MAKING SENSE OF RESEARCH INTO THE ORGANIZATIONAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING: A REVIEW OF ITS UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS [1]

Abstract

A central notion behind this paper is that certain fundamental theoretical and philosophical assumptions underlie any piece of research there is no such thing as a totally objective or value free investigation. Given this initial claim it is thought that the underlying assumptions behind any piece of work should be recognized and assessed by researchers to ensure that they are consistent with their personal beliefs. In other words, researchers into the management sciences should consider their own values and beliefs concerning the nature of society and the social sciences. In order to assist people in this task previous research into the organizational and social aspects of accounting is reviewed and grouped into various schools of thought within a basic sociological framework devised by Burrell and Morgan (1979). This classification of previous accounting literature according to its principal theoretical and philosophical assumptions serves a number of important purposes. First, the framework forms a map that can be used to find one's way through the wealth of research, the aims of which are sometimes confusing and the results conflicting. It will be seen that the multi-disciplinary nature of management accounting, and the consequent variety of theories subsumed under its heading, masks the fact that they tend to stem from similar perspectives towards society and the social sciences. Secondly, a practically oriented subject such as management accounting has often embraced theories from other areas with little concern for their philosophical underpinnings. By making explicit the basic assumptions behind different pieces of work, it is hoped that a greater tolerance and awareness of research from alternative disciplines and perspectives may br