INTERPRETIVE AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING 63
to change the course of events, to overcome resistance, and to get people to do
things that they would not otherwise do’ (p. 30).
Morgan (1986) identified power as either a resource or a social relation, defining
it as ‘the medium through which conflicts of interest are ultimately resolved’
(p. 158). As a social relation, power is concerned with domination of one person
(or group) over another. As a resource, power is concerned with the dependency
of one party on particular allocations, and the control over the distribution of that
resource by another party. By contrast, Giddens (1976) argued that power does
not of itself imply conflict. Because power is linked to the pursuit of interest, it is
only when interests do not coincide that power and conflict are related.
Power is implicit in organizational functioning and in the definition of what is
important. Child (1972) concluded:
When incorporating strategic choice in a theory of organization, one is rec-
ognizing the operation of an essentially political process in which constraints
and opportunities are functions of the power exercised by decision-makers
in the light of ideological values. (p. 16)Cooperet al.(1981) saw accounting systems having:
[an] impact on sustaining and influencing an organization’s culture and
language and in terms of their ideological and legitimizing influence in
maintaining systems of power and control in organizations. (p. 175)Emmanuelet al.(1990) described control as taking two forms: control as domination
of one person or group over others; and control as regulation where the controller
detects a variation between actual and planned results and creates a stimulus
for corrective action. While the latter is associated with the cybernetic system
described in Chapter 4, control as domination is relevant to the interpretive and
critical perspective.
Markus and Pfeffer (1983) argued that accounting and control systems are
related to intra-organizational power:
because they collect and manipulate information used in decision-making
...[and] because they are used to change the performance of individuals and
the outcomes of organizational processes. (pp. 206 – 7)Conclusion...........................................
We will return to interpretive and critical perspectives throughout this book.
However, a major difficulty in adopting a non-rational paradigm is that organi-
zational discourse suggests that the rational-economic paradigm of shareholder
value is the only valid one, while individuals often act in the pursuit of power and
self-interest.
Otleyet al.(1995) suggested that while the definition of management control
was ‘managerialist in focus...this should not preclude a critical stance and thus
a broader choice of theoretical approaches’ (p. S42).