Accounting in a changing organisational reality: the case of China Packaging Import and Export Liaoning Company

Abstract

This study seeks to explore the interaction between accounting and organisation, and to describe how accounting systems, activities, and practices constitute and are constituted by the organisational settings in an emerging economy. The setting of the study is a Chinese state-owned foreign trade company - China Packaging Import and Export Liaoning Company. The company experienced substantial changes at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, when the country moved from a central-planning economics system to a market-oriented one. Focusing on this changing time period, we can see a vivid picture of how accounting systems were intertwined with and implicated into organisational life.