284 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
(September, Vol. 4, No. 3). Both these publications (plus the edited collections by
Lowe and Machin, 1983 and Chuaet al., 1989) have been spawned by the activities
of the Management Control Association, a group of UK academics, which has
sought for the past 20 years to promote wide-ranging research in the field. The
latest review of nearly 20 research approaches is by Macintosh (1994), which
unusually develops the issues through a selection of methodological approaches.
The predominant ontological stance is realist, stemming from the original
concentration of the practical theorists on what they saw as real problems in
practice. The primary epistemological stance of these control theorists is positivist
and functionalist. Functionalist approaches have been severely criticized (e.g.
Burrell and Morgan, 1979) as being part of the sociology (and perhaps the
economy) of preservation, and thus antithetical to radical change. In the sense that
management control is concerned with forms of stability this might be so, but the
pursuit of efficiency has led to radical, and often unwelcome, change for many
people, and control techniques have been used to promote quite radical social
changes. Whilst some of the more radical theorists have examined this issue it,
perhaps, remains somewhat under researched. Laughlin and Lowe (1990) using
the framework of Burrell and Morgan (1979) along with Scott’s framework to
review accounting research and demonstrate the diversity of approaches available
argued that only the open systems approaches were beginning to move away
from the functionalist orientation. Given our argument as to the paucity of open
systems research, similar claims can be made for the need to extend the theoretical
and methodological boundaries of management control research.^2
The review shows that accounting still acts as an important element of manage-
ment control. Whilst there have been developments in control in associated areas
(such as Management Information Systems (MIS), human relations, operations
research) these disciplines have been less inclined to see themselves as offering
themselves as vehicles for integration of the diversity of organizational life than
has accounting. Accounting is still seen as a pre-eminent technology by which to
integrate diverse activities from strategy to operations and with which to render
accountability. There is a sense in which the reduction of values to accounting
measurements can contribute to management control sliding into the merely tech-
nical. Such a tendency is reinforced by the very constructs of the management
information system and of information management which accounting uses. The
ubiquity of computers, data capture, high-speed software, electronic data inter-
change and open access has changed the speed of data flow without yet having
had great impact on either management control research or practice. Yet the topic
of management control holds the promise of providing a powerful integrating
idea to provide a very practical focus to concepts developed in other disciplines
if it is not wholly accounting focused. Mills (1970) thoughts about the role of
management control as an integrative teaching device also appear to apply with
some force to its role as an integrative research framework for an important part
of management studies. With this in mind we move to the final section.
(^2) Agency theory research, not included in this review, would not be immune from this comment.