Don’t Mistake Shadow for Substance: Real-life responsibility

Abstract

Previous management-control studies have regarded responsibility accounting as the assigned formal authorities of individuals underpinned by other organisational structures. The financial success of, for example, projects, is evaluated through various business ratios extracted from accounting figures. Also, performance feedback to individual managers who are held responsible is crucial to this view. However, what being responsible means is not clarified. This paper reports on a yearlong study of project management at Ericsson Microwave Systems AB in Sweden. The study is of an ethnographical character and is based on a series of interviews with members of a project team and on observations of their meetings. Within the paper the following question is addressed: How is responsibility constructed within companies, and what is the role of accounting information in this regard? The purpose of the study is to enhance the understanding of what types of responsibility constructs organisational members develop, and the role of accounting figures in this respect. A distinction is made between correlated and superimposed control in order to clarify the decisive difference between formal authority and responsibility. The findings indicate greater complexity than mainstream research attributes to accounting and its link to responsibility. By means of a number of illustrations, we show how constructs of responsibility reflect a tension between expectations of (1) what one wants to do versus what one ought to do, (2) responsibility versus formal assigned authority, and finally (3) co-ordination of one’s own needs with the needs of others versus securing one’s self-interest. Contrary to mainstream ideas, in our case accounting figures played a secondary role in project management. However, accounting is an important point of reference for peoples’ actions and for their responsibility. Our conclusions are not in line with previous claims about legitimating and dominating being the most significant aspects of accountability situations. Instead, we add the trust-creation aspect to the sense-making aspect.