296 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
of the organizational and sociological theoretical traditions which have been
used in managerial accounting research in order to facilitate understanding,
and perhaps influence usage, by accounting scholars adopting more traditional
research perspectives. In our effort to provide a sweeping critique of organiza-
tional and sociological perspectives, rather than a detailed and nuanced treatment
of this stream of management accounting research from these theoretical per-
spectives, there are points of omission, under-representation, and compression of
the multitude of views within these theoretical traditions. And yet, it is precisely
through such a broad treatment that we hope to reveal the distinctiveness of
these organizational and sociological research traditions which exhibit a cluster
of tendencies that distinguish it from the more familiar research traditions which
draw on neoclassical economics and contemporary social and organizational
psychology.^1
The paper is organized into four sections. The first section addresses the con-
tributions which contingency theory has had in situating managerial accounting
in the control processes and structures of organizations. Contingency theory
(Thompson 1967; Perrow 1967; Lawrence and Lorsch 1969) represents a rich blend
of organizational theory – i.e., it has roots in the organizational decision-making
perspectives of the 1950s (Simon 1957; March and Simon 1958) – and sociological
functionalist perspectives of organizations – i.e., it has roots in the sociological
concerns about organizational structure of the 1960s (Burns and Stalker 1961;
Woodward 1965; Aiken and Hage 1966; Hickson 1966). Contingency theory took
the insights on such critical organizational processes as decision-making and con-
trol as depicted in the literature on organizational decision-making and combined
these with sociological functionalist concerns regarding the impact of such struc-
tural factors as environment, size, technology, etc., on organizational behavior.
Important to both the decision-making perspective of organizations and the soci-
ological concerns for organizational structure are issues of organizational control
and coordination. This explicit concern for issues of coordination and control, in
turn, has provided important contributions to managerial accounting research in
our understanding of such issues as the design of information and control systems,
budgeting and strategic planning.
The second major section of this paper deals with the various organizational
and sociological theories which concern themselves with the social construction
(^1) Our focus on managerial accounting research motivated by organizational and sociological
theories precludes this paper from addressing managerial accounting research generated from
other theoretical traditions (economic, psychological, historical); nor does our paper address
some excellent descriptive and applied work in managerial accounting. Here our approach
complements such recent work as that of Young and Selto (1991) whose primary concern was
to review the managerial accounting literature by topic, i.e., strategic cost accounting, product
life cycle cost management, flexible manufacturing systems, etc., while embracing a variety
of theoretical and non-theoretical work, albeit with less of an explicit focus on critiquing the
theoretical traditions. McMann and Nanni (1996) took the same approach as Young and Selto
(1991), however with a more specific focus on one topic – Japanese managerial accounting. This
explicit focus allowed them to provide more insight on such critical subtopics as continuous
improvement, quality, target costing, etc. – with the research once again cutting across theoretical
and non-theoretical traditions, as well as across research methods.