Exploring notions of control across cultures: a narrative approach

Abstract

It can be argued that the concept of control is one of the most important and yet complex notions of management accounting theory and practice. Despite its importance, it is not fully understood in terms of its significance in an international context. Using an interpretive approach and against the background of structuration theory, this paper explores and identifies differences in notions of control across European cultures. The empirical research is based on samples of narratives of personal experiences taken from respondents in four European countries: Austria, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The results indicate that control is influenced by, and deeply embedded in, the cultural context of the respective countries. This has implications for the transfer of management accounting and control knowledge across different European countries and suggests that one has to be aware of the existence, meaning and significance of the differences and characteristics of the regional culture. In an era of internationalization and standardization, this paper responds to calls (Hopwood, 1999) for research, which emphasizes the importance of attempts to understand how the practices of management accounting and control are differentiated in relation to regional cultures.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the participants of the Euroconference Series ‘Managerial Accounting in Europe, Engaging Research and Practice’, the participants of the European Accounting Association, Munich 2000, the participants at the 4th International Conference on Organisational Discourse, London, 2000, and the participants of the 5th International Management Control Systems Conference, Royal Holloway, 2001. We would also like to thank Thomas Ahrens and Thierry Garrot for helping us with the data collection. Finally, we would like to thank Albrecht Becker, Al Bhimani, Richard Laughlin, Kari Lukka and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

Notes

¹In the German context, for example, activity-based costing (Prozesskostenrechnung) contains significant elements of ‘full cost’ accounting techniques, which are a throwback to nationally shaped practices, based around production-led cost accounting techniques. This is enhanced by the lack of professional accounting bodies in the German-speaking areas (Power, 1996; Scherrer, 1996).

²The Anglos, the Latins, the Northern Europeans (and Israel), the East–Central Europeans, the Asians, the Arabs and Developing Countries.

³If control is a relational phenomenon, and if research is, in a fundamental sense, a kind of observation or control from ‘the outside’, then research on control has to be seen as constituting relations of control in itself: asking people to give accounts on control in a research process, for example, entails control activities, i.e. by controlling time. Furthermore, depending on the type of research participants the research process is pre-situated in relations of control. Thus, even the idea of ‘controlling from the outside’ is relational, processual, situational and reflexive, and has to be considered in drawing conclusions.

⁴We fully acknowledge that the students in the sample of narratives we have collected will be different not only in terms of their cultural background but also in terms of their professional backgrounds as well as being shaped by different personal experiences (see the Appendix).

⁵This idea also stemmed from teaching experiences which suggest that ‘control’ has different meanings for students in different European countries and yet, in the main, they read and study texts from the Anglo-Saxon area – an area in which a culturally specific understanding could be assumed. Furthermore, Kostera (2002) argues that Anglo-Saxon management concepts are changing the perceptions of students in other regions in relation to understandings of control.

⁶With these four countries, all the European management culture regions depicted by Hickson and Pugh (1995) were represented.

⁷The exception is two stories that focus on the control of technical equipment.

⁸There is, however, a slightly more interactive pattern in the Austrian narratives in that the position of the controlled person is not clearly detached from the control situation even though there is no communication.

⁹In this context it is interesting to note that German cost accounting is historically bound to the production process, with an emphasis on accuracy, planning and rule-based action (Coenenberg and Schoenfeld, 1990). It is less focused on management accounting as information for decision-making as is the case in the UK.