The importance of agents in promoting stability and or change of accounting practices
has been widely acknowledged in accounting literature (Andon et al., 2007; Briers and
Chua 2001; Busco et al., 2006; Chua 1995; Dent, 1991; Granlund, 2001; Johansson and
Baldvinsdottir, 2003; Abu Kasim Nor-Aziah and Scapens, 2007). Dent’s study (1991),
for example, is illustrative of the role of the agents and their doings in promoting
organisational change. He acknowledges the role of the business managers in a railway
company in influencing the change process by translating operational issues into the
language of accounting. In each episode, he describes how business managers tried to
persuade the organisational members that they would be better off by subscribing to the
business and accounting practices. From one episode to another, more members were
recruited and the company was gradually shifted from one with a strong ‘railway culture’
to one which celebrated the ‘new business culture’. The motivation of the organisational
members in this case arose from the desire to be known as ‘business people’, who
received higher status in the eyes of the public; further, it was noted that the railway
company managed to secure funding from the government for a major electrification
project as a result of the perceived involvement and economic judgment of some of the
business managers.
Dent’s study (1991) is exemplary in showing how accounting penetrated into an
demonstrates how agency is significant in maintaining stability, although in this case the
agency was caused by a single individual in an organisation.
One common approach adopted by many of the investigations of accounting in action is
the sole focus on the role of human agency in shaping stability and change, such as the
business manager in Dent’s study (1991) and the financial manager in that of Granlund
(2001). The role of human agencies, however, has proved to be insufficient according to
studies based on Actor Network Theory (ANT), as non-human agencies are observed to
be equally responsible in shaping the stability or change of accounting practices in
organisations. To ANT scholars, stability is a matter of the extent to which the alliance
and network of actants in a particular context are fragile or sturdy. An investigation
carried out by Gendron et al. (2007), for example, traces the construction of the auditors’
expertise in Alberta to the existence of a network of allies such as the Canadian
Comprehensive Auditing Foundation (CCAF) and the Alberta Financial Review
Commission (AFRC) that assisted in facilitating the auditors’ attempt to claim expertise
over the program evaluators in assessing the government’s performance. Importantly, the
publication of various guidelines and recommendations in the auditors’ annual reports, as
reported in these studies, were the discourses that helped to promote the government’s
claim of expertise in performance auditing.
ANT-based studies are not only notable in directing our understanding on the role of non-
human agencies, they also point to the dynamic relationship between agency and
al. (2007), the role of human and non-human agencies in the construction of auditing
expertise was prefigured by the existing auditing practices in Alberta. For example, the
course of actions undertaken by the network of allies in this case to promote the method
of assessing the government’s performance was informed by the continuous discussions,
experiments and validation of similar auditing practices in other jurisdictions. This study
also points to the different ways in which the subcultures of the two professional experts
(the cultural practices of the auditors and programme evaluators) influenced what they
did in their attempt to win the right to conduct performance auditing. To the programme
evaluators, performance could be measured more accurately by examining the detailed
programme and considering the qualitative aspects of the performance. Taking a similar
approach to that of financial auditing, the government auditor focused more on
quantitative measurement. This enabled users to make a comparison of performance
across various settings and thus make more sense of the wide adoption of their approach
rather than the restricted generalisation of a qualitative approach by programme
evaluators. The public availability of auditors’ reports that enabled the sharing of
information among the auditors was another practice that contributed to the success of the
auditors’ claim to expertise, which, unfortunately, was not part of the practice in the
professional evaluators’ association.
Although the coexistence of stability and change has been acknowledged in prior studies
(Burns and Scapens, 2000; Busco et al., 2007; Dambrin et al., 2007; Lukka, 2007; Siti
The present study therefore hopes to demonstrate that the coexistence of stability and
change occurs as a result of the on-going interplay between agency and subcultural
practices. In everyday accounting practices, agency plays an important role in altering the
practices, and the magnitude of the alterations determines whether the practices are more
or less stable or changing. The common coalition of organisational members according to
functional expertise, locations, experience and social and economic background entails
the creation of subcultural practices which possess distinctive bodily doings and sayings
that symbolise what is right or wrong, as well as the norms, beliefs or expectations in the
subculture. Practices are the source of cultural influence in an organisation in which the
participants of the practices derive their meaning and identities. It is hoped that this study
of the relationship between agency and subcultural practices will shed light on the
processes of the coexistence of stability and change of accounting practices.
However, in understanding the phenomenon of the coexistence of stability and change,
agency and practices are not analysed as a distinct process, since agency is constituted in
practices and practices prefigure the agencies. On these grounds, Ahrens and Mollona
(2007) illustrate the interplay between agency and subcultural practices:
“Control practices mobilised, but also depended on, particular accounts of what was
profitable and what costly, what represented UNSOR’s most significant capital, and how
best to maintain and exploit it in the pursuit of diverse commercial, occupational, and social ambitions and concerns [….].The practical nature of organisational subcultures is revealed through the ways in which their members actively reconstitute their control practices by drawing on them as a shared resource.” (pp.328-329)
That is, they explain that the organisational subcultures are visible through the bodily
doings and sayings of the practitioners who enact the organisational subcultures by
mobilising various aspects of organisational and social knowledge. However, the extent
to which such actions are acceptable is dependent on the symbolic systems of a particular
subculture.
The next section will briefly discuss the organisational background and a comparative
analysis of subcultural practices in two divisions of the organisation. The discussion will
highlight what is at stake in studying stability and change, and a conclusion is provided at
the end of the paper.