Accounting in organizational action: A subsuming explanation or situated explanations?

The central question addressed in this paper is whether the relationship of accounting and organizational action has been, or could be, exhaustively pre-defined. Drawing on some prior literature a number of candidate theories are considered. Each is first subjected to internal criticisms and is then shown to be unable to adequately explain the varying response to accounting of the employee representatives whose consequential relationships with accounting are investigated through a longitudinal field study. The description in the study of three sequential time periods—within each of which accounting had a different relevance for the actors—seeks to illustrate that the meaning given to accounting in organizations cannot be enclosed in a general, subsuming theory as situationally specific, multiple, and potentially volatile factors are involved.