PROCESSES OF PERSISTENCE AND CHANGE IN MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS: AN ANALYSIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF INSTITUTIONAL PARADIGMS

Abstract

This essay analyses the processes of persistence and change in management accounting systems. In doing so, it employs the concept of the institutional paradigm, as opposed to the neo-classical economic paradigm, and assumes that managerial accounting systems fulfill an organizational role beyond that of its economic utility. In an institutional context, such systems can be interpreted as composite texts of signs and symbols that can be used as mechanisms of social control. The reflections developed in this essay allow us to focus on managerial accounting systems as social control mechanisms that act by means of management reports. As a consequence of the persistence of management accounting systems resulting from their historical database, they seem to follow process of persistence and change that reveal a tendency towards homogeneity. Finally, it can be argued that the determining element in the substitution of one managerial accounting practice by another is whether or not the current practice has lost or is losing its capacity to fulfill its role as a mechanism of social control.