304 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
Formal structures are not only the result of their relational network in the
social organization...[t]he elements of rationalized formal structure are
also deeply ingrained in, and reflect, widespread understandings of social
reality....Such elements of formal structure are manifestations of powerful
institutional rules which function as highly rationalized myths that are
binding on particular organizations.Strands of this Weberian sociological tradition are embedded in March and
Simon’s (1958) organizational decision-making model which provides a key con-
tribution in its focus on the routine, taken-for-granted aspects of organizational life.
Traces of a cognitive orientation in Weber’s theory of bureaucracy – his emphasis
on the role of calculable rules in reducing uncertainty and rationalizing power
relations – are apparent in the richness of March and Simon’s (1958) decision-
making model where they urged a focus on understanding the initiation and
preservation of power relationships on two fronts: (1) the power to set premises
and define the norms and standards that shape and channel behavior; and (2) the
power to delimit appropriate models of bureaucratic structure and policy that
go unquestioned for years. Weber’s concern was to understand the dominance of
organizations and their forms of rationality upon society’s technical, economic and
political forms of life. Weber reasoned that rationalization is concerned not only
with the long-term process of social structure transformation, but simultaneously
and more importantly, the perpetuation of existing power relations concealed in
the advancement of rational imperatives. Thus, the critical issue is the politics of
rationality itself.
This concern for the power and politics of rationality is inherent in other
interpretive sociological work such as Berger and Luckmann’s (1967).The Social
Construction of Reality, in which they reasoned that the central question for
sociological theory is: How is it possible that subjective meanings become objective
facts? Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) argument is that social order is based
fundamentally on a shared social reality which, in turn, is a human construction,
being created in social interaction. The process by which actions become repeated
over time and are assigned similar meanings by self and others is defined
as institutionalization. Further, Berger and Luckmann (1967) emphasized the
importance of employing an historical approach, arguing that it is impossible to
understand an institution adequately without an understanding of the historical
processes in which it was produced. The result is the paradox ‘‘that man is capable
of producing a world that he then experiences as something other than a human
product’’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 61). Similarly, Garfinkel (1967) developed
an approach to social investigation, ethnomethodology, which shifted the image
of cognition from a rational, discursive, quasiscientific process to one that operates
largely beneath the level of consciousness, a routine and conventional practical
reason governed by rules that are recognized only when they are breached. To
this he added a perspective on interaction that casts doubts on the importance
of normative or cognitive consensus. Here Garfinkel (1967) argued that action is
largely scripted and justified, after the fact, by reference to a stock of culturally
available legitimating accounts.