322 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
broadest social and historical level (i.e., parts of larger historical trends of struc-
tural antagonism or disciplinary techniques) the more immediate organizational
influences (contingency theory) or organizational fields (interpretive perspectives)
become more tangential to the research focus. In summary, despite the differences
between the theoretical points of departure and related demands for empirical
inquiry pertaining to the contingency, interpretive, and critical perspectives, these
approaches to management accounting provide multiple understandings of man-
agement accounting that are not offered by more narrowly focused analysis which
centers around individual preference and cognitive functions.
A second aspect that distinguishes the management accounting research which
draws on organizational and sociological traditions is its tendency to offer a rel-
atively non-technical understanding of management accounting. For example, it
is usual to suppose that management accounting is an information systems that
can be designed to influence decisions and to so gain control over behavior. Here,
accounting is a tool that not only signals certain states of the world, but also works
as an instrument by which certain outcomes are made more probable. This instru-
mental and consequently asocial, ahistorical and apolitical view of accounting
contrasts with that gained from the various alternative research streams. Again,
referring to the contributions of Seltoet al.’s (1995) contingency perspective-driven
field work, such management accounting practices as JIT/TQC systems are seen
to be invested with the social aspects of worker empowerment, workgroup perfor-
mance, and relations within and between workgroups, operators and supervisors.
By modifying the system, aided by management accounting, the fit may be
enhanced and performance consequently improved. An interpretive perspective
of management accounting would particularly probe the issue as to whether
JIT/TQC systems are as much a symbol demonstrating efficiency and rationality
to be displayed for external consumption as they are an instrument for achieving
efficiencies, thus focusing their theoretical and empirical efforts to inform our
understanding of the symbolic nature of JIT/TQC. Critical perspectives, in turn,
might mobilize their empirical efforts around their respective theoretical motiva-
tions to examine JIT/TQC systems within the context of a class-divided society to
aid economic expropriation of workers’ surplus, or, in the Foucaultian tradition, to
examine JIT/TQC systems as artifacts of a general historical mechanism by which
people are made calculable and manageable.
Accordingly, alternative streams of research, to varying degrees, move towards
considering accounting as a social practice rather than a technique. To treat
accounting as a ‘‘practice’’ instead of a ‘‘technique’’ is to embed accounting
within the web of human actions which are, in turn, constitutive of social rela-
tions. The intricacies and richness of social relations that are suffused by such
aspects of sociality as symbols, myths, language, status, class, trust and intimacy,
comprises the backdrop for the organizationally and sociologically informed stud-
ies of accounting. More specifically, management accounting research rooted in
the contemporary social and organizational psychology and neo-classical eco-
nomics usually examines management accounting procedures and techniques
with the intent to improve its efficacy. In general, these traditional approaches
are problem driven and directed towards improving and refining the instrument