Management Controls that Anchor other Organizational Practices

Thomas Ahrens

Contemporary Accounting Research, 2018, vol. 35, issue 1, 58-86

Abstract: How do management control practices structure other organizational practices? This paper proposes a theory of practice hierarchies. The key idea is that organizations possess constitutive rules that define their character. They are enacted by the practices at the top of the hierarchy. These “anchor practices” contain objectives and established ways of doing things that control, or structure, subsidiary practices. They do so by defining key social relationships in the organization, often ones that are antagonistic. The paper uses illustrations from a longitudinal field study of a retail bank and draws on insights from cultural sociology. Comment les pratiques de contrôle de gestion structurent‐elles les autres pratiques organisationnelles ? L'auteur propose une théorie de hiérarchisation des pratiques. Son analyse repose principalement sur l'idée que les organisations possèdent des règles constitutives qui définissent leur caractère et s'inscrivent dans les pratiques figurant au sommet de la hiérarchie. Ces « pratiques d'ancrage » englobent les objectifs et les façons de faire établies qui contrôlent ou structurent les pratiques secondaires, et cela en définissant les principales relations sociales entretenues au sein de l'organisation, notamment les relations antagonistes. L'auteur utilise des exemples tirés d'une étude longitudinale sur le terrain du cas d'une banque commerciale et s'inspire des perspectives de la sociologie culturelle.

Date: 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12377

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:coacre:v:35:y:2018:i:1:p:58-86

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