‘Accounting Talk’ Through Metaphorical Representations: Change Agents and Organisational Change in Home-Based Elderly Care

Abstract

This paper has analysed a change process within an organisation providing home-based elderly care. Using a theoretical framework from metaphor theory and insights from the literature on ‘accounting talk’, we followed how metaphorical representations of accounting were introduced and developed by the change agent. New core values and practices emerged within the home help unit that were in line with the ideas and inferences made by these accounting metaphors. The metaphorical representations of accounting concepts linked the unfamiliar domain of accounting to a more familiar domain, and provided rationales for organisational change. Our findings highlight the importance of change agents and ‘accounting talk’ for determining the trajectory of organisational change processes. The findings also suggest that metaphors are a potentially powerful tool for both changing organisational members’ general understanding of financial issues, and forging specific links between accounting concepts and work practices.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the helpful comments from Trevor Hopper, Sven Modell, two anonymous reviewers and Associate editor Andrea Mennicken.

Notes

¹For additional examples of the policy implications of specific accounting-related metaphors, see Walters and Young (2008) and Ravenscroft and Williams (2009).

²Henceforth also referred to as ‘the manager’.

³The observational material was gathered by attending a number of team meetings. To give a more detailed account of who spoke in these meetings, each home helper is referred to using a unique numeric code.

⁴To distinguish between these two home helpers, they are referred to as home helpers A and B.

⁵See Ravenscroft and Williams (2009) for an analogous argumentation concerning the link between neoliberalism and changes in the metaphor of accounting.

⁶For example, using a study by De Goede (2005) and Young (2013) notes that regulatory and other responses are constrained by the common representation of financial crises as instances of irrationality and external disturbances to an otherwise functioning system.