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Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127Management accounting as practice

Thomas Ahrens a,*, Christopher S. Chapman b,1

a Accounting Group, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdomb Sad Business School, University of Oxford, Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP, United KingdomAbstract

In this paper we outline a distinctive practice theory approach to considering the role of management accounting inthe constitution of organizations. Building on [Schatzki, T.R. (2002). The site of the social: a philosophical account of theconstitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press] notion of arrays ofactivity we emphasise the ways in which organisational members actively reconstitute their management control sys-tems by drawing on them as a shared resource. By tracing the skilful practices through which social actors in a restau-rant chain understand and mobilise accounting to contribute in specific ways to what they regard as the objectives oftheir organisational units, we develop a notion of situated functionality. Situating the interrelationships between tech-nical and interpretive accounting processes in the wider field of organisational practices we elaborate the ways in whichmanagement control systems as structures of intentionality both shape and are shaped by shared norms andunderstandings. 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Historical and contemporary studies of account-ing have shed light on the diverse ways inwhich accounting has been and is being implicatedin a wide range of activities and social arrange-ments. Those studies have furthered our under-standing of the constitutive powers of accountingin relation to organisations and society whichhas become a popular research topic for interpre-tive accounting research (Hopwood & Miller,0361-3682/$ - see front matter 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.aos.2006.09.013

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 0 24 76572953.E-mail addresses: thomas.ahrens@wbs.ac.uk (T. Ahrens),

Chris.Chapman@sbs.ox.ac.uk (C.S. Chapman).1 Tel.: +44 0 1865 288908.1994). In the endeavour to shed light on the partic-ular meanings of (and uses for) accounting in spe-cific locales, interpretive studies have, in someform or other, sought to explore the ways in which

[. . .] the social, or the environment, as itwere, passes through accounting. Con-versely, accounting ramifies, extends andshapes the social (Burchell, Clubb, & Hop-wood, 1985, p. 385).

Here, the orderly properties of the socialarrangements around accounting have been con-ceived as a direct outcome of practical activity,avoiding analytical distinctions between high-level

mailto:thomas.ahrens@wbs.ac.ukmailto:Chris.Chapman@sbs.ox.ac.uk

2 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127structures and low-level action. Accounting cannotbe understood simply with reference to its sup-posed functional properties because it is implicatedin the shaping of its own context.

Debunking the hold that powerful structureswere supposed to have on the functioning ofaccounting has a distinguished history. Early inter-pretive studies of accounting have frequentlysought to correct the simplifications of functional-ist studies. They have shown that organisationalobjectives, which, from a functionalist point ofview, should determine the uses of accounting,are rarely clear-cut and that they frequently fol-low, not precede, calculation (Cohen, March, &Olson, 1972; March, 1987). Accounting andorganisational objectives are interdependent inthe sense that objectives are influenced by theknowledge of potential accountings (Swieringa &Weick, 1987). Moreover, objectives may be contin-uously reformulated in the light of new informa-tion and revised calculations (Den Hertog, 1978;Hedberg & Jonsson, 1978; Preston, Cooper, &Coombs, 1992). Accounting thus lends itself tomultiple political uses (Bariff & Galbraith, 1978;Markus & Pfeffer, 1983; Wildavsky, 1978).

A key insight was that organisational actorsretain some degree of choice between strategicobjectives and specific solutions (Child, 1972).They can draw on the multiple conceptualisationsof accounting and its uses that circulate in organ-isations (Ahrens & Chapman, 2002; Boland &Pondy, 1983; Chua, 1995; Mouritsen, 1999).Besides being used for the deliberation of futurealternatives, accounting is a vital resource formaking sense of past decisions and the present towhich they have lead (Ansari & Euske, 1987;Brunsson, 1990). It is as much implicated in deci-sion-making as in processes of organisationallearning, bargaining, and rationalisation (Burchell,Clubb, Hopwood, Hughes, & Nahapiet, 1980).The cumulative effect of such interpretive studiesof accounting has been to establish the flexibilityand variability of accounting (Dent, 1986) andthe unintended consequences of accounting sys-tems (Burchell et al., 1980; Den Hertog, 1978;Hedberg, Nystrom, & Starbuck, 1976).

Whilst early interpretive studies were theoreti-cally well-founded and supported by field researchand archival study, they also portrayed accountingoften as just political, unintended, temporary,etc., foregrounding its political, symbolic, andritual functions. They left relatively unexploredthe practical commercial and strategic uses ofaccounting. Understandably, in seeking to correctthe simplifications of functionalism early interpre-tive studies have tended to downplay the ways inwhich accounting can and does help organisationsthrough its role in the constitution of particularfunctionalities. Organisational members may wellbe aware of the limitations of accounting andreporting practices. Nevertheless they draw onthem, for example, to discharge formal obligations,communicate with colleagues, pursue informalobjectives, avoid switching costs, etc. Through suchuses, accounting can potentially make significantcontributions to the ways in which organisationalmotivations take shape and organisations coordi-nate intentional action.

The interlacing of political, commercial, andtechnical uses of accounting has been illustratedby Bowers (1970) study of the resource allocationprocess for four specific investment projects in fourbusiness units of a large US chemicals company.He showed in great detail how different businessenvironments and strategies, the business unitsand the corporations formal organisation andpolicies (including their accounting systems), andindividual organisational members values, desires,feelings, and judgements of the strategic, commer-cial, technical, and political potential of their pro-jects affect their evolution and eventual acceptanceor rejection.

While the evidence reveals the relative unim-portance of a particular technique of finan-cial analysis and limited usefulness of the[theoretical] financial model, it also indicatesthat management can control the investmentprocess (Bower, 1970, p. 279).

The organisational work of contextualising theprojects in ways that disposed other organisationalmembers favourably towards them lay at the heartof preparing a successful investment proposal.Bower was aware of many of the shortcomingsof accounting that later became an importanttheme for the interpretive literature but he was

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 3more interested in how organisational memberscan shape and pursue organisational objectiveswith accounting nevertheless. He ended his bookwith a call for a conditional theory of organiza-tion (p. 318) to explain the scope of managersin influencing structural aspects of organisationsin particular contexts.

In a similar vein, and with the benefit of havingwitnessed the beginnings of a contingency theoryof accounting, Hopwood (1989) sought to circum-scribe the practical character of accounting byarticulating a vision of the study of accountingpractices as finely graded, highly specific contin-gencies in the minds of organisational memberswho seek to put them to use for their specific pri-orities. In three short case studies he sought toillustrate

[. . .] a deep interpenetration between thetechnical practices of accounting, the mean-ings and significances that are attributed tothem and the other organisational practicesand processes in which they are embedded(Hopwood, 1989, p. 37).

Mindful of the objectives and concerns of senioraccountants and managers, and the forms thatthey were given by existing accounting informa-tion systems, Hopwood sought to characterisethe implication of accounting in the operationalprocesses of particular organisations. His casedescriptions delineated a particular kind of fitbetween accounting, operations, and strategic pri-orities. Unlike the fit between generic strategic pos-tures and general accounting system characteristicsfound in the contingency literature (p. 27), Hop-wood sought to convey the practical understand-ings played out through organisational membersuses of their accountings. He emphasised the waysin which accounting illuminated key aspects ofoperations for organisational members, such thatthey were enabled to evaluate and intervene.

In contingency theory, analyses of the fitbetween context and accounting are supportedthrough questionnaires that collect aggregateinformation about organisations and their subsys-tems. By contrast, practice theory seeks to delveinto the details of the functioning of subsystems.Practices are about the specific relationshipsforged between understandings and traditions ofsocial groups and their aspirations and pressingproblems.

Accounts of order and agreement that referto practice presume not passive actors butactive members, members who reconstitutethe system of shared practices by drawingupon it as a set of shared resources [. . .](Barnes, 2001, pp. 1718).

Like Barnes (2001) notion of practice, Hop-woods (1987, 1989) concept of the social embedd-edness of accounting had a distinctive normativedimension. Organisational members develop andjudge the shared understandings of accountingand organisational process, on which they basetheir managerial efforts. Accounting, like Barnes(2001) practice, is reconstituted in the act of itbeing drawn upon as a resource (c.f., Swidler,1986). Hopwoods (1987) advice to study the his-torical layers of accounting systems to understandthe complex relationships between accounting andorganisational priorities over time acknowledgedthe simultaneously functional and normativeaspects of managerial agency. Of the myriadorganisational narratives available, he focused onthose that, through the visibilities accorded themthrough accounting, had been deemed organisa-tionally significant by organisational participants,mostly at the intersection between organisationalstrategy, key processes of organisational competi-tiveness, and accounting information systems.

The successes of prior studies in exploring thepotential reach and roles of accounting practicesnotwithstanding, the emphasis on accounting asa social and not equally strategic and commercialtechnology has left an important gap in ourunderstanding of the interconnections betweenaccounting and other organisational practices.Contemporary discussion of management control(e.g., Kaplan & Norton, 1996; Simons, 1995) fre-quently seek to address strategic concerns. Theydo not, however, tend to elaborate on the specificactivities through which their exhortations mightbe taken up. How exactly, for example, are manag-ers to make, the Balanced Scorecard the corner-stone of a new strategic management system(Kaplan & Norton, 1996, p. 75) and mould it to

4 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127their own ends? The result is an often unhelpfuldynamic in discussions between academic andpractitioner accounts of such developments.

In this paper we will draw on practice theory inorder to attempt to fill these various gaps in ourunderstanding of management accounting in prac-tice. Even though they have often been pursuinghighly specific agendas, practice theorists havebeen concerned to reflect on the ways in whichaction relates to aspects of contextwhat Ortner(1984) called the systembe it primarily politi-cal, economic, cultural, or technological. Con-cerned to correct the relative neglect of action insocial theory they have tended to develop theoriesof how action arises from and structures context,resulting in varying degrees of social order (e.g.,Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984). Neither does anobjective system determine activity, nor can socialphenomena be explained simply through theaggregation of individual actions.

Through the analysis of a longitudinal fieldstudy of management control carried out in a UKrestaurant chain, we draw on specific lines of prac-tice theorising, in particular Schatzkis (2001, 2002,2005), in order to bring out the regularities in theuses of, and arrangements around, accounting asa direct outcome of normative action. Drawingon discussions and observations drawn from acrossthe organisational and functional hierarchy weelaborate the ways in which specific organisationalmembers sought to use accounting to achieve, ifnot grand strategic missions, at least specific sub-sets of organisational objectives, what one mightcall the situated functionality of accounting.Contextualising the local

The idea to conceive of social order as a directoutcome of activity is not new in the accountingliterature and has given rise to various specificnotions of practice. In particular, studies of gov-ernmentality have developed a complex notion ofthe practice of accounting arising from a historicalunderstanding of the disciplinary powers of sys-tematic bodies of knowledge. Broadly speaking,they have sought to delineate the conditions underwhich accounting became institutionalised in waysthat produced specific systematic effects on theconstitution and functioning of organisations andstates, and thus define what might historicallyqualify as accounting practices (e.g., Hoskin &Macve, 1986, 1988; Miller & OLeary, 1987; Miller& Rose, 1990). In so doing, this literature hasmoved from the implication of accounting inorganisational politics and sense-making, whichhas been an important concern of many studiesof accounting and organisational process, to theconstitution of organisational process itself.Accounting has been seen to have permeated thefabric of organisations and social institutions,not just as a technology to be used in any whichway, but

[. . .] always intrinsically linked to a particu-lar strategic or programmatic ambition [. . .]to increase efficiency, to promote economicgrowth, to encourage responsibility, toimprove decision making, to enhance com-petitiveness (Miller, 2001, p. 394).

Millers insistence on accountings inbuilt pro-grammatic ambition in many of his works hashelped to establish in the accounting literaturethe significance of what Goodwin (1994) called astructure of intentionality. Discussing a standardcolour scheme used by archaeologists to classifyearth colour, Goodwin observed that,

of all the possible ways that the earth couldbe looked at, the perceptual work of studentsusing this form is focused on determining theexact color of a minute sample of dirt. Theyengage in active cognitive work, but theparameters of that work have been estab-lished by the system that is organizing theirperception. Insofar as the coding schemeestablishes an orientation toward the world,it constitutes a structure of intentionalitywhose proper locus is not an isolated, Carte-sian mind but a much larger organizationalsystem, one that is characteristically medi-ated through mundane bureaucratic docu-ments such as forms (Goodwin, 1994, p.609).

More generally, charts, maps, and otherschemes can powerfully structure the cognitive

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 5practices of social groups, as can accounting.Accounting rules and categories bias social percep-tion (Cooper, 1980), and the insistence on thestructure of intentionality enshrined in accountingconvention can obstruct the search for regulatorysolutions (Young, 1996).

Millers work on the programmatic character ofaccounting has sought to emphasise the highly spe-cific ways in which structures of intentionality can,through temporary assemblages of people,accountings, ideas, buildings, material flows, etc.,come to be contextualised in particular cases.Rooted in an analysis of the organisational func-tions of accounting, the governmentality literature,more generally, has opened a particular vista onaccountings broader social significance beyondthe organisation, for example, through historiesthat relate the emergence of accounting to thespread of novel forms of writing, indexing, andgrading (Hoskin & Macve, 1986) or more generalpolitical efforts at standardising different spheresof social life (Miller & OLeary, 1987; Radcliffe,1998).

Studying in this way the conditions under whichaccounting was made practical (Miller &OLeary, 1990) has avoided the cumbersome dis-tinction between macro structures and microaction by focusing on particular instances in whichaccounting was implicated in the production ofsocial order. But it has also avoided inquiring intothe detailed practices through which accounting ismobilised by organisational members. The prac-tice notion of governmentality has primarily beenconcerned with the putative origins of action, thatis, its generic strategic or programmaticambition (Miller, 2001, p. 394), and not actionitself:

[. . .] new calculative practices alter the capac-ities of agents, organizations, and the con-nections between them [. . .] As a technologyof power, management accounting is thus amode of action that does not act directlyand immediately on others. Instead, it actsupon the actions of others, and presupposesthe freedom to act in one way or another.The agent who is acted upon thus remainsan agent faced with a whole field of possibleresponses and reactions (Miller, 2001, pp.379380).

On the whole, the practice approach of govern-mentality studies did not foreground the ways inwhich accountants and non-accountants alike con-ceive of and conduct their everyday tasks with ref-erence to accounting and, in one way or another,seek to advance their particular plans throughaccounting. Practices that would be thus infusedwith accounting occasionally only shine throughthe disciplinary histories, for example, when Her-mann Haupt, graduate of West Point and newlyappointed engineer at the Pennsylvania Railroad,changed freight pricing with the help of novel anal-yses of fixed and variable costs (Hoskin & Macve,1988, p. 61). Millers (2001) notion of practice, inparticular, has steered him away from addressingin detail the uses and functionings of accountingin specific situations. For instance, Miller andOLearys (1994) study of a new manufacturinginitiative at Caterpillar Inc. conceived of account-ing practices at the level of designing accountingpolicies, mainly for investment decision making,and building accounting information systems.The relationship between accounting and organi-sational processes was discussed only to the extentto which it rendered them operable. How, oreven whether, accounting was mobilised in anyparticular organisational activity was not dis-cussed. Accounting remained a potential. Moregenerally, all organisational practices weredescribed as successive designs of policies, systems,and architectures that sought to act upon organ-isational members who were mere users of systemsand occupants of spaces and whose activities werenever described.

To relegate practical activity with and throughaccounting to a secondary class of events whosemodes are determined by the general historicalconditions of the formation of specific accountingconstellations (Burchell et al., 1985) is a particularcase of top-down history. With the emphasis onthe temporary assemblages of systems ofaccounting and other controls, agents can be leftwith the freedom to act in one way or anotherbecause that freedom is regarded as inconsequen-tial, not something on which the academic inquiry

6 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127into the functioning of accounting should concen-trate. Interactions between discourses and prac-tices are thus stylised as orchestrations whosepotential is determined by successive accountingsystems designs. A more detailed concern withthe activities of agents might shed more light onthe reasons why, and the processes throughwhichfrom among many possible programmes,discourses, policies, etc.some end up in tempo-rary assemblages with particular accountings.

The assembly of accounting designs and sys-tems has been of keen interest to another largegroup of management accounting studies drawingon actor network theory (ANT) and, particularly,the work of Latour and his collaborators. Not somuch a theory as a post-humanist ontology toovercome puzzles of social theorysuch as theduality of agency and structure, for exampleANT sought to replace notions of social struc-tures, entities, levels, etc. with the concept ofheterogeneous networks of humans and non-humans2 (Latour, 1987, 1996; Law & Hassard,1999). The networks of ANT are not the structuresof traditional sociology. They are not to be con-fused with the social networks in which humansliaise and network (Latour, 1996, p. 373), nordo they exhibit the distance-denying instanta-neousness of the world wide web that gives imme-diate access to discrete pieces of information(Latour, 1999, p. 15).

ANT networks come into existence through thecirculation or travel of actants, something thatacts or to which activity is granted by others(Latour, 1996, p. 373). These heterogeneous net-works deform or transform the travellers in theprocess. Actants make up networks, but throughprocesses of transformation the networks also giveactants actantiality, i.e., [. . .] provide actantswith actions, with their subjectivity, with theirintentionality, with their morality (Latour,1999, p. 18).

Herein lies an important point of contactbetween ANT and governmentality research inaccounting. Governmentalitys built-in program-2 Computer system architecture (Dechow & Mouritsen, 2005)or ABC costing systems (Briers & Chua, 2001), for example.matic ambitions of accounting, and the freedomof human actors to draw on them, can be tracedas the fabrication of accounting into an actant,made up of humans, accounting rules, reports,computers, etc., ultimately lending accountingactantiality. For ANT, only those people, things,and networks are worthy of study that leave animprint, that possess actor-like qualities.

ANT emerged out of highly specific intellectualconcerns, however. Latour appears to have pri-marily been concerned not with action as suchbut the delineation of the networks that wouldallow him to trace action.

It is a method to describe the deployment ofassociations like semiotics; it is a method todescribe the generative path of any narra-tion. [. . .] In itself ANT is not a theory ofaction, no more than cartography is a theoryof the shape of coast lines [. . .] (Latour, 1996,p. 3734, italics in original).

A stream of studies of budgeting in variousnational health systems have drawn on ANT as ameans to explore exactly such generative paths.Preston et al. (1992) and Bloomfield et al. (1992)for example studied the introduction and emer-gence of responsibility accounting in the UK hos-pital sector. Their choice of research settingsallowed them a particular advantage in followingLatours exhortation to arrive before the technol-ogy is fixed, known and unproblematic (Prestonet al., 1992, p. 564). Likewise Chua (1995) empha-sised the potential contributions of a study of themaking up of new accounting numbers (p. 115)in her study of the fabrication of a hospital case-mix costing and accounting. As with earlier studiessuch as Pinch, Mulkay, and Ashmore (1989) andPreston et al. (1992) her study emphasised the sig-nificance of processes of enrolment and rhetoric(see also Mouritsen, 1999).

Latourian analyses have highlighted the chang-ing and fragile nature of management accountingsystems, but not in the same manner as earlystudies of the political and symbolic roles ofaccounting that emphasised the variability andunintended consequences of accounting. Thenotion of unintended consequences presumes thataccounting systems also possess intended conse-

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 7quences, which in turn allows the study of loosecoupling between formal objectives and everydayaction (Berry et al., 1985; Ezzamel & Bourn,1990). By contrast, ANT was a project meant toredress the privileging of formal objectives. For-mal objectives, too, were only a network effect, afabrication. They were not believed to have power-ful implications independent of the details of theirfabrication because ANT does not a priori privi-lege any network locations.

Law attributed this to a fear of the perils ofmanagerialism (Law, 1991, p. 13) or hero sociol-ogy. ANTs principle of symmetry (Latour,1996) seeks to treat the powerfulmanagers andaccounting system designers, for exampleas net-work members and effects, just like anyone (andanything) else, so as to trace precisely the originsand makeup of their fallible powers. We agreethat powerful organisational members inhabitthe same field of practices. Their preferences areshaped by this field. They are not outside thenetwork.

A challenge for ANT in relation to the study ofmanagement control (at least in commercialorganisations) then is that in a management con-text those who are designing, reading, and inter-preting management control systems are in fact apriori privileged. For example, Paolo Quattroneand Hopper (2005) reported on a Japanese headoffice that insisted on maintaining their preferredaccounting configuration when introducing anERP system, despite the ERP systems technolo-gical imperatives for change. Management maynot win all their games all the time, but they arenonetheless more central to bigger and moreresourceful networks. Also, their networks andpowers possess special qualities.

Though they are quantitatively different,they are not only quantitatively different, atleast some of the time. Which means, if weconcentrate [. . .] on this alone, we are liableto miss out on some of the ways in whichquantity is (reversibly) transmuted into qual-ity. Or, to put it differently, we will miss outon the ways in which the great distributionsare laid down and sustained (Law, 1991, p.14, italics in original).In principle, ANT might discuss the great dis-tributions, Laws shorthand for social structures,through much comparative tracing of networksbetween organisational and extra-organisational,human and non-human allies. In practice, account-ing researchers have sometimes restrained thedeconstructive impulse of ANT. Mouritsen(1999) researched the network of the relationshipsbetween customers, subcontractors, workers, andproducts through BusinessPrints existing manage-ment hierarchy, following the leads of the differentmanagers priorities and problems (not those of theworkers, machines, or products), unearthing howtheir different capabilities, interests, and objectivesgave rise to the conflicting notions of managementcontrol and specifically their different concepts offlexibility. Even though the attempts of the CEOof BusinessPrint of turning overheads into directcosts through outsourcing [. . .] quickly spiralledaway from [an immediate concern with] indirectcosts into areas such as marketing, production,new technology, productivity, and political risk(Mouritsen, 1999, p. 47), this did not, as Law(1991) suspected, invalidate his power or thwarthis subsequent efforts to assume greater control.Even though management is not omnipotent, thedistributions of power tend to be sufficientlyskewed to begin management control researchwith management strategies and hierarchies, andthen see their effects ripple through diverse organ-isational and extra-organisational processes andartefacts all the way back to the strategists andtheir ongoing attempts at control.

ANT has made an important contribution tothe theorising of practice in management account-ing. It has shown the significance of actors,action, and inscriptions in the fabrication ofsocial order. Its approach to the study of manage-ment control has been distinctively deconstruc-tive, however, in the sense that the intellectualeffort has been devoted to untangling processesof inscription and fabricationwhat is fabri-cated, the fabrications themselves, is treated assomething of a side effect, a moment of temporarystability that is of little interest in itself. In this wesee another parallel with governmentality researchin accounting, which tends to be more interestedin the programmatic potential of accounting than

8 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127the temporary assemblages of which it actuallybecomes part.

In the more recent management control litera-ture we see studies inspired by ANT rather thanstraightforward applications of it. For example,Briers and Chua (2001) developed important con-tributions to our understanding of ABC throughan intellectual bricolage. They enriched the flatontology of ANT, as set out by Latour, with theconcept of the boundary object (Star & Greise-mer, 1989). They advanced our insights intoABC, yet their approach was strictly antitheticalto Latours notion of ANT. The concept of theboundary object allowed traction on notions ofintent and interaction in their study. Analysed asa visionary boundary object that bringstogether actors, more than an actant in its ownright, the ABC system allowed for the renderingof individual actors motivations by providing acontext through which these can be seen to inter-act and affect the shape of the emerging net-works. Dechow and Mouritsen (2005) developedthis line of reasoning on boundary objectsthrough their discussion of enterprise resourceplanning systems (ERP) as providing tradingzones in which organisational actors negotiatethe ways in which a new ERP relates to existingreporting practices.The situated functionality of management

accounting practice

The notions of practice inherent in governmen-tality and ANT studies have provided importantalternatives to conceptualising the functioning ofaccounting with reference to social structures, enti-ties, levels, etc.We sharewith governmentality stud-ies an interest in the conditions that renderaccounting operable in specific modesdevelopingits potential as a structure of intentionality. Equallyconcerned with the significance of action, however,we share with ANT an interest in the heterogeneousnetworks of humans and non-humans throughwhich accounting is fabricated as an actant. In ourdiscussion of management control as practice wewould like to give greater prominence to the con-struction and functioning of managerial intentand some of the ways in which they relate to the sit-uated functionality of accounting. To those ends,we adopt Schatzkis (2002) definition of practicesand their role in social order. For him,

[. . .] the site of the social is composed of nex-uses of practices and material arrangements.This means that social life inherently tran-spires as part of such nexuses. By practices,I mean organized human activities. Exam-ples are political practices, cooking prac-tices, educational practices, managementpractices, shop floor practices, and designpractices. Any practice is an organized,open-ended spatial-temporal manifold ofactions (Schatzki, 2005, p. 471).

People live meaningful lives by engaging in prac-tices, which are connected with material arrange-ments. The recognition of material arrangementsin social research is familiar from ANT, but howdo we know to which practices certain actionsbelong?

The set of actions that composes a practice isorganized by three phenomena: understand-ings of how to do things, rules, and teleoaf-fective structure. By rules I mean explicitformulations that prescribe, require, orinstruct that such and such be done, said,or the case; a teleoaffective structure is anarray of ends, projects, uses (of things), andeven emotions that are acceptable or pre-scribed for participants in the practice(Schatzki, 2005, pp. 471472).

Understandings, rules, and the engagements ofteleoaffective structure organise chains ofactionin Schatzkis phrase, arrays of activity(Schatzki, 2001, p. 2)which make up practices.Practices are constituted in activity and inherentlynormative. We are reminded of the programmaticnature of Millers (2001) accountings. However,our practice perspective emphasises the role ofaction in the constitution of such programmes.In this we share the concerns of ANT, but suggestthat Schatzkis (2002) site ontology offers advanta-ges in the study of management control practicebecause it is more accepting of structures ofintentionality.

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 9Management control as practice is understoodas a bundle of practices and material arrangements.Situated in offices and workshops, using configura-tions of machines and computers, organisationalmembers negotiate strategies, budgets, and perfor-mance targets, they discuss ways of realising them,alert others to contingencies, give orders, follow,dispute, or circumvent instructions, generatereports and make comparisons, give and receiveadvice, find excuses, take corrective action, etc.Those activities occur in chains of actions andwithin management control practices. They [. . .]also transpire[] as part of these practices: theactions involved help compose the practice(Schatzki, 2005, p. 472, emphasis in original). Also,the ends that organisational members pursue inperforming these actions, are contained in the tele-oaffective structure of management control prac-tices (such as the desire for commercial success,for example). Acting in those ways is to be carryingon the practice. In this way practice theory offers away of understanding volition conditioned by sys-tems, but as played out in the moment of action.

This intertwining of the explicit rules, proce-dures, standards, etc. set out in management con-trol systems, with shared normative judgementsas to the appropriateness of particular instancesof action, holds the promise of locating the muchcommented upon fluidity and variety of everydayaccounting activities (e.g., Burchell et al., 1980;Dent, 1986; Den Hertog, 1978; Hedberg et al.,1976) in a context of shared engagements. The nat-ure of their sharedness lies not in the similarity ofactivities but in the ways in which actors under-stand relations between ends, projects, uses (ofthings), and even emotions (Schatzki, 2005, pp.471472). Management control is thus skilful prac-tical activity that represents an aspect of socialorder because of and notwithstanding its fluidity.A practice understanding of management controlactively looks for such fluidity, recognising thatactors accounts of their own activities (and repre-sentations of them) are categorically unlike thecomplex cognitive processes through which theygo about accomplishing them.

Thus when our informants honestly say thisis why we do such things, or this is what thismeans, or this is how we do such things,instead of being pleased we should be suspi-cious and ask what kind of peculiar knowl-edge is this which can take such an explicit,linguistic form? Indeed, we should treat allexplicit knowledge as problematic, as a typeof knowledge probably remote from thatemployed in practical activities under normalcircumstances (Bloch, 1991, pp. 193194).

Compared to the actors unspoken mastery ofcertain situations, explicit decision rules seemunwieldy and, very often, unrealistic. At the indi-vidual level, expert actors tend not to articulateexplicit decision rules and apply them to situa-tions like a novice would (Dreyfus & Dreyfus,1988). Novice management accountants tend tolack the ability to think through organisational sit-uations with the conceptual schemes that theystudied during their training (Ahrens & Chapman,2000), for example. The usefulness of thoseschemes for practice only becomes apparentthrough experience. The primacy of practice(Archer, 2000) suggests an analysis of cognitionhinging on what we can do, rather than on theapplication of general rules that seek to describe(or constrain) action.

[. . .] order per se cannot be identified withregularity qua repetition of the same. RecallWittgensteins example: a variety of differentactivities count as games, and in this sensecompose an order, even though what in theworld corresponds to the state of order isnot the uniform repetition of specific fea-tures, but a tangle of samenesses and similar-ities among the activities involved.Observations such as this suggest that thereis more both to the ordering of things andto cognition (including scientific cognition)than regularities and their apprehension(Schatzki, 2001 italics in original).

The consequences of such analysis calls intoquestion an analysis of management control sys-tems as a means to transplant particular modelsof conceptual analysis from powerful centres tocontrolled peripheries (Latour, 1987). A num-ber of laboratory experiments in the accounting

10 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127literature have worked with the situated nature ofthe cognitive processes associated with manage-ment accounting and control tasks (e.g., Vera-Munoz, 1998; Vera-Munoz, Kinney, & Bonner,2001). In her stylised business resource allocationcontext, Vera-Munoz (1998) showed that particu-lar norms of presentation and analysis of subjectswith more extensive accounting training came tothe fore, inhibiting the application of opportunitycost principles. Those same individuals, however,did apply opportunity cost principles in a styliseddomestic setting with the same calculative taskcharacteristics. These studies thus gave supportto those who drew on notions of cognition in prac-tice to question the idea of transferable skills per se(e.g., Lave, 1988).

Key to understanding cognition in practice isthat it is distributed over the environment of theactors and that elements of it take place outsidetheir heads, through the meaningful interactionbetween, for example, charts, images, gestures,orin relation to this papermanagement con-trol systems.

Through such mapping, elements of thechart become dynamic, transportable struc-tures. In comparison to the static form ofthe chart (when the chart is considered tobe a self standing, isolated form), the com-pound multimodal structure is less perma-nent, but a more powerful, dynamicprocess. Because this process is largelyinstantiated in the environment, we can seeit and examine its unfolding through timein detail (Alac & Hutchins, 2004, p. 650,emphasis in original).

The act of explaining brain functions in thisobservation was not just relying on an assortmentof material props that happened to lie aroundwhen the expert explained the brain mapping.The neuroscience chart, for example, was a prod-uct of, and contributed to, the wider social contextof teaching practices in the laboratory in which itwas observed. What looked like the achievementsof an individual scientist was really an outcomeof the interplay between cognition and specificpractice arrangements bundles. The functionalityof certain techniques for certain actions could onlybe established with a view to the practices thatwere constituted by those actions. For the field-work researcher it is important to recognise indi-vidual actions as part of larger arrays of activity(i.e. practices) and to engage in an ongoing refine-ment of the descriptions of certain practicesthrough ongoing reflection on those actions.

To summarise, practice arrangements bundlescan be related to each other, to other materialarrangements, and to other practices. As a totality,the nexus of interdependent practices can be calledthe field of practices. Thus,

the social is a field of embodied, materiallyinterwoven practices centrally organizedaround shared practical understandings.This conception contrasts with accounts thatprivilege individuals, (inter)actions, lan-guage, signifying systems, the life world,institutions/roles, structures, or systems indefining the social. These phenomena, saypractice theorists, can only be analyzed viathe field of practices. Actions, for instance,are embedded in practices, just as individualsare constituted in them. Language, more-over, is a type of activity (discursive) andhence a practice phenomenon, whereas insti-tutions and structures are effects of them(Schatzki, 2001, p. 3).

Practice theory does not need higher-levelaggregations above practices and practice arrange-ments bundles. A management control system is abundle understood as management control prac-tices plus material and technical arrangements. Itsees institutions and structures as effects of actionas much as the other way around, yet unlikeANT, practice theory assumes that actions areorganised around practical understandings, rules,and engagements that define and connect agentsqua practitioners.

From the perspective of this practice theoryapproach, the perceived usefulness of manage-ment control practices and systems is of para-mount importance for researching managementcontrol and management accounting moregenerally. In this paper we set out to understandthe constitution and implications of normativeaspects of practice as they are observable both

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 11in activities and through relatively enduringaspects of organisation, such as distributions ofpower, played out through management controlsystems. As such our practice approach is sugges-tive of new insights into the mutual constitutionof individual and organisational intent throughits theorisation of individuals skilful activity asenactments of situated functionality. We seek todemonstrate this through a detailed analysis ofvarious aspects of management control practicethat we observed during a longitudinal field studyof a UK restaurant chain.Field study

Restaurant Division was one of the largest full-service chain restaurants in the UK. All restau-rants were wholly owned by the company andwere run by salaried managers. Restaurant Divi-sion had enjoyed substantial returns on sales andsales growth over a period of years. This growthhad been attained partly through acquisition ofsmaller chains but mainly through addition ofnew units. More than 200 restaurants were organ-ised as profit centres which reported into areasRestaurant Divisionmanaging director

Area managers

Restaurantmanagers

Operationsregional managers

Operationsdirector

Marketingdirector

Group boardof directors

Com

Based away

Fig. 1. Restaurant divisionand then regions of operational management.Restaurant Division was wholly owned by andreported to a leisure group quoted on the LondonStock Exchange, but it was also registered as acompany with limited liability and had its ownboard of directors (Fig. 1).

Our fieldwork over a period of a little over twoyears involved interviews, examination of archivalrecords, and direct observation of meetings andworkshops. Table 1 details what might be thoughtof as formal data collection. Our efforts to delin-eate the organisations structures of intentionalitybegan with questions aimed at eliciting a basic roledescription from interviewees (from waiters to themanaging director). We then asked questions tofind out which (if any) performance informationinterviewees drew on and or worked around intheir day-to-day activity.

Interviews lasted about seventy minutes onaverage. Most of them took place with bothresearchers present, were tape-recorded and subse-quently transcribed. Where this was not possiblenotes were taken during the interview, and moredetailed notes were written up as soon afterwardsas possible. Over the course of the study we inter-viewed the entire divisional board and executiveCentral financialservices

Human resourcesdirector

Finance &commercial

director

mercial MISFinance

from head office

organisation chart.

Table 1Information on formal fieldwork activity

Functional breakdown of interviews carried out

Central financial services 1Head office Commercial 6Head office Finance 11Head office HR 4Head office Managing Director 1Head office Marketing 5Head office MIS 2Head office Operations 4Area managers 2Restaurant managers 9

45

Observations and attendance at meetings

Area business development meetings 2Cross functional meeting to discussthe food margin

1

Eating of control 3 course meals byboth researchers

2

Area manager-Restaurant manager performancereviews (held at individual restaurants)

6

Observation of kitchen operation 2Residential control workshops 2Various finance meetings 4

19

12 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127committee,3 other head office managers and staffspecialists from different functions. In the opera-tions hierarchy we interviewed regional and areamanagers, and restaurant managers.

We reviewed internal planning, control andfinancial documents, materials used in internaltraining, computer data entry and reportingscreens, etc. These materials were often presentedand discussed during interviews, giving intervieweesopportunities for talking us through their work.

We carried out observations at head office andin restaurants, as well as several residential train-ing sessions. We made visits to 15 restaurants,sometimes more than once, where we eitherobserved performance reviews between restaurantmanagers and their area manager or interviewedrestaurant managers and had shorter meetingswith various assistant managers, chefs, and wait-ing staff. We also took the opportunity to observe3 Comprising all the managers who reported directly tomembers of the board of directors.restaurants (including kitchens) during openinghours. On two occasions we ordered the samethree-course meals in order to assess the standar-dised nature of portions and presentation.

Informally, our presence at coffee breaks andmeals during and after our formal observationsand interviews meant that we could listen to par-ticipants observations of, and reactions to, themeetings themselves. On such occasions we alsolearned about a rich stream of organizational gos-sip, jokes, and stories, which we used to test ourdeveloping understanding of the role of manage-ment control systems in Restaurant Division.

Our various modes of analysis were overlappingand iterative (Ahrens & Dent, 1998). Interviewtranscripts and field notes were organized chrono-logically, and the common issues in the accountswere analysed to understand areas of agreementand disagreement between organizational actorsand groups. Archival records were used to elabo-rate and confirm issues that arose in interviewsand observations. We dissected and reorganizedthe original transcripts around emerging issues ofsignificance to our understanding of managementcontrol systems. Findings that did not appear tofit emerging patterns identified in this process weremarked for subsequent discussion as the researchcontinued.

In the following section we present field mate-rial that illustrates management control practicesin a way that brings out the fluidity and the direct-edness of purposeful interconnected social activi-ties in a large and complex organisation. Heedfulof Blochs (1991) warning against linear explana-tions of practice, we have worked to intersperseour interview excerpts with information aboutcomplementary organisational practices gatheredfrom observation, other interviewees, and docu-ments. As such the interview excerpts do not standalone as descriptions of practice but are intendedas part of a more encompassing ensemblewithinthe inevitable constraints of textual representation.Menu design as management control practice

Since the foundation of Restaurant Division,the concept of branded eating out had lain at the

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 13heart of its strategy. Head office staff designed afood offering and a restaurant ambience for atarget clientele, sourced and distributed the dishingredients, and controlled restaurant perfor-mance. Each restaurant sourced its food throughthe central supply chain. Based on their weeklysales forecasts, the restaurant managers orderedraw materials electronically and the groups fleetof chilled and frozen food trucks delivered themdirectly from the divisions central warehouse. Inthe restaurants, the electronic cash registersrecorded the sales volume of each dish. Weeklyrestaurant reports showed which restaurants hadkept within the standards for raw material con-sumption given the actual dishes sold during thatweek. The resulting gross profit margin on food4

was calculated both in cash and percentage terms.At the time of the research, profit expectations

were 20% of divisional turnover, and, like thegroups other restaurant businesses, RestaurantDivision was expected to achieve about 67% foodmargin. The centrally designed menu, which spec-ified dishes, prices, costs, and sales mix for all ofRestaurant Divisions outlets, was a key functionalelement to realising its commercial objectives. Asthe number of dishes on the menu grew over theyears, increasing analytical effort went into design-ing a menu that could be expected to achieve finan-cial results in ways that fit with the existingcustomer base, brand proposition, personnel, andtechnologies, but also supported planned develop-ment of these.

Menu design was the responsibility of the mar-keting planning manager. He worked to produce acommercial proposition that would satisfy Restau-rant Divisions diverse strategic, financial, andfunctional objectives. Starting with a new menusplanned financial performance he developed fore-casts of the consumption of different groups ofmenu items.

From our perspective its obviously impor-tant that every menu that we put outachieves a certain margin, at the moment4 Gross profit margin on food was calculated in terms ofcontribution (i.e. revenue minus food costs). Hereafter, we referto it simply as food margin.thats about 67, 67.3% [. . .] looking at themenu as a whole. Clearly, within that menuyou have got some items that are low marginand some items that are higher margin [. . .]our food development team in marketingalong with [the commercial manager] andhis team will decide which products will getonto the menu. We balance a certain elementof new products with a mix of, like the oldfavourites. And what well do, we split thatinto starters, main courses, younger guests,sort of children between the ages of 7 and14, [. . .] the under-fives, side orders, whichwe call extras, and desserts [. . .] My role inall of this is to estimate how many people,what percentage of people will have whichdish, and we call that sales mix [. . .] this iswhere [starter] penetration comes in.5 [Hepoints at a large spreadsheet.] This is thetotal number of people coming into [Restau-rant Division], I am predicting that 61.8% ofall people who come into [Restaurant Divi-sion] will have a starter [. . .] or, 11.9% willhave a soup. Thats partly because its thecheapest dish on the menu [. . .] Its also veryseasonal, like soup goes up in winter anddown in the summer, so theres that sort offactor to consider as well. So, I predict eachindividual dish. So, we have a target in termsof overall penetration, obviously maincourse and younger guests is going to be100%, we assume that everyone who comesinto [Restaurant Division] will have a maincourse. And then about 61% will have a star-ter, somewhere in the region of 17% will havea side order, and about 62% will have a des-sert. Marketing planning manager

Achieving the target food margin of the menuas whole, given the marketing objectives, requiredconsiderable analysis of the financial profile of theindividual dishes. Calculative rules and routines5 Much emphasis was placed on starter penetration becausestarters had greater percentage food margins than main coursesand they were an important way of increasing spend per head.

14 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127quickly became bound up with collective norma-tive assessments of customers perceptions of valuefor money.

[. . .] if youre selling a main course for 15then looking to make 75% margin on thatmight be a little bit greedy whereas if youreselling something for 6 maybe you shouldbe looking to make 75% margin. Commercialmanager

[. . .] now, another thing is price points, mak-ing sure weve got a range of products within67, making sure that we are not shiftingprices up too far. We are concerned withvalue for money, we dont want to pushprices too high. Marketing planning manager

The calculation of an overall target margin for amenu does demonstrate the combinability (Rob-son, 1992) of diverse dish characteristics as inscrip-tions of revenue and cost. However, in practice,the functionality of such inscriptions for thepractice of menu design did not lie primarily inbeing Latourian immutable mobiles throughwhich senior managers exercised control at a dis-tance. Evaluations of price, value for money,branding, logistical and operational appropri-ateness were subject to ongoing debate and con-tinually reworked through an ongoing array ofactivities. The financial parameters of individualdish designs inscribed in the head office spread-sheet were thus results of discussions and negotia-tions through which the marketing planningmanager sought to co-ordinate the financial per-formance of the overall menu. This involved anarray of activity stretching over multiple partici-pants within Restaurant Division, its suppliers,and customers over successive menu periods.

So [the commercial analyst], having decidedwe want a steak and kidney pie, and that itshould be something that we would want tosell for 8.99, and therefore this is the sortof cost we would be looking for, [. . .] wouldthen brief [the buyer] on that, and she wouldgo off and brief suppliers [. . .] Commercialmanager

[. . .] the items that tend to be higher marginare the ones that have been on the menufor some considerable time, therefore haveachieved economies of scale through oursuppliers because they got better at makingthem. And also we buy in bulk, so get a rea-sonable discount. Whereas with new prod-ucts we try them first in certain areas,therefore buying a lot less quantity. Market-ing planning manager

The work of co-ordinating various dish-relatedactivities around the menu design process wascomplicated by the fact that each dish could onlycontribute to profitability as part of the overallmenu. Was a dish underperforming because itwas expensive or unappealing, or because therewere there too many similar dishes on the menu?Were dishes set against other dishes that offereda much better value proposition? Could the price(and margin) of a dish be reduced such that itsincreased volume increased organisational profitswithout poaching custom from other high margindishes? Could those volume increases be translatedinto bulk buying discounts which would partly off-set the margin losses?

Through the activities that were concerned withanswering such questions, distinctive functionalunderstandings were brought to bear on the organ-isational objectives of profitability and brand man-agement. The shaded boxes that highlighted certaindishes on the menu were an illustrative example.Restaurant Division managers had found out thatputting a shaded box under a menu item increasedits sales. From the point of view of the finance man-agers it would have made sense to highlight thehigh-margin items. But that did not happen. Themarketing managers had argued that doing sowould increase the sale of dishes that most custom-ers would not regard as good value for money. Onaverage they would leave the restaurant feeling thatthey were overcharged and would not return.Therefore, the boxes actually highlighted the best-selling items. The rationale was that the boxeswould help undecided customers choose what mostpeople liked, thereby, on average, contributing tosatisfying those customers.

Menu design as management control practicemeant ensuring that besides yielding good finan-cial performance of the dishes as a group, new

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 15menus reflected, but also developed further, thetastes of Restaurant Divisions customers. Duringour research an important menu design objectivewas, for example, to begin to Italianise a stilloverwhelmingly traditional British menu. Thisinvolved

[. . .] deciding, you know, whether weve gottoo many chickens [chicken dishes], or, youknow, need another vegetarian. Commercialmanager

[The commercial analyst] would work with[suppliers] to come up with a product thatlooked like the sort of thing we wanted.[Our buyer] is a food-eater, white-coat per-son and understands all these technicalthings like, you know, you put some paprikaon top of it and itll brown in the oven better.Commercial manager

Central to the practice of menu design andmanagement were an ongoing refinement ofunderstanding customer expectations as much asan active management of those expectations(Ahrens & Chapman, 2005).

Designing a new menu thus brought together amultitude of perspectives and possibilities. In fol-lowing the activities involved we see how Restau-rant Divisions strategic agenda was enactedin situation-specific ways. In the process of menudesign abstract strategic notions such as We mustItalianise our menu took on concrete formthrough the attempt to introduce specific dishesthat might contribute to achieving this end.Whichever came first, a dish suggested by suppli-ers, or a calculative spreadsheet entry that trig-gered a call to suppliers to meet a new foundneed, the dish and its calculative presence in thespreadsheet became mutually constitutive duringthe menu design process.

As a factor in the financial calculus of the targetmargin a new dish emerged from arrays of dishdesign, market research, and budgeting activities.Those chains of action were skilfully organisedthrough arrays of understandings, rules, andengagements, constituting the practice of manage-ment control. In turn, the design of the man-agement control systemsthat is, managementcontrol practices plus material and technicalarrangements, such as the electronic dish data-basesought to arrange the understandings, rules,and engagements that organised the organisationalmembers actions. Management control func-tioned as structures of intentionality, not coer-cively, but by enabling (Ahrens & Chapman,2004) the managers in Restaurant Division tothink through the strategic potential of past andpotential actions.Management control practices in restaurants

Management control activity in the restaurantsfocussed on the weekly business developmentmeetings between restaurant managers and theirarea managers. These provided a regular opportu-nity to discuss a standard commercial agenda,including financial information, kitchen, bar, andrestaurant operation, personnel issues, customersatisfaction and ratings, local competitor activity,etc. Most restaurant and area managers whomwe met, regarded going through the standard com-mercial agenda as a helpful rule for the businessdevelopment meetings that helped them in theirobjective of meeting the restaurants budgets. Itwas understood that the role of the area managerin business development meetings was ambivalent,frequently moving between coach, mentor, andenforcer in just one meeting.

The following are excerpts from a businessdevelopment meeting that took place in restaurant#1 between the area manager and the couple whomanaged it, Janet and Andrew.

Area Manager: What happened to your foodmargin? [Regional manager] said, this isrubbish.Janet: We had a problem with charcoaled[burnt] steaks. . .AM: Did you log that?Janet: Ive got a restaurant log [for recordingthe loss of high value food items like steak].[. . .]AM: When was the last time you went throughthe specs [dish size and ingredients specifica-tions] with the kitchen team. [. . .] Theyreover-portioning somewhere.

6 Local school children had decorated an artificial tree in therestaurant with butterflies that they had made in class.

16 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127Andrew: Im wondering what it is. . .AM: . . . The waitresses know that big dessertsmean big tips. A specs check with kitchen staffis always good. Lots of opportunities for sav-ings. You made some good savings in the lowerparts of the P & L. You need to keep that going.[. . .] Use the Gold Scheme [divisional servicequality scheme] to set targets and link it in.And in August set new targets [. . .] We dontneed new customers, we need to mug the onesweve got. Sell more desserts, wine. . .Janet: Maybe get a drinks waiter who goesaround. . .[. . .]AM: Profit conversion was brilliant last week.[X]% last week.Janet: What about the price banding for drinksfrom September?AM: [Pub Division] have gone up 4 pence perpint, but nothing is set in stone on pricing.[. . .] We dont need to be cheaper, no point,its not driving sales.

In this conversation the participants identifiedchains of activities, such as advising, signalling con-cern, demonstrating willingness to improve, priori-tising information, motivating, framing local issuein the strategic context, etc., all geared towardsenabling Janet and Andrew to meet, or possiblyexceed, their restaurant budget. Diverse pieces ofinformation on the food margin, the profit and lossaccount, human resource management practices,and pricing were mobilised in order to support rec-ommendations for improving restaurant manage-ment. Whether or not they were mobiliseddepended on their perceived functionality forimprovements. Discussions of financial resultsand their causes iterated rapidly with proposalsfor concrete activity. Through such interactionsorganizational members constituted the practiceof management control as skilful practical activity.

Area manager: There is healthy sales growth.Janet: The flyers are down in the bed and break-fast down the road.AM: You done that? How do you measure it?Janet: I put a stamp on the back. We also gaveprivilege cards to big companies.AM: It is difficult to get out of those later. It isbetter to have vouchers, something personalised.Andrew: We could do that.AM: It is just something that worked well for[other restaurant].[. . .]AM: The school thing6 worked well. What doyou have to follow it up?Janet: School visit? Halloween party? Bonfire?[. . .]AM: Anything else on sales?Janet: The Summer-Funday-Sunday! I just needto order a Caribbean kit please. Were planninga low-key, family-type disco.AM: You should set some financial targets forthat. Sales. . .Janet: Yes.Andrew: And we do cocktails and stuff. . .AM: Yeah, I get the flavour.Andrew: And prizes to give away. . .[. . .]Janet and her area manager wanted other res-taurant staff to understand the ways in which indi-vidual local activity might be orchestrated in linewith Restaurant Divisions service qualityobjectives.

AM: The service quality report is good. Nocomparison to what we had in January [. . .]Give your staff a bit of a lift, dont wait forthe official [announcement from head office].Janet: Its been a good piece of work in hardtimes.AM: Have you done something like key tasksfor Linda [support manager]? Give her a train-ing plan. Better stillJanet: [interrupts] Get her to do it.They agreed that Linda should develop aninduction programme for herself.AM: From her point of view, whats thebenefit?Janet: She can tick things off.AM: Whats the danger?Janet: Shes not learning it really.

7 A slip that summarises the order of one table. It is printed inthe kitchen after a waiter has entered the order into the till.8 A common expression amongst Restaurant Division staff

was the Ten-Ticket-Chef. It referred to a chef who wouldkeep calm under mounting orders and just bang out thosedishes to standard dish specification.9 This compares with 25,000 per year as the lower bound of

the restaurant managers fixed salary range in 1997.

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 17This discussion gave insight into the practicaleffects of Restaurant Divisions management con-trol systems as structures of intentionality andthe skills of the restaurant and area managers atmobilising them for their diverse ends. As withthe menu design process, the management controlsystems provided the motivation, timing, and thefundamental parameters of this conversation.Conceived of as an array of activity that was dis-tributed over all of the divisions restaurants, areaand restaurant managers, performance reports,and movements of physical inventory throughthe kitchens, etc., the conducting of business devel-opment meetings was a practice which was definedby, but also developed further, certain understand-ings, rules, and ends, thereby clarifying importantaspects of the roles to which individual restaurantmanagers aspired as well as their relationshipswith their area manager.

Whilst working within a nexus of practices andarrangements that had great influence over howfood was prepared and service delivered in orderto meet business objectives, individual restaurantmanagers retained distinctive yet systematic ideasabout their own restaurant management activities.In discussions with us, and their peers, they wouldfrequently compare and contrast their current andpast restaurants in terms of their preferred man-agement style. By all accounts, the couple in res-taurant #2 represented an extreme approach torestaurant management. One of the many husbandand wife management teams in Restaurant Divi-sion, Armando and Elena had worked for thecompany for 18 years. Their enthusiasm hadearned them a reputation for opening new Restau-rant Division outlets and building the business tomaturity until another manager could take it overfrom them. If Elena lets me, I will have one morego at opening the perfect [Restaurant Divisionoutlet]. They also had a reputation for over-spending on food and labour.

You can grow a business or kill a business. . .Managers who are running a food surplusunderportion or serve rubbish. In the fiveyears we were at [newly opened restaurant]our food deficit was 2500 per year. Wehad a deficit of 50 per week. You will seekitchens where the chef goes ooops thebeans are too soft. . . just serve them. . .Waste will happen with human error! Itspanic! Now there is one ticket,7 suddenlythere are ten!8 . . . Our chef in [newly openedrestaurant] had 23 years experience. We paidhim 23,000 a year flat salary.9 Without achef youre going nowhere. I dont careabout costs, we need good chefs! You getwhat you pay for and you got to pay thema living wage. Armando, restaurant manager

Alistair, another restaurant manager in theSouth East of England, had adopted a very differ-ent management approach, but still regardedArmando and Elena very highly. They are thebest managers in the South East. Wherever theygo they get a lot of business. His own approach,however, differed markedly. He distanced himselffrom the work in the restaurant that he managed.Its not my business. I get paid for doing a job.He was one of the few managers whose wife wasnot also working for the restaurant and who livedaway from the restaurant and not in one of theflats that were usually located on the first floorabove the restaurant.

There is a real danger of developing blinkers,getting too involved [in the restaurant]. Youmust keep your eyes on the whole business,not get sucked in. You can get away withbeing involved in a smaller place but [not]when you manage somewhere bigger [. . .]Alistair, restaurant manager

Achieving the target labour cost percentage ofsales was an important priority for most of the res-taurant managers and all area managers withwhom we spoke. But again, restaurant managers

18 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127had developed distinctive practices for achievingthe percentage in conjunction with their other par-ticular objectives. For Alistair it was important todelegate session control to his department heads inthe kitchen, the restaurant, bar and cellar. Hesought to minimise his own interference in theirdepartments. Armando and Elena, by contrast,were too concerned with perfecting the service intheir restaurant, and with avoiding staff turnover,to let staff learn from their own mistakes.

When we opened here we took on inexperi-enced but polite staff. . . We helped themout when they struggled and now they stillrely on us. Armando, restaurant manager

The skill of restaurant management lay indeveloping workable practices out of diverse com-binations of restaurant specific resources and con-straints. Concerns with the chains of activityrequired for food preparation, for example, couldthus affect restaurant management practices inways that we would a priori have expected to bedominated by more abstract concerns with dishprofitability. Talking about how to assemble aset menu for coach parties that would use a restau-rant for lunch on a day trip, Geoff, the manager ofrestaurant #3, said that we do whats easiest forthe chef. Instead of using the dish margin data,he and his wife saw coach parties primarily interms of the dynamics of large groups. A success-ful restaurant visit by a coach party was one inwhich the lunch service contributed to a goodsocial atmosphere. The set menu needed to offeran attractive, if restricted, choice of dishes and itneeded to be manufacturable to serve everyoneat the same time.

Likewise, the management and control ofspaces turned out to be a key consideration in res-taurant managers efforts to run a profitable res-taurant. Restaurant managers reflected on theyardage they felt different waiters were able tocover, as much as on the proximities and compat-ibilities between groups of guests that were charac-terised by their noisiness and desires forcontinuous supplies of alcoholic drinks. Restau-rant managers controlled spaces by appearingunexpectedly at the side of the grill controllerwho coordinated the movements of waitersbetween the kitchen and their tables, next to anoverworked grill chef in the kitchen, or behindthe bar. They complained about the layout of res-taurants which, they felt, required them to be intoo many places at the same time, if, say, the guestreception desk was on the ground floor and a seriesof separate dining rooms on the first floor. Restau-rant management practice entailed the physicalpresence to the managers to survey, remind, andreassure groups of staff and guests. Managementcontrol practice consisted of targeted, but ulti-mately unpredictable, chains of action that weredistributed over people, spaces, processes, andinformation.

This distribution was not limited to single res-taurants. It was a collective endeavour thatextended across the chain. In the coffee breaks oftraining workshops we observed some of the waysin which restaurant managers of neighbouring res-taurants swapped scarce inventory items. Restau-rant managers in the same areas exchanged tipson how to make new dishes, like creme brulee,work. They kept each other informed on how cus-tomers reacted to new dishes that they suspectedwere badly designed by head office. Exchangessuch as these allow us to speak of Restaurant Divi-sions management control practice as a categorythat was made up of organisationally characteris-tic activities in many sites. What made them char-acteristic were the meanings with whichorganisational members invested them, the rulesthey considered, and their various engagementswith particular objectives, uses, emotions, etc.We are here not referring to repeated activity, asone might when discussing routines, but meaning-fully related activity that transpires as (and therebyhelps compose) practice. By highlighting the waysin which practice is made up of arrays of activ-ity, Schatzkis (2002) concept of practice makesvisible orders that are constituted by, rather thansmother, expressions of individual agency.

Diverse forms of managerial power ran throughRestaurant Divisions organisational practices. Asone restaurant manager put it, if you enter yourclosing inventory and your food margin is wayout, you can expect an unpleasant visit from yourarea manager first thing Monday morning.Depending on circumstances and personalities,

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 19area managers could coach restaurant managers tothink through their priorities and options as seenin the conversation observed in restaurant #1.Alternatively, they reduced individual restaurantmanagers to tears or meted out a collective dress-ing down via email or at area meetings. Such crudedisplays of power were performed with referenceto the management control systems structures ofintentionality. By the same token, reference tocommercial success could (temporarily) work toinvert the formal hierarchy. Very good chefs couldextract high salaries from their restaurant manag-ers, just as commercially successful restaurantmanagers could attain legendary status even ifthere was widely shared, but unproven, suspicionthat they ripped off the company by keeping ashare of the revenues to themselves.

Hes been delivering on budget year afteryearits uncanny. [. . .] the company hassort of accepted that he gives us more profitthan anyone else could, so. . . Financialcontroller

In most day-to-day interactions, however, areamanagers ability to define what counted as com-mercial success in the context of the complex rela-tionships between financial and non-financialinformation constituted an important source oftheir power.Senior managers practice-view of management

control

From a practice point of view, the role of theboard of directors was not simply a matter of blue-print design and the writing of policies. Rather, itwas a question of developing arrays of activity andunderstandings that organised the activities ofother organisational membersthe manifestingof structures of intentionalityknowing full wellthat those activities were, and should be, informedacts of skilful practical activity more than expres-sions of routine understandings of restaurantmanagement.

When we began our research, the senior man-agement of Restaurant Division felt that theyplayed a key role in leading a growth strategy.Having joined the organisation almost two yearsbefore being interviewed,

[The managing director] and I had a totallydifferent brief [from the previous board ofdirectors] when we were brought in January94. We were told to go back to being muchmore expansionist, both physically, so inother words go out now and buy some sites,and mentally, lets start trying lots of things,lets start recognising that we did great forthose three years at [. . .] taking no risks basi-cally. We now take risks, otherwise [Restau-rant Division] will die as a brand. Operationsdirector

With their specific strategic brief in mind, seniormanagers saw that going for growth had wide-ranging implications for operations, and the waysin which restaurant managers should think aboutthe nature of the business. In a chain organisation,which was used to pretty bureaucratic, autocraticprocess management, they saw their task inbringing about management control systems thatwould help restaurant managers develop answersto questions such as,

how do you grow? What are the symptoms,what happens to an organisation to say [weare now] customer led, market led, watchout for the competition coming round thecorner because, again, historically [the com-petition had been weak]. Managing director

The board agreed that this presented a signifi-cant communication challenge. Restaurant Divi-sion belonged to one of the UKs largest leisuregroups, with demanding financial targets. Butfinancial objectives, such as food margin, on theirown were not regarded as suitable for gettingacross the boards expectations to the rest of theorganisation. They were an important motivationfor head offices strategic concerns but, on theirown, they could not be used to explain those con-cerns to Restaurant Divisions organisationalmembers.

An important attempt at communicating headoffices strategic priorities to the organisation wasthe list of specific measures known as the 13Key Tasks (see Appendix A for details). Whilst

20 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127senior managers did elaborate the significance ofspecific and concrete relationships that they feltwere important in understanding the nature ofRestaurant Division (e.g. the relationship betweenhigh gross profit margin and superior customerservice), they were not directly concerned withthe elaboration of a concise business model.Instead they sought to create a general awarenessof strategic priorities that they hoped might infuselocally appropriate activity.

You know that 13 key tasks is an almostludicrous number. They are 13 key tasks inthe sense that they are 13 areas on whichwe need to focus during the year. And thatswhat we are trying to say to people. . .We aregoing to do TV advertising, and therefore weneed to know how we will know if thatsworked. Now if you are a [restaurant] man-ager its not a key task. Its going to happenwhether you. . . What its saying is be awarewere going to be having more customersand new customers so get your service qual-ity s*** together. So the issue is if you are ahouse manager your issues are service qualityand profit, thats it, but you need to knowthat were going on Carlton and Granada.10

Acquisitions, if you are a [restaurant] man-ager who is not moving to a new acquisition,it is not an issue for you in the slightest bit.What were saying is that as a companyyou should be aware that were trying toopen 15 [restaurants] [. . .] Because if youare aware of that you know the companysgrowing, so theres an information comfortthere, youre in a growing company. Sec-ondly if youre driving down the road andtheres a site, then maybe that could be a[possible site for a new Restaurant Divisionoutlet]. Thirdly if the [restaurant] is openingin your area, then we probably want you tohelp by taking some of the new staff intoyour [restaurant for initial training]. So itsnot a key task for you if youre not goinginto one, but you need to be aware that thatswhere were going. Human resources director10 Two important television advertising regions in the UK.The human resources directors explanations ofthe significance of non-financial management con-trol systems offered a refreshing contrast with con-temporary musings on the topic. His account ofthe possible uses of the 13 Key Tasks were areflection of head office managements sensitivityto the connections that they wanted organisationalmembers to make between performance metrics,Restaurant Divisions strategic agenda, and res-taurant management issues in the shaping of dailyactivity.

Management control information was onlyseen to be useful in the context of specific mana-gerial intent (c.f., Barnes, 2001). In the previousquotation we saw that the specifics of perfor-mance metrics might provide a framework forthe articulation of managerial agendas. In turn,managerial intent simultaneously shaped the selec-tive attention required for the overwhelminglydetailed monthly management information packto effectively contribute to management controlpractice.

Are you taking about data? . . . We have, Inever go anywhere without it, but I meanwe have. . . where is my Period 7? [searchesfor report] There it is! Right, Period 7 [heavesweighty report onto his desk], and Ive goteverything in there, all the financial detail[starts leafing fast through the report], andIve got all the stock, food data, Ive got allthe distribution account, Ive got the balancesheet, Ive got our service quality informa-tion, complaints, complaint ratios to covers,how each region is doing, ah, top ten, bot-tom ten, ahm, on growth, on service quality,Ive got, ahm, food quality data, Ive gotahm, you know, financial, MAT11 informa-tion on food, liquor, etc. [. . .] spend per head,liquor spend per head, sales mix, TV adver-tising data, then you move into labourturn. . ., human resources information,labour turnover by region, by category ofemployee, ahm, etc. [keeps leafing throughpages] ahm [interviewer tries to interrupt]staff turnover, support manager turnover,11 Moving average total.

T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127 21ahm, people moves from one restaurant toanother, ahm, training data, ah, Ive gotinformation on the training centre, the train-ing report, so we go into my budgetaryresponsibility, which is obviously the HRbudget, how thats doing, blablablabla[keeps leafing]. Human resources director

Head office managers were under no illusionthat their strategic visions would easily translateinto managerial actions throughout the orga-nisation. They never suggested straightforwardrelationships between management control infor-mation and organisational activity (c.f., Bloch,1991). For them the larger management controlchallenge lay in the creation of roles and forumsin which complex understandings of the ways inwhich the strategic agenda of the Division mightfeed into day-to-day activity would be fosteredthrough dialogues that might open up eventsdepicted through the performance data. Withoutwishing to relinquish their strategic or hierarchicalprerogatives, they were sensitive to the benefits ofan approach to management control that soughtto reckon with the intelligence of managerstoenable them (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004).Discussion

In a restaurant chain, in which direct food costsconstituted the largest single operating expense, thefood margin reporting system, which was based onthe division-wide menu, took on a particular signif-icance. Through a detailed discussion of menudesign practice we saw that based on the high levelparameters set out by the board of directors, themarketing planning manager was implicated in acomplex array of financial, logistical, marketing,and operational activities and objectives.

The strategic agenda set out by head office staffprovided a starting point in the process of menudesign, offering a series of targets (e.g. attain67.3% food margin, Italianise the menu, etc.).These targets provided a poor basis for under-standing management control in Restaurant Divi-sion however, since targets on their own did notprovide for an understanding of their practicaleffects in all but the simplest of settings. In Restau-rant Division, a target food margin might beachieved in any number of ways, as might intro-ducing a more Italian flavour to the menu. A prac-tice perspective offers a way of understanding thediverse activities involved in menu design in rela-tion to each other as an array of activity. Throughsuch analysis we can see the way in which the pre-cise nature of objectives (Italianising the menu)arises from daily activity as much as daily activityis shaped by those objectives.

Likewise in the weekly business developmentmeetings, restaurant managers and their area man-agers reviewed restaurant operations and discussedthe possibilities implied by management controlinformation. Over the course of their careers restau-rant managers built up their own understandings ofrestaurant operation which provided them with aready source of ideas on how to manage theirrestaurant. Area managers were to facilitate theachievement of corporate objectives throughthe construction of arrays of activity that incorpo-rated these with the restaurant managers personalunderstandings. They were supported in this taskby a series of division-wide financial control work-shops that propagated an enabling vision of man-agement control systems (Ahrens & Chapman,2004).

Focussing on the specifics of management activ-ity our account foregrounded the ways in whichvarious managers constructed purposeful chainsof activity stretching widely across the organisa-tion. We sought to bring out the ways in whichthose purposes might more instructively be thoughtof as an accomplishment of those actors however,informed by but also constructive of the financialand strategic imperatives advertised by senior man-agement. The key assumptions underlying seniormanagements understandings of their own tasksand activities were very similar to the practice the-ory outlined in this paper. The priorities of differentobjectives were contingent on ongoing develop-ments. Performance information was regarded ascomplexly interwoven with organisational context.The functionality of performance information wasparamount to senior management but they werekeenly aware that their notions of functionalitywere highly context specific.

22 T. Ahrens, C.S. Chapman / Accounting, Organizations and Society 32 (2007) 127Management control as a practice unfolds itspotential through the ways in which organisationalmembers draw on it as a shared resource. In seek-ing to develop our understanding of the ways inwhich management control in Restaurant Divisionstretches across diverse practices and arrange-ments we found it useful to build on theories ofcognition in practice. In contrast with, notably,Hutchins (1995a, 1995b) work on cognition inpractice in airplane cockpits and the commandbridges of ships, we addressed task contexts thatwere characterised by diverse ideas about the orga-nisations objectives (and subsets of objectives)and the best ways of attaining them. Managementcontrol is grounded in the power of senior manag-ers to set agendas, the management control sys-tems through which they seek to structureorganisational practices, and the responses oforganisational members. As a structure of inten-tionality, management control is constituted incognitive processes that are distributed over peo-ple, practices, arrangements, and contexts.Conclusions

It is often not easy to determine what bearingthe diverse purposes of organisations have on theactivities of their members. Central to understand-ing organisation as practice are the structures ofintentionality, as they arise from the understand-ings, rules, and teleoaffective structures of practice,that organise connected activities and arrange-ments. Management control practices are centralto organising because they help to bring aboutconnections between the diverse activities oforganisational members. Unlike the communitiesof practice literature, which has shed light on thedevelopment of specific spheres of activities withinorganisations (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991; Orr,1996), management control as practice seeks tounderstand a wider and more complex field oforganising practices.

The notion of structures of intentionality relieson a conception of functionality that is cognitivelydistributed over people, practices, arrangements,and contexts (Hutchins, 1995; Lave, 1988), andthus situated. What is and is not functional canonly be taken for granted in situations so simpleand stable that they make few demands on organ-isational skills. The concept of accounting andmanagement control practice that we seek to out-line in this paper is all too aware of accountingsdiverse meanings in the political processes thatsurround its uses to submit to the functionalistparadigm of schematic ends, means, and imple-mentations. Yet at the same time, we do not thinkthat technical conceptions of accounting are sim-ply unrealistic dreams.

For the managers in Restaurant Division, func-tionality was inherently practical. For example,enhancing the representational faithfulness ofaccounting systems was not their major concern.The managers mostly seemed to regard theiraccounting systems as imperfect but adequate forthe task of rendering visible organisationalmembers daily activity through accountinginscriptions. For them, the main use of past per-formance evaluation lay in its potential to helpconstruct future lines of action. To this end theywere happy to work with approximate representa-tions of physical and financial flows. We saw thatin actively working with other organisationalmembers in order to establish a shared under-standing of what it meant to do well, they drewon, but were not captured by, performance met-rics. The meanings of diverse objectives (andperformance metrics) for the activities of organisa-tional members onl