The cultural fields of accounting practices: Institutionalization and accounting changes beyond the organization

Abstract

Research interest in the institutionalization of accounting has risen appreciably in the past twenty years. Much of this work has been occupied with regulations and professional norms, often in individual firm settings. However, social spaces around, i.e., institutional fields, and beyond corporations, regulatory agencies and professional organizations are important in the process of accounting innovation and transformation. This paper draws attention to these social spaces by developing the concept of the cultural fields of accounting practices as an institutional field level analysis that has so far been relatively neglected in the accounting literature. In developing this concept, we outline how we define and characterise cultural fields, emphasizing their cultural-cognitive character, their lack of formal governance, their dispersion and the varying social space they can inhabit (from bounded technology fields to global ‘world culture’ Meyer, 2009; Lechner & Boli, 2005). Our term ‘cultural fields’ references both the wider, field-level processes that are not captured by a focus upon professional norms and state regulations, and the ‘cultural-cognitive’ character of cultural field-level processes that we argue merit wider consideration in accounting research. We identify three linked features of the cultural fields of accounting practices: the dispersed sites of the cultural production of accounting; the diverse, shifting and hybridised logics; and the role of arbiters of tastes and the carriers of ‘best practices’. We draw on these key features to discuss and offer examples of researching accounting that would address these processes of accounting development and institutionalization.