Accounting,

Organizations

Pergamon

MANAGEMENT

Vol. 23.

( 1998 Elsevier

PII:

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and Society,

No 4. pp. 41 l-434.
1998
Science Ltd All rights rrsavrd
Printed in Great Britam
0361.36B2/98
$lO.OO+O 00

SO361-3682(97)00018-4

ACCOUNTING

RESEARCH

TO MANAGERIAL

WORK!*

S. JtiNSSON
University of Gotbenburg

Abstract
This article argues that management
accounting
research
should be more aligned with managerial
work.
Managers
work with words. This means that managerial
conversation
and the use of accounting
information in such conversation
should be studied.
Methodology
is developing
rapidly in other areas of social
science where a linguistic
turn has made an impact. Managerial
work, characterised
by brevity,
variety,
and fragmentation,
provides
the context
in which accounting
information
is used. Management
is thus
described
as a ccFoperative
game where communication
is central to attention
direction
as well as problem solving. An illustration
is given of the kind of studies deemed necessary
for management
accounting
research
to progress
towards
managerial
re!evance.
,(;: 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

It seems like management accounting research

has been out of focus for some time now.
Various reasons can be named. There is clearly
a lack of empirical input to the theorising
which is increasingly drawn towards clean
ontological assumptions suitable for rigorous
analysis. Empirics tend to be limited to quick
survey studies which fit into the publication
requirements of the main stream. There are
also some complaints of a lack of relevance
(Johnson St Kaplan, 1987; Cooper, 1990) of
standard cost accounting
technologies
for
complex
real-world settings.
Case study
approaches have been recommended (Ton&ins
& Groves, 1983; Hopwood, 1983, 1987; Scapens
1990). Researchers and educators alike have
been exhorted to get in touch with the real
world. Still no breakthrough has been claimed.
Concern has been expressed for the limitations of contingency studies relying on crosssectional methods and statistical inference
(Chua, 1986; Merchant, 1985). As a counter
point to such studies longitudinal ones have

been presented (Dent, 1991; Bhimani, 1993).

Studies where managerial action to adapt the
organization to changing environments
have
been studied. At best these studies provide
ontological insights by using the history of the
organisation as the ground against which the
figure of current change is depicted. They may
at times also be connected to current debates
and fashions of accounting technology.
The most promising aspect of these studies
is, however, that they make managerial action
visible in accounting
studies. Management
action seems oriented towards change rather
than choice; lean production, customised service, multi-domestic strategies provide interesting challenges to management research. In this
area the management of strategic change, no
doubt stimulated by the celebrated success of
Japanese companies on western markets, has
been a dynamic field. Community and network
have been added to the traditional dichotomy
of Market and Hierarchy. Virtues like loyalty
and trust stand as ontological alternatives to

The research
on which
this article is based was financed
by a grant (90-354 03) by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary
Foundation.
Final revisions
were carried out while the author held an Erskine Fellowship
at the University
of Canterbury.
(Christchurch.
411

412

S. JiiNSSON

opportunism
and individual maximisation of
utility. The study of organizational learning has
advanced and changed our views of the role of
communication
(Hedberg & Jonsson, 1978).
We realise that communication
is not only a
matter of information technology but a crucial
factor in the social construction of practices. A
further complicating aspect of the modern corporation is the differentiation of technology and
their attached knowledge communities (Boland
& Tenkasi, 1995). Managers have to organise
and maintain knowledge intensive communication around the redesign of products as well as
processes in cooperation
between specialists
(in house and outside). There is likely to be
misunderstanding
which
cannot be easily
resolved by resorting to power or hierarchy.
Communication
through several channels and
sensemaking (weick, 1995) will be a major
occupation.
All these aspects of the management task
effect managerial work which, in turn, will
influence the selection and use of management
information. The relevance of accounting information will depend upon its ability to relate to
the work managers do.
This paper attempts to introduce such a
managerial perspective for the development of
management accounting research. A perspective which would align it with current developments in management
and social research
focusing on the communicative
aspects of
managerial work. First the reader will be
reminded of some of the results of empirical
studies of managerial work. Then the meaning
of an approach to management accounting
from the managerial side is discussed. The
dimensions thus introduced will support an
illustrative example of how communication in a
management team meeting can be analysed.
The paper aims to stimulate readers to explore
the area further, to persuade rather than prove.

MANAGERIAL WORK
The first systematic, empirical study of managerial work was probably done by Carlson

(1951). Mintzberg (1973) was inspired by

Carlson but applied a more intensive observation method (participant
observation)
than
Carlson who used a diary method in combination with interviews. Mintzberg observed his
managers for five days each while Carlson collected data on one month for each manager.
Kotter (1982) used a combination
of interviews, questionnaires, and participant observation over two periods for each participant.
These three studies will be used as indicators.
Carlson structured his observations in incidents for which the following data were recorded; where was the work done, what time did
it take, who participated, what manner of communication was used, what was the nature of
the business, and what kind of action did it
imply (decision, inquiry, command, etc.).
When reporting the results, Carlson complained that the top managers spent so much
time away from the company for non-commercial contacts. When they were in, they spent
too much time in inefficient meetings. Meetings
took too long and were not properly co-ordinated with other forms of control. Far too little
time was devoted to analysis and planning.
Why not use subordinates in all these meetings!
They could better devote their full attention to
the matters dealt with by the committees and
working parties! Managers also seemed systematically to overestimate the time they spent
managing-by-walking-around.
Carlson found that the average time alone in
the office before being interrupted again was 8
minutes. A typical top manager (CEO) worked
undisturbed in his office for more than 28 minutes on only nine occasions over a period of
35 days.
Contact diagrams showed that functional
business dominated the agenda. On the average
about 15% of the time was spent on corporate
matters and the rest was spent with representatives of functional areas. Coordination by responding to one functional area on the basis of
current knowledge of the other areas seems to
have been a critical task for Carlsons managers.
Only 6.3% of the incidents were classified as
ending in a decision. The most frequent activity

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was getting information (39.6%) followed by

give advice, explain (14.6%).
Mintzberg (1973) worked with a chronology,
postal protocol and a contact protocol that was
coded for a week
for each of the observed
managers. Mintzberg summarises his observations on the nature of managerial work in terms
like relentless pace and brevity, variety and
fragmentation.
It seems like managers prefer
activities that are current, specific and well
defined before the abstract and non-routine
ones. They work verbally with fresh information rather than analytically with systematic
information.
Mintzbergs study is probably most well
known for its typology of leader roles; relational, informational and decisional roles. The
empirical basis for these role descriptions must,
however, be considered rather thin. If one considers the fact that roles are developed over
time and in interaction with others the one
week
observation period is not sufficient. Still
the criterion question in Mintzbergs classification of activities into roles: Why did the manager do this? indicates the multitude of tasks
managers are obliged to carry out. Mintzberg
refers to Katz and Kahn (1966) who state that
leadership is related to incompleteness
and
uncertainties inside and outside the organisation, which means that management could be
described as an unprogrammed
activity. Barnard (1966) claims that the most important task
for the manager is to maintain organizational
activities. This adds up to a description of managements main task as being to assure that the
organisation is effective, stable and has an abiIity to adapt. This requires continuous vigilance
concerning environmental,
task, person, and
situation variables. Emergencies are normal
(Walker et aZ., 1956, p. 76). Nonetheless there
are routines and recipes for certain types of
problems (acquisitions, turn-rounds). Mintzberg
discusses the possibilities of programming
these recipes and whether this could not be
done in co-operation with analysts who could
distance themselves better than the manager.
Mintzberg is thinking about academics here,
but the task of extracting patterns in managerial

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41.3

behaviour and programming

them could as
well be done by staff departments. When he
gives advice on how the situation could be
improved it points in the direction of more team
work in top management (which, obviously,
implies communication).
One cannot help wondering if, perhaps, all
these intelligent, successful managers indulge
in managerial work characterised by brevity,
variety and fragmentation because it is an efficient way of running a company?!
Kotter (1982) introduces managerial work in
terms of its complexity. It is not so much the
analytical task that is difficult but the intensit)
of the competitive pressure which provides for
variety and change. Dilemmas of complexity
are illustrated; setting goals in spite of the fact
that basic underlying conditions are uncertain,
balancing short term return and long term
development, keeping informed, criticising and
motivating subordinates. These are issues without analytical solutions.
Kotter finds that the managers he studied
were not analytically inclined, neither are they
generalists.
Managers are socially talented
and they have usually acquired an extensive
knowledge of an industry in their career to be
able to be accurate in intuitive judgement. In
this sense they are specialists.
Kotter found that managers took on their
tasks in a similar manner. Early-up
to six
months or a year-after
their appointment
they devoted their attention to the establishment of an agenda and building the necessar)
network to carry it through. Such an agenda
coincided only partly with the official business
plan of the organization and it had content as
well as process aspects. During this initial period the new manager aggressively sought
information,
primarily from those he already
had trust relations with, by asking questions
using his own experiences to guide the direction of the questions. The sequence of meetings
and discussions with co-workers are often
unplanned and disjointed. Choices are made on
intuitive grounds to achieve specific programs
or projects, that can be expected to contribute
to several goals at the same time, and for which

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S. JiiNSSON

a mandate to implement is sought. This goes on

continuously, bit-by-bit in a time consuming
manner during the first phase. The content of
the agenda is characterised by loosely coupled
goals and plans based on business ideas with
mixed time horizons and covering a broad spectrum of issues. They were not put in writing.
Building networks is time consuming. It
means spending time with others, and managers
devoted considerable time to building relations
assumed beneficial to the implementation
of
the agenda. Relations often reach far beyond
the immediate coworkers and across formal
organizational boundaries. The manager in his
(or her) role as boss has an interest in promoting teamwork and eliminating politics in his
immediate neighbourhood.
On the other hand
there is a need to build networks which can be
used to short-circuit
the formal organisation
to promote implementation
of the agenda.
Kotter attributes differences in the manner in
which all this is done to background and career
experience.
The more comprehensive
the
experience of the industry the less time was
devoted to agenda- and network-building
and
more to implementation.
Such differences in
the allocation of time to networking have also
been documented
by Luthans et al. (1988).
Here focus is on successful (fast career) and
effective (good responsibility centre performance) managers. While successful managers
spent 48% of their time networking, effective
managers spent only 11% of their time on this
kind of activity.
Once the agenda and network were established they asserted a more direct influence on
the daily work of the manager. The agenda
directed attention to its issues and the network
framed how they were approached. In this way
managerial agendas affect significantly behavioural patterns of the company. On the issue
of whether it is possible to detect differences
between
more or less effective managers,
Kotter claims that even the small sample that he
studied gives reason to conclude that several
completely different behavioural patterns, seemingly based in contingency-specific solutions,
seem effective.

These empirical studies of managerial work

have some notable commonalities: (1) Managerial work is mostly done in groups and in faceto-face communication;
(2) Decisions are rare
events-asking
questions and getting information are the most frequent activities; (3) Managers work with fresh, verbal information in a
fashion characterised by brevity, variety and
fragmentation
in a stream of events where
agendas related to but separate from the formal
plans of the company are at work. Managers
want to shape and change the organization to
something better, and they do it with words. To
achieve this they build networks of personal
relations. They may be assumed to behave this
way not because they are stupid and ignorant
but because it works.

THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF MANAGEMENT

ACCOUNTING
Management accounting, seen as an indicator
of structures of responsibility, is embedded in a
modernist frame, the specificities of which may
vary somewhat between countries (Garner,
1954; Loft, 1986; Jonsson, 1991, 1996). The
universal modernist frame of reliance on control from the top, use of scientific knowledge to
improve the world, etc., is moderated by particular experiences of war, paths of internationalisation, values as to the relation between
individual and society, institutional histories,
etc. After the oil crises, deregulation, European
integration,
and the liberation of trade the
modernist frame is challenged. Regulation,
which was largely carried out in a national setting, has been replaced by a view of harmonisation across several cultures. The modernist
conception of rationality based on a given and
accepted set of values is replaced by accommodation to several sets of values. This is especially true for small countries with open
economies. Reformers of management refer to
multiple sets of values, often abstracted and
labelled beyond
comprehension
(customer
satisfaction, value-added, multidomestic
competition).

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ACCOIJNTING

The last decades have seen a management

reform movement argued on the basis of ideas
linked to lean production (inspired by Japanese
models) and customer focus (inspired by
American ideas of value added).
Management accounting, which used to be
securely embedded in a context of large scale
production of a limited number of products,
lost its bearings in this new situation of global
strategy turmoil. Criteria for what constitutes
relevant information have become ambiguous
and uncertain. Relevance
may have been
lost. Still, product costing has hardly changed in
its basic structures (Robinson, 1990; Ask et al..
1996) even if the ABC approach, with its analytical and decision making focus, caught a lot of
attention. To regain contextual sensibility management accounting needs to realign with
managerial work. Rather than sticking to a
score card function (Simon et al., 1954) it
should support managers when they make
sense of managerial situations, direct attention,
and solve problems. No longer will researching
the everyday accountant (Tomkins & Groves,
1983) suffice. It is the everyday manager who
will determine what is relevant, the everyday
manager in context. The search for a new
alignment therefore should be clinical. For
results to be useful, management accounting
research should be tuned to what goes on at
the clinic and focus on how management
accounting becomes embedded in new social
or managerial structures. If this is accepted as a
reasonable point of departure, the formidable
task of maintaining the systematic and conceptual basis while developing the communicative
aspects of management accounting lies before us.

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO APPROACH

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING FROM THE
MANAGEMENT SIDE?

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WORK!

415

interested in how management

accounting
information is used in managerial discourse, i.e.
when attention is directed and problems solved
(Simon et al., 1954). These latter activities will
be based on soft information in terms of intuitive definitions of situations where the joint
social construction of action premises goes on.
The analytical use of management accounting
information is likely to be referred to staff units
for confirmation of hunches or the calculation
of aspects of alternative lines of action. Line
managers, working in real time in management
situations characterised by brevity, variation
are likely to use accountand fragmentation,
ing information in conversations with others,
be it joint problem solving, implementation
processes or attention direction, to establish
rules of the game, commitment to tasks and
policies, and for testing half-baked ideas. Such
conversations are usually cooperative
games
rather than competitive ones. This means that
the argument of one participant will build on
and add to that of another participant and the
joint product will be beneficial to both. It also
means that the game is not specified in advance
but generates its own contextual meanings.
Managerial conversations do not only convey
information or solve problems but also serve to
generate symbolic capital and trust. Participants
build identities as competent managers by relevant contributions
which are presented in
accordance with how things are done in the
given context. This effectively discourages
opportunism, since participants will meet again
in new conversations, and because performance
in conversation will be evaluated by peers. This
poses problems for an outside observer. Help
from participants is required in sorting out the
implications of what was actually said, meant.
and understood during the conversation.

MANAGEMENT AS A CO-OPERATIVE GAME

If a more management orientation to management accounting were to be adopted, we
would not want to diminish the usefulness of
analytical applications of management accounting techniques in any way. But we would be

In order to be able to analyse managerial

conversations as cooperative games a set of
concepts and conventions for relating them are
needed. A basic ontological assumption is that

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S. JiiNSSON

participants work with each other and that a

game is finished by mutual agreement rather
than by applying some criterion of winning.
Conversations in themselves have some systemic and ritualistic constraints which have to
be met for them to function as a medium of
interaction. Furthermore we are interested in
implications for managerial action, not only in
the conversation itself.
The constitution of conversation
Goffman (1981, p. 14) specifies the following
systemic requirements for a meaningful conversation:
1. A two-way capability for transceiving
acoustically adequate and readily interpretable messages.
2. Back-channel feedback capabilities for
informing on reception while it is occurring.
3. Contact signals: means of announcing
the seeking of a channelled connection,
means of ratifying that the sought-for
channel is now open, means of closing off
a theretofore
open channel. Included
here are identification and authentication
signs.
4. Turnover signals: means to indicate the
ending of a message and the taking over of
the sending role by next speaker@ the
case of talk with more than two persons,
next speaker selection signals, whether
speaker selects or self-select types).
5. Preemption signals: means of inducing a
rerun, holding of channel requests, interrupting talker in progress.
6. Framing capabilities: cues for distinguishing special readings to apply across strips
of bracketed communication,
recasting
otherwise conventional sense, as in making ironic asides, quoting another, joking
and so forth; and hearer signals that
the resulting transformation
has been
followed.
7. Norms of obliging respondents to reply
honestly with whatever they know that is
relevant and no more.

8. Nonparticipant
constraints
regarding
eavesdropping,
competing
noise, and
blocking pathways for eye-to-eye signals.
Inside such a framework there are numerous
ritual constraints at work to regulate how participants should act to preserve everyones face,
express disapproval, sympathy, greetings etc.,
and also how potentially offensive acts can be
remedied, and offended parties can induce
remedy. There is also a specific ordering device,
adjacent pairs, which caters for the flow of
conversation by statement-response links. The
variety within such a framework is overwhelming and the micro-analysis of discourse through
conversation analysis has to deal with them.
Here is not the place to go deeper into these
matters. It is however necessary to indicate an
approach to how participants work out implications of what is said in conversation, i.e. how
sensemaking (Weick, 1995) is accomplished.
For this purpose Grices Cooperative Principle
(1989, originally presented in 1975) will be
used.
Implicature
As already mentioned,
conversations
are
typically co-operative efforts and could be
thought of as quasi-contractual in the sense that
there is a common immediate aim. Contributions are mutually dependent, and the interaction should continue until all or both parties
agree to terminate. The general formulation of
the cooperative principle is : Make your conversational contribution such as is required at
the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted
purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged (Grice, 1989, p. 26).
Grice distinguishes four categories under which
fall maxims to be followed to live up to the
cooperative principle. These categories are:
l

l
l

Quantity:
make your contribution
as
informative as is required and no more!
Quality: try to make your contribution one
that is true!
Relation: be relevant!
Manner: be perspicuous!

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Conversational implicature can be achieved

by failing to fuffil the maxims (violate a maxim,
opt out, clash between maxims, flouting) under
these categories. A hearer will repair the failure
by finding an implication that wiIl restore the
cooperative principle, i.e. make sense of the
implication. (He said that p; he is following the
maxims of the co-operative principle; he could
not have said that unless he thought that q; he
knows that I will recognise that he thinks that q
is required; so he has implicated that q.).
Example:
A: How is X getting on in his new job?
B: Oh, quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues and he has not been to prison
yet. (Grice, 1989, p. 24)
Here B fails to fulfil the maxims of Quantity
by providing more information than requested.
A will have to work out the implications.
One of the points with Grices Cooperative
Principle is that it gives illustration, in an intuitively satisfying way, to the work participants in
conversations do to bridge gaps and rectify failures in conversational cooperation. To accomplish something similar the analyst will require
context information
as well as participants
help in arriving at conclusions. Research into
conversational implicature must therefore work
with data collection on at least two levels, the
conversation itself and the context relevant for
uncovering the implications.
Figure 1 illustrates a conception of communication in two dimensions. We have now dealt,
admittedly briefly, with the horizontal axis.
The content of the message is given meaning
when placed in context. This is done by sender
and receiver, who may have different experien-

Sender
Context

Content
+
Receiver
Fig. 1. The factors

of communication.

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417

tial backgrounds. Complexity arises because of

these differences. Not only are experiences
themselves different, but they may have generated different kinds of structural and institutional
frames for sensemaking. Institutions like trust
and commitment, roles and teams can serve as
reducers of complexity, because they enhance
the use of codes (Bruners (1990) paradigmatic
cognition.).
However, communication
across
institutional boundaries may require extra efforts
to translate the relevant institutional contexts.
The next step is to consider the institution
building aspects of managerial conversation.

BIJILDING INSTITIJTIONS
Complexity arises from the fact that information emerges as the receiver interprets the
message. The sender may have an intended
meaning with the message, e.g. to arouse a certam pattern of behaviour in the receiver. But
the extent to which that intention is realised is
largely dependent
upon what meaning the
receiver ascribes to the message (if the message
is at all noticed in the noise of everyday urgencies). This emergent view of information
(Moore & Carling, 1982) is crucial for the analysis if narratives constitute a significant part of
the conversation. If sender and receiver have
developed mutually understood codes in earlier
interaction they may have little difficulty in
reaching similar or the same interpretation of
the content of the message. In this paradigmatic
mode (Bruner. 1990) the content of the message is a matter of coding and decoding (plus
channel capacity). Information may be said to
be contained in the message (Moore & Carling,
l982)the container view. This case is,
however, of less interest in a managerial perspective because it illustrates programmed
control (Simons, 1990) where codes are used
in a more or less technical communication.
More interesting here are situations where
members of managerial teams are assumed to
have different
experiential
bases for their
interpretive work or where there is communication between teams. Then it is likely that the

S. JiiNSSON

418

same message is attributed different content by

different participants. Variability in interpretation must be assumed to be the normal situation in communication
between communities
of knowing (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995).
The fact that sincere interpreters can arrive at
different understandings of the same message
brings out the issue of truth. How can it be
determined that the story contained in the
message is true? Most of the time we cannot be
sure. We have to rely on trust. Even if it
could be determined that the story was untrue
it could be persuasive. The story could have
internal consistency and reveal a connection
between variables that is interesting, or it may
provide the basis for a useful concept. Such
generation of relations, concepts, or models of
interpretation
which seem useful in understanding other situations have a value. They
contribute to the language of organizational
interpretation.
Such stories are instrumental in
generating language which extends vocabularies. The meaningfulness of them consists of
their making sense. The truth concept of
pragmatism (lames, 1974; Mead, 1934) comes
to mind. If it works in your experience, if you
are ready to act on this new insight after having
been frustrated, the information has truth value
in a pragmatic sense. Provisional truths may be
tested through conversation (Do you see what
I see?) and through action. If action fails data
will be reconsidered, but if it succeeds, this
experiential confirmation will constitute learning and the portfolio of practices or the interpretive repertoire (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984;
Potter & Wetherell, 1987) may expand. Repeated successful action will prime the interpretive patterns (Wilson, 1980) of actors and
teams so that they will be more likely to be
evoked in similar situations. In time custom and
even culture are formed.

BUILDING BLOCKS OF MANAGERIAL

INSTITUTIONS
A significant difference between managerial
behaviour and the behaviour assumed in markets

is that managers wiIl meet their partners in discourse repeatedly and thus have an interest in
building relations which will facilitate future
communication. Such effects will emerge if the
manager behaves consistently. Other members
of the organisation will then be able to see the
implications of communicated messages.
Rule -following
According to Wittgenstein (1953) and Winch
(1958) meaningful behaviour must meet two
criteria:
1. the actor must be able to give a reason
(account) for an action, and
2. the actor must be bound by the act now
to do something consistent with that act
in the future.
When these two criteria are met the actors
behaviour may be said to have a sense.
The first criterion means that the actor must
be capable of providing a justification or an
account for the act. The actor will usually not
have to specify all the alternative acts that were
at hand, but it is obviously necessary to show
that there was a choice (at least to avoid action)
and the reason for the actual choice. (If there
was no choice there is no initiating actor and
no responsibility.) The reason does not have to
be true but it must be recognisable as a reason
and it must not be incompatible with other
information about the situation.
The second criterion establishes the rule-following or commitment aspect of action. As the
actor makes public the reason for the act he or
she also announces an intention to behave
accordingly in the future. A principle has been
applied that is elevated to be a rule in the
repertoire of rules that generates the behavioural pattern that in turn constitutes identity.
Hereby accountability is established. The actor
declares a willingness to be held accountable
for this and consequent acts. This giving of reasons for acts constitutes explanation to the
environment. As such, it has to be geared to the
conceptual framework (paradigmatic meaning)
or constitute a self-contained story (narrative
meaning). The environment
will signal its

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expectancy of an explanation by holding the

actor responsible for this and future acts. Competent rule-following
will lead to increased
trust and a granting of a status of self-management, i.e. to be allowed to handle sensitive
matters and warranty relations without interference from other members of the group.
This is akin to being considered Mundig (in
German), which means having the right to sign
contracts, and being bound by ones word.
Rules of the game
When a person understands the reasons for
the acts of others and expects them to be
bound by their commitment to behave consistently in the future he or she may act confidently and effectively because of the trust in
the rules of the game. Garfinkel (1963) illustrates a conception of trust via a description of
games. The basic rules of a game involve framing a set of moves which the player has to
choose from, which the player expects to be
binding for him as well as other players, with
the player expecting other players to expect
the same thing in return. This gives rise to the
constitutive expectancies of the game. Trust is
then defined as constituting a situation where
individuals in their interpersonal relations are
governed by constitutive expectancies.
When trust is breached, e.g. by actor moves
that violate the rules of the game, Garfinkel
(I 963) found that individuals engaged in vigorous efforts to normalise
the situation, i.e.
return it to the original constituent expectancies. He also found that persons who tried to
retain the original rules of the game were more
frustrated in their normalising efforts than persons who were willing to redefine the game.
This indicates that the rules of the game have
strong normative power. Wieder (1974) extracted maxims from interviews with inmates in
a half-way house for reformed drug addicts that
seemed to guide behaviour. He could then
demonstrate how these maxims were used to
regulate conversation. One of the maxims, in
fact the primary one, was Above all do not
snitch. When Wieder had a friendly conversation with an inmate it was sometimes abruptly

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stopped by the inmate saying you know 1

wont snitch. Analysing what this utterance
achieved, Wieder found that it (1) defined what
Weider had just said as a request to snitch
which allowed the inmate not to answer. It
would have been illegitimate for an insider to
answer. It also (2) served to confirm that
Wieder was an outsider and not a friend. If
Wieder would have continued his line of questioning he would risk being seen as an incompetent, as someone who does not understand
the Code.
Roles of the game
When an actor meets constituent expectancies and engages in meaningful behaviour,
every act, consistent with the expectations,
serves as confirmation of a role in the game.
Consistency in behaviour provides a stable
basis for other actors rational calculation and
efficient response and binds the actor further to
role consistency.
In sociology there has long been a clash
between two approaches to role theory, structuralist and interactionist. Structuralists see the
role concept as a set of social norms constituting a part of the culture that influences actors
in a given situation (Turner, 1985). Society in
principle is a system of social norms and behaviour is an expression of how well the individual has intemalised and adapted to these
norms, Critics of this view ask how were these
norms established in the first place and how did
they achieve a status independent of the role?
The symbolic-interactive
view sees the role
concept in more of a communicative light. The
role has a character of a relation and the individual assumes and forms the role in interaction
with the environment.
The communicative
capacity of humans makes it possible for them
to see a situation not only from their own perspective-not
even only in alters perspective-but
also from a third position and see the
interaction between ego and alter from
the outside, objectively as it were. This interactive ability rends behaviour meaningful, i.e. the
ability to foresee the reactions of others to own
behaviour. Role expectations are mutual and

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situation specific. The role is formed in interaction on specific problems.

The fundamental difference between these
two views-the
role given by the expectations
of the environment (with role conflicts if the
individual is unable to meet them) on the one
side and the role emerging and changing in
communicative interaction in a situation on the
other side-may
not be as fundamental as it
once seemed. Turner (1985) sees convergence
between the views over the last decade. The
differences seem to have been inspired by the
different modes of data collection and analysis
that the two schools have practised. In both
cases it seems reasonable to assume that rule
following is a generator of roles. When people
assume roles they certainly put limitations on
their repertoire of behaviour, but they also
become more predictable and they may reduce
complexity (Wildavsky, 1975).
Teams
A set of mutually constituted roles is a team.
The members of a team establish a division of
labour and constituent expectancies in an inner
dialogue (Ionsson, 1992) in which a unit is
chiefly concerned with translation from narrative meanings to paradigmatic ones, i.e. from
stories to principles. Bruner (1990) maintains
that there are two modes of cognition, the
paradigmatic and the narrative. The paradigmatic mode starts from definitions, models and
deductive logic and provides a rational analysis
inside a problem frame. Data become meaningful by being processed through a model. A
technology
is applied to the data. The narrative mode builds on our capacity to make sense
of our experience by narrativising it, tell a story,
put it into script as it were. The narrative
gets its meaning from the internal coniiguration. The narrative is good and worth remembering if it is exciting, plausible and persuasive.
Paradigmatic information is acceptable if it is
logical, noncontradictory
and consistent. The
narrative is social and it is through narrative
that we build and maintain culture and praxis.
When the narrative is established well enough
to be taken for granted it has been conceptua-

lised into the paradigm or integrated in background context.

This translation work gives members of the
group opportunities to build trust and professional competence
in experiential
learning
cycles (Kolb, 1984) and it builds on the giving
of accounts. A competent person must be able
to account for what happened. It is part of the
definition of competence. You should always
know what you are doing and why. If you are
competent then you are responsible for the
consequences of your actions.
Everyday life is built around giving accounts
(Garfinkel, 1967). The network of social life is
constituted and maintained by story-telling, or
accounts (explanations) of things that seemed
to have no meaning before. Once we are given
the account that bridges between that which
we already take for granted and that which
seemed odd we can extend the area of normality yet another inch. Inside the constituting
network of the social we can then use the
paradigmatic for effective communication
in
coded messages. Management accounting is
such a paradigmatic code used by responsible,
competent persons who manage resources and
personnel over which they are granted jurisdiction by others. The technical has its own rules
of communication.
By applying them properly
membership in the class of responsible team
members can be maintained (Munro, 1994).
When there is error, when there is a variation
from budget or some other expected performance target, an explanation is in order. Typically we use a story of some kind. If we say It
was due to the fluctuating currency situation
that may be an acceptable explanation, but if
we say the deviation from budget is due to my
wife being seriously ill (I cannot concentrate
on my job) it will probably not be accepted as a
legitimate explanation. At best we might get
away with Dont let it happen again! (Which
means that we lose part of the trust that was
put in us.) The manager receiving our explanation may feel sympathy with our problem, but
the role of principal does not allow exceptions
from the rules of the game. Membership
puts limits to what kind of narratives we may

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allow ourselves as explanations

to error
(Munro, 1994).
Membership work thus amounts to giving
accounts for our activities and developing routines for doing so. In this way routines become
the constituents
of social order (Giddens,
1984). But routines are also there to keep
things apart. Not to mix up company time with
personal time, company money with private
money and admissible accounts with inadmissible ones. A constant labour of division goes on
and part of membership work is to keep a clear
distinction between what is in and what is
out. This requires attention to the rules of
the game by members: The activities whereby
members produce and manage settings of organised everyday affairs are identical with members procedures for making those settings
account-able (Gartinkel, 1967, p. 1.).
Between teams-discourse
Communication
between teams is complicated. Interaction between teams is less frequent
than in the inner dialogue of teams and it is
more abstract in the sense that it rarely takes
place in the presence of the work process.
Communication typically takes place in a meeting between representatives of the involved
teams. If teams develop special expertise,
which might be the main purpose of a decentralisation but also a consequence of evermore
differentiated
technology,
they may also
become intolerant towards information, advice,
orders, intervention from other groups. If teams
have developed a role in a large unit it will be
expected to behave consistently with that role
and may need to negotiate contracts
to
change that role. It is also likely that the same
data will be interpreted differently by different
communities of knowing due to the different
experiential basis for the interpretation.
Then
narratives will be used in reaching an understanding. But a precondition
for reaching an
understanding is that the conversation develops
as a co-operative game.
There are two, possibly alternative, approaches to the tools people use to make sense of the
world which are of interest here; Moscovicis

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theory of social representations

(Moscovici,
1984; Moscovici & Doise, 1994) and the conception of interpretive repertoires (Potter &
Wetherell, 1987; Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984).
Social representations are mental schemata
with abstract as well as concrete elementsconcepts and images. In most representations
concrete images are most important in which
case the representation is built up around a
figurative nucleus. These social representations are assumed to underpin attributions or
the causal explanations people give for events
(Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 140). The representations are social because they originate
in the course of social interaction and because
they provide an agreed code for communication. Moscovici also claims that social representations are social because they serve to
homogenise and unify groups. Since they pro
vide a conventional code of communication
and are used in the sense-making process, all
who share a representation will agree in their
sense making. The members of a group share
representations and therefore representations
can be used to identify a group. (This is a problematic statement that we will come back to.)
Social representations have a constructive
effect. When a group makes sense of the world,
it is constructed in terms of social representations. Two mechanisms are proposed for how
people cope with new experiences-anchoring
and objectification. First, anchoring is used to
assign the new object to an element or category
in an earlier representation,
then the new
object is transformed into a concrete, pictorial
element of the representation to which it is
anchored, and the new version of the representation is diffused in conversation.
Potter and Wetherell (1987, pp. 142 ff.)
challenge this theory of social representation
(referring to their own research and that of colleagues) and the thrust of the critique is directed
towards the assumption that the community of
representations establishes group identity. This
assumption is problematic becauseit creates a
vicious circle of identifying groups through
representations
and representations
through
groups. There are also empirical problems

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S. JiiNSSON

connected with the use of representations in

the sense that a representation could be used in
explanations or merely mentioned (the left
wing press have claimed that the riot was
caused by poor housing, but...). It is also possible to distinguish between use in theory
(general formulation) and use in practical situations. Finally there is the issue of social representations
being
cognitive
or linguistic.
Moscovici seems to view them as cognitive
phenomena. Researchers are then faced with
the problem of constructing a neutral record on
the basis of secondary phenomena. How could
one recognise an instance of anchoring in the
interview transcript?
To remedy some of these problems Potter
and Wetherell offer the notion of interpretive
repertoire which has been developed in collaboration with several colleagues in empirical
discourse analysis. The point of their offer is
that they focus on how members cope with
accounts in interaction-discourse
in context-rather
than on cognitive aspects-what
lies behind. A study by Gilbert and Mulkay
(1984) is used to illustrate this phenomenon.
After identifying a group of biochemists in
the U.K. and U.S.A. who worked in the same
area Gilbert and Mulkay collected publications
of respondents
and conducted
interviews
where accounts of biochemical research work
were elicited. There were two competing theories in this prestigious area and adherents to
both were represented in the network of 34 of
the most productive biochemists. But there
were also two modes of accounting for scientific work. The formal one of scientific writing,
and the informal one of interviews, seemed
to generate different accounts of the same
action. In a scientific article it was the results
(of standard experimental work) that suggested
the model, but in the interview it was the
model (a dramatic revelation) which suggested
the results. On the basis of numerous differences in accounts Gilbert and Mulkay arrived at
the conclusion that there exist two broad interpretive repertoires that explain the differences
in accounts. These were labelled the empiricist and contingent
repertoires, respec-

tively. Interpretive repertoires are recurrently

used systems of terms used for characterising
and evaluating actions, events and phenomena
(Potter & Wetherell 1987, p. 149). The basic
principle in the empiricist repertoire is that
actions and beliefs are a neutral medium
through which empirical phenomena
make
themselves felt. The scientist is forced by the
observations and professional rules to take
actions (accept a hypothesis). In the contingent
repertoire, the basic principle is that actions
and beliefs are crucially infhtenced by factors
other than the empirical phenomena. The scientists used both. They used the empiricist
repertoire to warrant their beliefs by referring
to how experimental
evidence and correct
application of the rules of scientific work prevented them from having any other beliefs.
Given the obligations of the empiricist repertoire scientists can make no mistakes. When an
error occurs scientists use the contingent
repertoire to explain. The contents of the contingent repertoire were more varied than the
empiricist one. Subjective elements were included like prejudice, narrow disciplinary perspective, threat to status, lacking experimental
skill, personal rivalry etc. When all the accounts
of these researchers were combined virtually
everyone in the network
had their work
explained away by at least one other scientist.
Gilbert and Mulkay found that researchers used
asymmetrical patterns in explaining right and
wrong
beliefs. The empiricist repertoirefacts arise naturally from empirical findingswas used to explain right beliefs (other scientists regularly seem to get them wrong), and
the contingent repertoire-provided
a package
of non-scientific resources for explaining error
(Potter & Wetherell, 1987, pp. 152f.).
Scientists manage to live with this asymmetry
in accounts of scientific work by using the
truth-will-out-device.
Even if the progress of
science is sometimes retarded by personality
problems and power struggles, the truth will
win in the end through experimental evidence.
This rhetorical
device serves to reconcile
potential
contradictions
between
the two
repertoires, but it also re-establishes the primacy

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of the empiricist repertoire, which may be its

main contribution.
Potter and Wetherell seem to perceive these
two approaches as exclusive alternatives, but
surely they are quite compatible. Moscovicis
main thesis is that of group polarisation
(Moscovici & Doise, 1994),
which means that
collective decisions in groups tend toward radical positions and members retain the groups
position after such an occasion of consensus
building. If, however, restrictions are laid on
the groups discussion, for instance in the form
of an agenda or a time schedule, the group will
tend towards compromise and group members
will not retain the opinion expressed by the
groups compromise decision. If this aspect is
added to the account of the social representation approach given above, compatibility may
be posited. The ontology related to social
representation
will be valid for the inner
dialogue of teams and that related to interpretive repertoires will be valid for teams outer
dialogues. Of course, there is a need for teams
to have a contingent repertoire to make sense
of unexpected situations, but the social institutions of the team will build on common
representations.
When, however, the team
communicates with other teams there is an
obvious need for more than one interpretive
repertoire to make sense of the actions of the
other team. Such translational vocabularies may
be primitive and based on stereotypes initially,
but they will develop as interaction with the
other team develops. Some terms may find their
way into the teams own repertoire.
Clearly, it has been demonstrated that also
the vertical relation in Fig. 1 (between Sender
and Receiver) is a complex one. The next problem is to probe into how communication
in
managerial work can be observed and analysed.

THE EMPIRICAL BASIS FOR THE ANALYSIS

OF COMMUNICATION
IN MANAGERIAL
WORK
Conversational analysis is often criticised for
being merely interpretive and not replicable.

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Alternative interpretations
of the same text
are possible and therefore interpretations are
subjective. Counter arguments are that the conversational analyst does not simply interpret or
read the text, but examines participants actions
and achievements in context and through the
structure of the conversation. Furthermore the
conversational analyst works with recorded facts
(the recorded conversation did in fact take place,
and may be assumed to be sincere since in the
company of peers it is not possible to uphold playacting for any period of time). The empirical evidence is available for others to analyse to a larger
extent than most other methods. The conversational analyst does not refer to speculative
assumptions about mental states (like attitudes,
rational expectations, preference orders, or utiles)
in drdwing his or her conclusions. Buttny (1993)
develops a conversation analytic constructionist
perspective which seems suitable for further
development of tools for analysing managerial
conversation and how it accomplishes changes in
pracrices. Drawing an analogy between the role of
the tape recorder in the study of social interaction
to that of the microscope in biology, he points out
the opportunity to reveal features which are
commonly seen but unnoticed during actual conversation through
repeated observation
of
sequences (pp. 56f).
In the following section an illustrative case is
presented of how analysis of conversation in
context could be used to gain insight into the
development
of accountability
and management accounting in an organisation.

SETTING RIJLES FOR INTERNAL RENTS

The conversation about to be analysed is a
sequence in the early part of a videotaped
meeting of the top management group of one
of the down town municipal districts in one of
the major cities in Sweden. The background to
the study was that the City had decided to
reform its organizational structure in 1989. In
the reform decision was included a contract
with the IJniversity to evaluate the reform over
a five-year period. This gave rise to a very large,

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S. JBNSSON

multidisciplinary
research project from 1990
onwards.
The new organisation meant that the city,
which was previously organised in large functional departments (Social, School, Culture, Leisure were involved in the reform), was now
divided into 21 districts, each with their own
political executive committee.
Some of the
catchwords used to describe the objectives of
the reform were improved democracy and
effectiveness, local solutions, integration, and
service. Each district has a district manager but
the middle management levels were organised
differently. Some districts used a geographical
subdistrict division, charging subdistrict managers with the task of finding local solutions to
the integration of activities that were formerly
managed by different functional departments,
like between schools and kindergartens. Others
maintained
a functional
structure
on the
district level and others again used target
groups, like Children and Youth or the
Elderly, to organise for integration.
The problem with the reform was that a very
severe economic crisis struck the Swedish
economy at the time the reform was launched.
The City quickly found itself in financial difliculties due to the fact that significant parts of
the welfare system are managed by municipalities and unemployment reached levels that had
been unheard of since the 1930s. The newly
formed districts came under orders to cut their
budgets drastically before they had a chance to
organise properly. By 1993 the best managed
districts had emerged from a very turbulent period with their finances in order and an organizational structure that might have to be pruned
further because new cuts were to be expected.
The research team which has done the video
taping of the meeting focused their interest on
the role of the district managers in the reform
process. Annual interviews had been conducted with the 21 managers and measures of their
conceptions of effectiveness etc., made. Large
repeated survey studies of citizens, politicians,
professional groups and personnel provided
background. To be able to study the city manager at work, the research team was given per-

mission to videotape meetings of the top

management group in a well managed district.
In preparation for the interpretive work, all
eleven members of the group had been subjected to interviews on two topics; the (four-year)
history of the district organisation and the group,
and the roles of members in the group. Further
background knowledge was based on the extensive studies of the districts over the previous
years (Jonsson & Solli, 1994) and studies of the
budgetary process of the city some 15 years
earlier (Ionsson, 1982).
Since there were eleven members of the top
management group we had 10 descriptions of
each member. They were remarkably similar.
For the purpose of this analysis we may note
that the leader, A, was seen as dynamic and
driving. There were also four female subdistrict
managers described as talkative and sometimes referred to as the four sisters. It should
be noted that the participants have considerable experience of management groups in the
old, functional organisation. One of the advantages with the current group in comparison
with the earlier functionally organised ones,
was said to be that if you are a subdistrict
manager and you bring up a problem there will
be three other subdistrict
managers who
recognise the problem and can contribute. In
the functionally
organised groups of earlier
experience everybody was a specialist and
meetings (except budget meetings) would tend
to be a sequence of dialogues between functional specialists and the boss. It was only natural that the four subdistrict managers form an
active subgroup. We called them the activists. G, the opposition,
is a committed
social worker in charge of the Drugs and
Prostitution Department. He speaks his mind
and is likely to be the one to interfere when the
group gets talkative and flimsy. A breath of
fresh air! as somebody described him. Other
persons in the group are the controller, B, a
quiet and able person who usually sits to the
left of the leader A. The other members, some
of whom are generally less active and called
the peripherals by us, are not active in the
sequence that follows.

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The group functioned

well together and
nembers were proud of its achievements. It
neets every fortnight to discuss and settle polcy matters and rules of the game. It is implicitly
understood that these meetings are not for
natters concerning
individual departments.
The whole district employs a little more than
2,000 people, with social services and schools
dominating.
The method of data collection beside the
preparatory interviews and the access to all
documents was to videotape whole meetings.
The videotape was then transcribed and the
conversation was analysed in terms of utterances, overlapping talk etc. From the video of the
meeting seven sequences of about one to two
minutes each were edited to a separate tape.
This tape of sequences was then replayed, individually to each group member for comments.
For each sequence, the respondent were asked
to explain what goes on here? These postmeeting interviews we have called self-confrontation interviews because part of the task
for the respondent was to interpret her or his
own performance. In all, we thus have 11 selfconfrontation
interpretations
of each of the
sequences.
The following sequence is the first on the
edited tape. The first item on the agenda was
Rents to charge when letting premises. The
district has a lot of different rooms, from gyms
and kitchens to conference rooms, that are not
used for municipal activities all the time. What
rent should be charged when letting those premises? An officer had investigated and pro
duced a memo that was presented to the group.
The presenter had been interrupted by questions and discussion several times. A crucial
question that turned the discussion towards
internal rents was Who gets the revenue?
posed by one of the peripherals who did not
participate in the following sequence. Somebody had introduced the example that a certain
school (the Gustavi School) rented the gym from
another school and would have to pay rent
from their operating budget while the receiving
school did not have the cost for the gym in its
budget. Budget responsibility at this time did not

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include rent, i.e. cost for premises was a central

responsibility. Charging the Gustavi School rent
for the gym would be sheer profit and no costs
for the receiving school! On the other hand,
responsibility should include all costs.

THE TEXT
Video-taped 1993-05-06, Sequence 13.06.30 13.09.10. (Summary on internal rents after a
lengthy presentation of a memo on the proposed changes in the ground rules for charging
rents.)
Personage:
A = the leader
B = the controller
G = the opposition
C ,D, I = activists.
X = persons unidentified by the transcriber,
[2 take it 12 = indication of overlapping talk
(...> = indicates words that cannot be heard,
usually because people are talking at the same
time.
A:

B:
@
G:
c:

We will, [I we could] 1 start from how we

basically treat premises, son of, and
there the rule is that rents, base rents, are
decoupled
from
budget
responsibility . ehhh...and if we then take...ehhh...
this case with the school then, we do in
fact pay full
ehhh
base rent, sort of
independently of how it . ..ehhh... adds up
in the Burred school or the Guldheden
school. It is then reasonable that we pay
full base rent, that is the rent for the gym
of the Gustavi school as well, huh. You
can argue that one should, sort of, start
from that which is the ...ehhh...base premises for the activity. Then we could
charge internal prices for the rest which
are transactions. In that way...that would
be a way to....

11 yahll
There is a silence for a long while.
ehhh...I am not sure that I understand, but...
no, me neither

426

I:
D:
A:

D:
A:
B:
I:
A:

I:
G:
A:

I:
x:
X:
G:
A:
I:
G:
I:

S. JiiNSSON

no [2 take it]2 once more

P WI2
Well...ehhh...the basic rent for a premise
is outside budget responsibility.
That
means that for the Guldheden school WE
pay full rent for premises so to say also for
the gymnastics activities. If we then come
to the Gustavi school, one could say like
this.. .ehh.. .they would pay for.. .ehh the
gym and that would come out of the
operating budget.
m=
= and that [3 would be]3 inside budget
responsibility
[3 ml3
=m=
and then we would use a different budget
principle for the Gustavi school than we
have for the rest of the school activities...
that .. . and that is not reasonable
no
no, thats not why (...) I agree about that
but I am of the opinion
Therefore I am of the opinion that [4 in
this type of cases14 I believe that it is reasonable to argue [5 on this issue15 that...ehh...we do not use internal charges,
while we should do it in the rest of the
cases, where this does not apply.
[4 yes, it is]4
15 (...)I5
yes
I [6 think that]6
[6 Shall we 16 [7 si]7
[7 (...)I7 [8 (...>I8
[8 (but what the hell)]8 I think that it can
be a bit unfair (. ..) huh=
= yes there are many other examples like
this then where you find yourself [9puzzledl9. I have been thinking about many. I
could think of . .. in my office it would be
the same effect. When we want to have a
meeting at the office there is no room big
enough to [ 10 take] 10 us all. Will I then
have to pay every time I want to be
somewhere for a meeting.. . or doesnt one
have... to [ll others]11 so to say huh.
What I mean is that; it will be [ 12

x:
x:
x:
X:
X:
A:
I:
A:
D:
I:
D:

exactly] 12 the same stuff and there will be

an [13 awful113
(...I
19 (...>I
[lo (...)I10
[ll mhmlll
[12 mm 112
[13 mm 113
yes [14 we will take 114
[ 14 or is it ] 14 maybe, so hard to drive it
home, I dont know
D!
[15 ehhh 115
[ 15 yes ] 15 that is exactly what I think
I also think we should have a special rate
for senior citizens.

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

The first reason we cut out this 2 minutes 40
seconds from the meeting of four hours was the
long pause in the beginning where the picture
seemed to freeze. It produced a comic effect.
Then there was an outburst of demand for clarification with G, the Opposition, breaking the
silence. Then there is a much clearer summary
that focuses the problem illustrated by the
Gustavi School paying from its operating budget for using the Guldheden school gym which
was not responsible for the cost of premises in
the first place. The proposed principle is that
for planned regular use of premises there
should be no internal rent charges, but for the
rest, occasional use, as it were, which are called
transactions, there should be a charge. G has
something on his mind and tries to break in, but
never gets to the point of articulation of his
problem. Instead I, one of the activists, thinks
of another example. When she has a meeting
with her subdistrict management team there is
no room big enough in the office and she usually
holds the meetings in the neighbouring old age
home where they have a nice room. That would
mean the same kind of bureaucratic costs of
charging rents. Then A, the leader, breaks out
of the example giving exercise by giving the
word to D, who comments on the original memo

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on external rents and proposes that there

should be a special rate for senior citizens.
In terms of interaction in the group, A, the
leader, is the dominating actor. He seeks to
conclude a diversion on internal rents by analogy. He does not get it right and it is in accordance with Gs role that he breaks the silence
of confusion. A gives it another try by relating
the summary to the example in focus. Then I,
an activist, thinks about other examples and
the paper work it implies to have these
internal charges. A marks irritation by saying
yes (in English) and moves the meeting back
on track with the help of D. Actor behaviour
fits nicely into the roles group members have
assumed over time. (We are not told what it is
G is annoyed about, only that he thinks there is
unfairness hidden somewhere).
We gain further insights into what was going
on by examining the context of this exchange.
There was a memo that had been circulated to
participants the day before. In the meeting
there was a presentation of the main points of
that memo with questions, and there was the
innocent question by H ; Who gets the revenue? This question alerts the participants to
the added freedom of action (in a budget
straight jacket) that rent revenue would give.
Then comes the fairness question of the school
with the gym (Guldheden)
getting revenue
from the Gustavi School without
having
responsibility for the costs of the gym.
This point on the agenda, which was the first
one, ends with a decision to go to the council
with a formal memo to request a decision on a
price list for external rents. This is a rule of the
game-only
the council can decide on fees and
charges to outsiders. Revenues would go to the
activity centers, but if these grow exceptionally
there will be a review of the rules. There are
also a number of points in the meeting minutes
about further development of the internal rents
issue. The task is given to B, e.g. to devise
administrative
routines and the appropriate
changes to the accounting system. The matter
of rents is fragmented into 13 statements in the
minutes. The original issue was external rents
but the crux was the definition of territory and

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revenue-sharing.
The group discovers several
new problems by solving the original one. It is
not without consequences for internal relations
to behave more business-like towards outsiders!

WHAT DID (S)HE MEAN?

SELF-CONFRONTATION INTERVIEWS
The video tape containing this sequence
(together with six other sequences from the
meeting) was replayed to the participants in
individual interviews three (summer-) months
after the meeting. The structure of the interview was the following; each sequence was
dealt with separately and the opening question
concerning each sequence was What goes on
here? The follow up questions on the first
statement of interpretation
varied depending
on the specific circumstances that developed in
the interview. In the following only those
aspects of the interview that seem to add to the
interpretation of the sequence are touched upon.
B, the controller (a peripheral), gives additional perspective to the sequence. He says that
the reason for this becoming a bit complicated
is that the district managed to take only half the
step when they designed economic responsibilities in the beginning of the reform period.
There are rates for schools, child care, home
service etc. (making resource allocation automatic and based on volumes). When they did
this there was no time to work out rates for
localities. They had to keep premises a central cost responsibility. Now there was an
opportunity to take a further step towards more
economic
responsibility
for the
complete
profitcenters/activity
centers by including
costs for premises. B did not see the sequence
as complicated at first but, (R = researcher)
.
R:

B:

But participants did not seem to understand. A had to repeat before getting any
reaction.
Well, 1 do not see that as indicating that
people did not understand. We were in
agreement on this issue.

428

R:
B:

S. JiiNSSON

Why did he have to repeat then?

Well I suppose he wanted some kind of
response. The fact that I brings up (the
example of paying for a meeting room) is
for clarification.

B sees the incident as a natural continuation

in the design of financial responsibilities.
The leader, A, also is of the opinion that there
were no difficulties in understanding. This was
not a complicated issue. When asked why he
had to repeat then, he says, maybe members
had not done their homework properly. A was
better prepared. It is difficult to jump aboard
if you are not prepared. The fact that I brought
up the example with a meeting room is interpreted by A as a questioning
of the solution.
The researcher says, when you say yes that
means that you recognise the consequences of
the rule and you realise that there may be problems with it. A responds with maybe.
I , who brought up the case of the meeting
room, admits that she did not understand the
opening summary and she adds that it felt like
nobody really grasped what he was talking
about. When A repeated it was much clearer. It
sometimes happens to all of us that we do not
understand.
One cannot avoid the impression from the
self confrontation interview that I has not really
understood what the decision was. She understood the principles all right and she wants to
increase her responsibility area to include internal rents provided that there is money in the
budget for it, but what about further decentralisation to lower levels?
G, the opposition, interprets the sequence as:
G:
R:
G:
R:
G:
R:
G:

as usual A gives a long harangue.

Dont you understand what he says?
No not always, sometimes he speaks in a
way we dont understand.
And then everybody is quiet?
Yes it looks that way.
And then several people ask for clarification?
Yeah, there is something there that isnt
right! Sometimes I think that it is some

R:
G:

bloody tactics of his just to get a decision

through
He dominates a lot?
Yes he does, but we let him!

In this sequence one might criticise the

researcher for leading the respondent
on
improperly,
but on the other hand we can
judge that what G says is in line with his role
in the group. It is not likely that the researcher
would make him say things he did not mean
to say.
Among other participants that did not take
part in the exchange of the sequence we note
that the record keeper of the group (a peripheral) finds the matter easy to understand when
the summary is repeated. The same goes for
other participants. The example of the meeting
room brought up by I was to confirm that she
had understood and she got that confirmation.
On the matter of not understanding what goes
on the record keeper complains that her greatest trouble is that there often is no clear signal
that a decision has been taken. It might be like
this yes-statement
in the sequence-and
then you have to back up and try to interpret
what the decision was. She usually tests her
interpretations with the others and if A is available she will check with him. Sometimes it is
clear from the whole atmosphere of the meeting which way the group wants to go but it is
still difhcult to formulate the decision. The
group has discussed how to be clearer about
decisions and there has been improvement. As
record keeper and information officer, she cannot dose off like some of the others do sometimes, but she likes being well informed and
keeps alert through the meetings.

ANALYSIS
The purpose of this analysis will be to identify two meaning generators uncovered by this
approach to managerial work; the concrete
case and the recipe. The first relates meaning to
context, the second illustrates meaning related
to role.

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The concrete

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case

The centre piece of this sequence is the role

of the concrete case of the Gustavi School paying
internal rents for using the gym of the Guldheden School, should the proposed principle for
internal rents be implemented inside the current responsibility system. On the basis of this
case a first general principle is (not very cleari)
it seems) formulated. A second version of the
general formulation is clearer. This could be the
end of the matter, because the original issue
was external rents, but now a second candidate
for concrete illustration is introduced by I. This
is the case of regular but less frequent use of
premises belonging to an activity centre and it
is a higher organisational level (the sub district)
using the premises of an activity centre. The
matter of internal rents is much more complicated than asking the council to confirm rates
for external rents! It has to be investigated further and it cannot be solved here at the table
today since it involves budget allocations as
well as principles for what is to be considered a
transaction between responsibility centres. A
cuts the discussion short and moves the meeting
back to the agenda, already set on a decision to
give somebody the task to prepare a memo on
principles for internal rents. What is established
in the sequence is a concrete case to be used as
touch stone in formulating the rules for internal
rents. The pronounced fairness criterion is that
there should be a match between cost responsibility and budget allocation. The alternate
candidate for test case, the meeting room, is
cut short by yes, meaning that the rule would
be generally applicable but this is not the time
to come up with a lot of tricky cases.
One might interpret the work by the group
as one of building a social representation of the
system of rules for internal rents, with a concrete case with a narrative appeal as the centre
element. It should be noted that in order to
understand the implications of the Gustavi
School example one has to use cues in the
meeting text outside the analysed sequence.
A further contextual aspect was that the tit,
had carried out a sale-lease back deal with a
financial institution for a large part of the

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42)

municipal buildings (including most schools)

the year before. This had lead to higher market based rents, and the cost of premises had
become a problem which had to be dealt with.
The district needed to find new revenue as well
as reducing floor space.
The recipe

A further approach to the sequence could

take as its point of departure the controllers
statement that this was not a complicated
issue, just a natural continued application of a
successful recipe. The recipe to take the district
through the difficult years of cost cutting was
to decentralist economic responsibility based
on clear rules of the game. Rates had been
calculated for many activities establishing a
transparent
relation between
volumes and
resources. Managers of responsibility centres
are able to calculate the consequences of their
actions. The reason why the costs of premises
were not included earlier was that the district
did not have all of its floor space at its disposal
all the time. The school byrns, for example.
were let to the central Leisure department on a
long term lease to allocate between sports
clubs etc. Therefore a proper cost allocation
would have to be preceded by a cost driver
study. The rent contracted with the Leisure
department could also be questioned on the
basis of such a study, and priority for local clubs
could be bargained for. However, the district
did not have personnel for such a study and the
matter of allocating responsibility for the cost
of localities was left for later. Now the time had
come to make the study and to include the cost
for premises (which accounted for 17% of the
districts budget) in the activity rates. Then cost
centre managers would be induced to reduce
floor space m,ithout extra pressure from top
management. The recipe which had worked
well in reducing costs for personnel and
direct costs would work with premises as well.
For the controller it was meaningful and natural
to take this last step in perfecting the system
of decentralised responsibility. It should be
noted that this cue is discovered through the
self-confrontation
interviews and it is only

430

S. JiiNSSON

appropriate that B behaving in accordance with

his role provided the clue for this meaning
generator which is role dependent.
Generating meaning
There seem to be at least two meaning generators at work in the group, one is the concrete case of the Gustavi School which is used
by members to test implications of proposed
rules, the other is the recipe which is used by
the controller and the leader to put the internal
rent issue in frame. One makes sense in terms
of a social representation, the other in terms of
the vocabulary of an interpretive repertoire. We
can expect the narrative to appear early in
sense making processes and the vocabulary
later. Accounting rules or responsibility specitication can serve a bridging function, connecting
the narrative with the vocabulary. A concrete
case can be narrated and seen as application of
the recipe. The recipe works by being able to
accommodate the concrete case. A recipe has
the instrumental characteristic that it links rules
to ends. The concrete case has the narrative
characteristic
which makes it possible to
manipulate the configuration of rules and see
the implications, Both provide context to the
internal rent issue. B, the controller, already has
the vocabulary because of his role. He sees the
concrete case as an opportunity to enlarge the
area of application of the recipe.
After some further investigation of how the
rules of the game should be designed and
applied, the top management team will be able
to integrate cost of premises into a joint social
representation of managerial responsibility and
accountability. As to the provision of added
vocabulary
to interpretive
repertoires
the
recipe has the potential, being instrumental in
character, to provide arguments in terms of
(central austerity) goals and thus can serve in
communication
with the corporate level. The
concrete case can serve to demonstrate the
fairness of the new rules to activity centre heads.
In both cases the communication will focus on
giving meaning to management
accounting
rules in spe. The context will determine which
meaning generator is appropriate.

DISCUSSION
This analysis of managerial conversation in a
well functioning team illustrates how the same
text offers different readings depending on the
approach. The use of a concrete case to establish meaning is illustrated by the use of the
Gustavi School image as a touching stone (and
the irritation over a competing case). This
reading relates to the horizontal axis in Fig. 1
(Message - Context). The other reading sets the
problem of internal rents in relation to the
recipe of managing finances through decentralisation, subject to clear rules. This reading
relates to the vertical axis in Fig. 1 (Sender Receiver) and the role of the interlocutor B,
who in his role as controller understands the
situation in terms of further development of the
management control system through the added
specification of responsibility. Both readings
make sense and are based in the recorded conversation and the interpretations done in selfconfrontation
interviews (Participants seeing
the sequence replayed and commenting
on
what goes on).
The epistemological status of these interpretations remains a problem. Clearly we have not
analysed the conversation as such to extract
recurrently used systems of terms . ..used in
particular stylistic and grammatical constructions. organised around specific metaphors
and figures of speech (Potter & Wetherell,
1987, p. 149) which is how interpretive repertoires are described. Instead we have used
the transcripts and interviews to detect cues
(Potter & Wetherell, 1987, pp. 138ff) and then
searched the context of the conversation and
member roles for further building material. It
might be ventured that this one case is too
specific and narrow to allow any general conclusion. Still management typically is conducted in specific situations. In the Gilbert and
Mulkay (1984) study, 34 scientists were interviewed and in that material, cues pointing
towards the two repertoires at work appeared
repeatedly. In this case further studies of
meetings dealing with costs of premises and
activity centre budgets can provide evidence of

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patterns in conversations and indicators of

interpretive repertoires being used.
To ascertain evidence of social representations seems more time dependent. The concrete
case serves the team as an anchor for the formation of a touch stone in the deliberations on
what rules are appropriate, but it is likely that
the Gustavi School will be useful (be a case in
point)
for this purpose only temporarily.
Evidence collected then and there will be relevant for analysis, but as the team moves on
towards more elaborate articulations of the
rules of the game other cases will be likely to
serve the function of social representations
even if the item on the agenda still is Internal
rents.
The ontological status of the two meaning
generators can be supported by references to
relevant literature. The narrative character of
the concrete case offers associative links in
analogue descriptions of cases. The discussion
in the meeting started to generate alternative
cases (which the leader found premature and
cut short). The concrete case allows the testing of how a principle would work (relate
to the pragmatic truth concept (James, 1974;
Baldwin, 1986)). Thinking through the consequences presupposes that the thinker has a
thick description of the case. Controlling
what case is used for this touchstone purpose
will make it possible to control the outcome of
such contemplation.
Narratives have great
power in normative discourse (Bruner, 1990).
The recipe is experiential (Kolb, 1984) in the
sense that it accounts for a behavioural pattern,
and instrumental in the sense that it summarises confirmed (successful) action. A recipe has
a history and the specific associative link to
consider here is the question of whether the
definition of the current situation is similar
enough (fits) to the experience condensed in
the recipe. The recipe also has a teleological
end. It informs us about what to do to achieve
certain ends-what
it is good for. Learning to
apply the recipe includes experience of earlier
applications as well as ability to determine a
diagnosis of what immediate objectives have
priority now.

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131

SO WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO ALIGN

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH
WITH THE WORK OF MANAGERS?
The main consequence of orienting management accounting research towards the information managers use when they manage would be
a focus on communication. This would alert us
to the ontological aspects of the subject.
Instead of assuming that management accounting information
goes directly into decision
making models of some kind, we would have to
assume that it comes to use in varying communicative contexts. When Simon et al. (1954)
talk about the attention directing function of
accounting
information
they
mean that
accounting information may serve as an indicator that something
is wrong. It is then
necessary for the user to identitji relevant
cause-effect relations, before a link between
accounting and control can be established.
Hedberg and Jiinsson (1978) advanced the idea
that semi-confusing
information could serve
the function of alerting managers to the need to
investigate what cause-effect mechanisms were
at play. The case presented above is intended to
illustrate the role of communication
in such a
focusing of attention. Simon et al. (1954) also
mention problem solving as a context for the
use of accounting information. In such a context we would expect to see efforts to connect
recipes and concrete situations in social construction work. What are the chances t.hat participants from different levels will talk about
the same thing in such situations? If not would
we not need to develop a procedure for the
analysis of many valued logic (i.e. implications
of the type X is a manifestation of Y, Y is an
attribution by B)? Are social representations
temporary but interpretive repertoires more
stable in the team and how is accounting data
implicated?
The assumptions of rationality and opportunism, implicit in most decision making models,
are sometimes criticised as not descriptive of
real humans. If research attention is focused on
managerial communication this may no longer
be an issue. The question of rationality will be

S. J6NSSON

432

an empirical one. The observational data may

support a rational model or it might be the case
that some other model makes better sense of
the observations. In both cases it is possible to
conduct a constructive debate on the merits of
theoretical statements against the background
of empirical observation. This brings us back to
the epistemological
aspects of the kind of
observation of managerial work exemplified in
the case above.

THIS IS ETHNOMETHODOLOGY!
The observational method exemplified in the
case above can be criticised in many ways, but
it provides a solid empirical base. This conversation did in fact happen and researchers may
go back and check again and again. It is not
likely that the participants play-act to give an
impression of their work which is not genuine.
This is so because they are peers who are in a
live situation where unprofessional behaviour
will be corrected. The empirical study of how
competent persons work to accomplish joint
solutions which work in a complex situation
falls under the label of ethnomethodology.
What is needed is an elaboration of systematic
analysis of data collected in the manner indicated above.
Ethnomethodology
aims to understand folk
(ethno) methods (methodology) for organising
their world (Garlinkel, 1967). Those methods
are laid down in the skills (artful practices)
through which people develop, jointly, an
understanding of each other and their social
institutions. Bruner, (1990) also uses the folk
approach in defining the narrative mode of
cognition, and Buttny (1993) does the same for
the study of accounts.
Ethnomethodology
is not well defined and
this has given rise to a number of misunder-

standings about its methods. Especially it is said

that it is tarnished by voluntarism and subjectivity. This is a misunderstanding attributed to
Bourdieu among others (Watson & Seiler, 1992,
p. xiv). On the contrary ethnomethodologists
agree on anchoring their analysis in texts of
behaviour (i.e. not in assumptions about mental
states). This has given rise to the label new
empiricism. They also agree that social facts
are not out there to be encountered, but are
continuously constructed through interaction,
which, contrary to mental states, is observable.
Subjectivity is virtually eliminated by the fact that
the registered text is a conversation between
competent persons (Atkinson, 1988) in their area
of competence and in a situation where their
purpose is to reach a solution that works. The
statements participants make are public and
stand to be corrected by other competent participants. Their statements are empirical facts.
What went on in their minds while they were
making them cannot be registered. Researchers
can come back to the empirical facts, the text,
when discussing interpretations. Conversation
and discourse thus allow and require interpretive feedback (note, in the case above, how A
was obliged to repeat the proposed principle of
accounting for internal rents) and thus provide
for a negotiability of meanings which includes
corrections and retrospective reinterpretations
(Blimes, 1992, pp. 97). Participants reflect on
what they are doing while doing it.
Ethnomethodologists
are not interested in
individuals or reading peoples minds, but in
describing the methods people use when they
generate accounts, together, of the way things
really are. This means that ethnomethodology
focuses only on social phenomena - how
participants use the tools, rules, and machinery
of conversation to accomplish their purposes,
and to expose and test their mutual understanding. (Moerman, 1992, p. 33).

It should be noted that understanding

is not an unproblematic
concept.
An early interpretation
of Webers
verstehen
was that it means to relive the experience
of the actor to understand
decisions
and actions-getting
inside the actors head,
as it were. later it was understood
to mean gaming access to subjective
meaning,
but lately the view, inherited
from
Wittgenstein
(?>, that subjective
meanings
are unavailable
to research
and that only public meanings,
(developed
in conversation
or discourse),
are available.

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Meaning is negotiated interactively in conversation and the parties participating in the

conversation are not alone. There are others
present in the form of expectations that constitute role and competence and there are sources
of norms like the city council demanding action
on cost cutting. The interpretation of what goes
on in conversation is more demanding the denser the presence of such situational structures.
Researchers need contextual information
for
interpretation and debate on systematic analysis.
These requirements are rather exacting and

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433

may explain why ethnomethodological

studies
in sociology have tended to focus on everyday
conversation, short sequences, and order in
terms of the sequencing (turn taking, etc.), of
the conversation itself. But there are also studies of scientific work (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984)
and more daring applications to accounting
work are both desirable and possible. In the
case reported above conversation was registered on the level of the management group.
Similar data from other levels on the organisation would have enriched the analysis.

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