contextualized notion of
``subjective-expressive'' (Wuthnow, Hunter, Ber-
gesen & Karzweil, 1984, p. 3) human predisposi-
tion, and the concomitant emergence of
management controls. If internalised condition-
ings are seen as escaping conscious knowledge and
enabling a group or a society to share a system of
representation and values without needing to
make these explicit, then knowledge of cultural
attributes cannot be mobilised to construct parti-
cular forms of management controls re¯ective of
subjective predisposition. Management controls
are in this sense emergent rather than purposefully
designed a priori.
In the context of the ``new'' historical perspec-
tive, homogenising forces within a collectivity are
seen as arising from the division between true and
false which gives rise to ``programmings of beha-
viour'' (Foucault, 1981, p. 10). Where such con-
A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440 433
ditioning is seen as immanent in organisations
within a nation, management control systems
evolve characteristic features which re¯ect endur-
ing propensities consistent with those found in
their broader national setting. If the discourse of
the true and false can be equated with a homo-
genising order, then the subjectivity of the indivi-
dual and the social conditioning of the
organisation will be informed such as to enable
particular forms of management controls to exist.
As such, the historical contingency of forms of
management control is demarcated within the
perspective of regimes of truth which direct the
subject's, as well as the organisation's existence. In
this light, the collective or national speci®city of
management controls may be discerned by exam-
ining the genesis of conceptualisations of truth
which alter, a?ect, and in¯uence the social space
within which subjects and organisations exist.
7. Discussion
Cross-national research in management control
is methodologically at a stage of infancy. Whilst a
body of comparative research has been docu-
mented, it has largely been undertaken in the wake
of methodological frames of reference existing in
other areas of management research which have
been subject to heavy criticism for at least three
decades. The contingency view stems from the-
ories of universalism and functionalism which are
increasingly deemed to be conceptually untenable.
The culturalist perspective, whilst appealing to
notions of the social dependency of management
controls, also ®nds its roots within a deterministic
frame of logic. Studies of these two genres have
sought to establish signi®cant statistical infer-
ences, whilst disregarding methodological precepts
deemed important in more established social sci-
ence disciplines.
Early e?orts within the ``societal e?ects'' per-
spectives have produced fruitful comparative
results in terms both of substantive methodologi-
cal underpinnings as well as potential depth of
analysis. This stance is rigorously grounded within
a body of theoretical propositions lending focus
and analysability. Its advocates make explicit,
however, the desirability of extending the frame of
reference to encompass institutionalist under-
standings of the provenance of forms of organisa-
tional structuring and management controls.
New institutionalism has emerged from estab-
lished research traditions within the organisational
sociology discipline. Its focus on the analysis of
organisational actors
0
subjectivities, and their
contextualized conceptions of social reality and
the attendant enactment of management controls,
enriches the potential conceptualisation within
which cross-national research can be framed.
Although little comparative management control
research has been guided by the new institutional-
ism perspective to date, our understanding of how
organisational practices can be explained by ana-
lysing collective-subjective elements is increasing.
The potential for cross-national research in man-
agement control remains extensive within this
frame of reference.
This paper has suggested that the ``new'' history
frame of reference opens up the possibility for a
conceptually substantive approach to comparative
cross-national management control research. This
particular view which is concerned with the
exploration of the conditions which may underlie
management control speci®city at the level of col-
lectivities draws upon rich descriptions of context
complemented by historical analysis of observed
practices (Miller, Hopper & Laughlin, 1991).
Moreover, this perspective theoretically encapsu-
lates a notional frame of reference for under-
standing control within the context of human
subjectivity. This lends plausibility to comparative
research which can position itself alongside a
growingly established body of accounting control
research that attempts to o?er an understanding
of present con®gurations in terms of the past (see
Covaleski, Dirsmith & Samuels, 1996; Dillard &
Becker, 1997; Hopwood & Miller, 1994; Luft,
1997).
The methodological approaches to cross-
national management control research discussed
here do not delimit a comprehensive locus of pos-
sibilities. Nor is the representation developed in
Fig. 1 implied to encompass all such loci or indeed
to be conceptually chaste in its own terms. The
present discussion should only be seen as o?ering
434 A. Bhimani / Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 413±440
a tentative starting point for debating about and
engaging in further comparative research along
new agendas. Moreover, it is understood that the
various perspectives presented here may be seen
by some as complementary, and by others as
alternatives, given that they span di?erentiated
epistemological and ontological research assump-
tions. It is believed that such di?erentiation can
only be of value in a domain which, by de®nition,
presumes scholarship predisposed to unravelling
diversity, multiplicity and plurality.
Acknowledgements
This paper has greatly bene®ted from comments
on an earlier draft by Thomas Ahrens, Markus
Granlund, Graeme Harrison, Anthony Hopwood,
Kari Lukka, Peter Miller, Michael Power, Carlos
Ramirez, Michael Shields and two anonymous
reviewers. The views of participants at the Map-
ping Diversity in Management Control Research
Conference held in Palermo, December 1997 are
gratefully acknowledged.
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