INTERPRETIVE AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING 61
Langfield-Smith (1995) contrasted culture as the setting for control; as a control
mechanism itself; and as a filter for perceiving the environment. Langfield-Smith
described a model by Flamholtz, Das and Tsui in which culture facilitates control
when the control system is consistent with the social norms of the organization,
or inhibits control when it is at variance with those norms. As Ouchi (1977)
showed, culture can lead to a ritual form of control where knowledge of the
transformation process is imperfect and the ability to measure output is low.
Langfield-Smith (1995) also described research by Birnberg and Snodgrass in
which culture influences the effectiveness of a control system by influencing
individual perceptions and value judgements about those perceptions.
Hofstede (1981) argued that control systems must be sensitive to organizational
cultures and that those running counter to culture are unlikely to be successfully
imposed. Markus and Pfeffer (1983) suggested that resistance to and failure of
accounting control systems was common, arguing that control systems will be
implemented when they are consistent with the dominant organizational culture
and paradigm in their implications for values and beliefs.
The radical paradigm and critical accounting
Radical approaches (Burrell and Morgan, 1979) emphasize broader structural
issues such as the role of the state, distribution of the surplus of production and
class difference (Hopperet al., 1987). Hopper and Powell (1985) claimed that the
functional approach does not address issues of power and conflict and argued that
interpretive approaches ‘indicate how accounting systems may promote change,
albeit within a managerial conception of the term, rather than being stabilizers’
(p. 449).
Hopperet al.(2001) argued that under Thatcherism:
accounting data and the consulting arms of accounting firms had been central
to economic and policy debates, involving privatization, industrial restruc-
turing, reform of the public sector, and worries about de-industrialization...
it appeared apparent that accounting had to be studied in its broader social,
political and institutional context. (p. 276)Those writers who sought a more radical interpretation than the interpretive one
drew on the work of Marx. There are three groups within this perspective: political
economy, labour process and critical theory (Roslender, 1995). All are concerned
with promoting change in thestatus quo.
Thepolitical economyapproach recognizes power and conflict in society and the
effect that accounting has on the distribution of income, power and wealth.Labour
processfocuses on the corruption of human creativity in the pursuit of wealth,
especially deskilling and management control as a reproducer of capitalism.
Labour process theorists argue that:
the driving force for social change in capitalist society is the development
and displacement (i.e. of impediments to capital accumulation and their res-
olutions)...[that] are inherent in the structural instabilities that characterize