Accounting for Managers: Interpreting accounting information for decision-making

INTERPRETIVE AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING 57

The organization as a

CLOSED SYSTEM

protected from its environment

by a protective boundary

RATIONAL perspective:

goal-oriented collective

with formal structure

NATURAL perspective:

motivated by self-interest,

informal relations more

important than formal

ones

Theories such as:

Scientific management (Taylor) Theories such as:

Bureaucracy (Weber)

Shareholder value (see Chapter 2)

Human relations (Mayo)

AGIL (Parsons)

The organization as an

OPEN SYSTEM

with activities that are loosely

coupled to satisfy both the demands

of the environment and technical

work activity

OPEN SYSTEMS perspective:

impact of environment on organization

in which the organization is

a shifting coalition of participants

Theories such as:
Contingency theory
Population ecology
Resource dependence
Institutional
Figure 5.1 Organizations as closed or open systems: rational, natural and open systems
perspectives
Based on Scott (1998).

accounting. The appropriate systems emerge from the influence of the environ-
ment (which may be turbulent or static), technology, organizational size and need
to fit with the organizational strategy, structure and culture.Population ecology
theoryis based on the biological analogy of natural selection and holds that