ACCOUNTING AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES 345
and joined the Executive Committee. But the regional management hierarchies
remained intact. Regional General Managers, carrying on the old traditions,
continued to run the railway.
The appointment of Business Managers was to have far reaching consequences,
however, for it introduced a new ‘‘business’’ culture, a counter-culture. They
brought a different interpretation of reality. For them the railway was a business, its
purpose was to make profit. Engineering and logistical operations were essentially
a means for extracting revenues from customers. Professional management was
about making the railway profitable.
Business Managers were appointed without staff or support at the margins
of the organization. But during the course of the study, they gained influence
at the expense of the regional General Managers. They persuaded many around
them of their idea of a business railway. Gradually, people converted to the
‘‘business culture’’. Others left the organization. The nature of dialogue and
debate changed. Appeals to the old traditions of railway excellence and public
service were repudiated. New kinds of policy decisions emerged, motivated by
the business logic. Operational activities out in the regions began to be informed
by the new rationale.
Now, the old world view, the preoccupation with engineering and logistics,
the belief in the railway as a social service, the railway culture, has been sub-
stantially displaced by the business perspective, the belief that railways should
be instrumental in making profit and managed to that end. The counter-culture
has emerged to become the dominant-culture among the senior management.
Traditions established over longer than a century were quickly overthrown.
Tracing the dynamics of change
The story is one of evolving interpretations, meanings and perceived possibilities.
No one in the organization foresaw the outcome at the start, not even the
Business Managers. At first, their ‘‘business culture’’ was vague and indistinct,
a kind of abstract generality. But as events unfolded, it became more specific.
Possibilities for coupling their business reality to organizational action were
perceived. Gradually, as people elaborated the new logic for organized activity,
momentum was created. Capturing the emergent nature of these developments,
one senior manager described the experience as ‘‘a voyage of discovery and
development’’.
This section traces the dynamics of change. Firstly, it considers the context
surrounding the appointment of Business Managers. Then it outlines the crafting
of new accounting systems. Subsequently, it traces the process through which
the new accounting was coupled to organizational activities and endowed with
meaning. Finally, it gives an account of the regional General Managers’ perspective
in these events. The section is interspersed with representative comments from
managers in the organization.