The concept of practice and practice theory are reviewed in this section given the focus of this thesis on the study of the relationship between accounting and innovation during the unfolding of the NPD process in practice. Thus the data collected for this study focus on the practices that unfold during the NPD process (the method of data collection is detailed in Chapter 6), including accounting practices, which consist of the “actions, doings, and sayings” (Schatzki, 2001a) that continuously endeavour to develop innovation for the new product. This thesis intends to study how accounting engages with the desires, intentions and motivations for innovation. In order to do so, attention is given to accounting practices (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007a; 2007b), and how these practices are interrelated with other practices in the NPD process.
Practice theory has been selected as a theoretical perspective for this study and it was chosen over actor network theory and structuration theory. The review of the literature on accounting within organizations as well as the preliminary empirical material collected for this study at the case site led me to consider Actor Network Theory (hereafter ANT) to help frame and interpret the findings of this research study. ANT has inspired accounting research and researchers since the early nineteen nineties (Justene and Mouritsen, 2011). ANT is a research approach developed by Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, and also by other scholars such as John Law, within studies of science and technology (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014). ANT has enriched understanding of management accounting from “consideration of only technical and functional system characteristics to the study of social and organizational contexts in which management accounting operates” (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014, pp.1325-1326). Insights developed from studies of ANT have contributed to describing “the very nature of societies” (Latour, 1996, p.369). These insights do not limit researchers to considering just “human individual actors, but extend [...] the word actor - or actant - to non-human, non- individual entities” (Latour, 1996, p.369). In ANT an actant “is something that acts
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or to which activity is granted by others [...]. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action” (Latour, 1996, p.373). In ANT studies, any actor is a network as “actors are not conceived as fixed entities but as flows, as circulating objects undergoing trials, and their stability, continuity, isotopy has to be obtained by other actions and other trials” (Latour, 1996, p.374). Actor-networks are described “as highly dynamic and inherently unstable. They can be stabilised to some extent when [e.g.] people, technologies, roles, routines, training, incentives, and so on are aligned. This alignment is achieved (or at least, attempted) through ‘translation’” (Greenhalgh and Stones, 2010, p.1287), involving problematisation, interessement, enrolment, and mobilisation (Callon, 1986; Greenhalgh and Stones, 2010).
Within the NPD process, the heterogeneity of the participating humans (e.g. the project leader and the project team members) and non-humans (e.g. the prototypes, projects reports and documents, standardized/structured processes) as well as the “pliable” and flexible nature of these processes initially motivated consideration of ANT as appropriate to interpret and frame the research underpinning this thesis. However, a more in-depth consideration of the appropriateness of ANT as a conceptual and interpretive framework for this study led to the conclusion that Latour’s view that non- humans have agency meant that it was not suitable as a theoretical framework for this PhD study. Although this research seems to have some partial affinity with that literature building on ANT, which portrays accounting phenomena as “enrolled in an actor-network that reconfigures other actors’ interests” (Justene and Mouritsen, 2011, p.176), the same literature also refers to how “accounting technologies and calculative devices are granted a new and prominent role because they are seen as actors that take part in the formulating, construction – and often stabilization – of organizational activities” (Justene and Mouritsen, 2011, p.176). According to these studies, accounting is “adapted and translated” (Justene and Mouritsen, 2011, p.176). As regards the specific case of this thesis, I could not recognize an agency of accounting within Beta. In this study, accounting is viewed as an object that stimulates the interest of the actors involved in the NPD process. Here, accounting is interpreted as a means of translating the different interests at stake during the unfolding of the process of innovation. Accounting is a stimulus for collaborations, discussions, reflections, conversations among the actors but it is not attributed any agency, it does not appear as “something that acts or to which activity is granted by others” (Latour, 1996, p.373). These
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reflections explain why ANT was not chosen as the conceptual frame for this study. This study has favoured the use of practice theory instead, as this research is aimed at examining in detail the unfolding practices throughout the NPD process and the subjects and objects which were involved in the unfolding, without pretending any symmetry between subjects and objects. The use of practice theory as a method theory9 (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014) for this study has allowed me interpret how accounting engaged with the desires, the intentions, the motivations of the subjects involved in the innovation process, by means of examining the series of their actions, doings, sayings, and the objects characterizing and developed during the unfolding of NPD practices.
The interest of this study in the role of accounting during the development of innovation and NPD processes in practice also stimulated consideration of the suitability of Structuration Theory (hereafter ST) as a theoretical lens for this study. The use of ST by researchers has significantly contributed to management accounting research heretofore (Coad and Herbert, 2009). ST has offered a “rich source of concepts to help understand the situated practices of actors as they draw on and reproduce structures over time” (Conrad, 2014, p.133). Those studies dealing with ST in the accounting area have referred to social structure and systems as characterized by a relationship of duality (Englund and Gerdin, 2014). The “rules and resources that actors draw upon in the reproduction of social systems are themselves the product of social action” (Englund and Gerdin, 2014, p.171), where structures provide “the bases upon which agents draw when they engage in social practices” (Coad and Herbert, 2009, p.179, drawing on Giddens, 1979).
The majority of studies based on ST are focussed on “how accounting (and its structural features) is (re)produced as a form of practice (i.e. as a social system)” (Englund and Gerdin, 2014, p.167). The significant interactions between multiple and heterogeneous professionals/agents within NPD contexts with their structured processes consisting of a predetermined sequence of phases (Cooper, 1990) which determine the unfolding of the
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In interdisciplinary studies of management accounting, “theories often appear in two distinct roles, domain theory and method theory” (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014, p.1309, drawing on Lukka, 2005). A method theory is an instrumental perspective, a tool, a theoretical lens offering perspectives and “a lever for gaining new insights, which can be more specific but also lead to more abstract or general conclusions” (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014, p.1312). The domain theory “refers to a particular set of knowledge on a substantive topic area situated in a field or domain such as management accounting” (Lukka and Vinnari, 2014, p.1309).
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NPD practices, led the researcher to consider ST as a potential theoretical lens for this study. In developing and elucidating ST, Giddens sought to bring together objectivist social theories (which assume that a hard social reality exists independently of individual actors and is to a large extent deterministic of their actions) and subjectivist ones (which assume that no social reality exists except the one that individuals construct in their interpretations and perceptions) (Greenhalgh and Stones, 2010, p.1286, drawing upon Giddens, 1984).
Stones (2005) has provided ST with “more concrete constructs” (Coad and Herbert, 2009), through focus on the “ontology-in-situ of particular structures and agents” (Greenhalgh and Stones, 2010, p. 1288, drawing upon Stones, 2005). This theory, also referred to as ‘Strong ST’, has introduced the notion of position-practices. These are “not merely structural ‘slots’ within which agents are largely interchangeable; rather, they are perpetuated (and changed) through their enactment by active agents within the network of relationships” (Greenhalgh and Stones, 2011, p.1288). Position-practices involve the employment of a quadripartite model of structuration, which comprise external structures; internal structures; active agency; and outcomes (Coad and Herbert, 2009, p.179, drawing on Stones, 2005). Stones (2005) moved “from the overwhelmingly abstract ontological concepts evident in the work of Giddens, towards understanding specific phenomena in a particular time and place” (Coad and Herbert, 2009, p.178).
ST applied to accounting research should require “researchers to be sensitive to [... the] diversity [of phenomenology, hermeneutics and practices of agents engaged in social interaction] through the examination not only of the influence of external structures, but also how they interact with the internal structures of agents in the context of the research study, and how the recurrent reconciliation of these interactions affects the practices of management accounting” (Coad and Herbert, 2009, p.189).
The case material collected for this study does not lend itself to the use of ST as a theoretical lens for the following reasons. The concepts of agency and structures, where agency is understood as it is represented in agency theory and where structures provide “the bases upon which agents draw when they engage in social practices” (Coad and Herbert, 2009, p.179, drawing on Giddens, 1979), were not reflected in the dynamics of
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the empirical context of this study (in Beta). Neither were they considered helpful for the achievement of the research objective - examination of the relationships between accounting and the desires, intentions, and motivations of the agents/experts participating in the NPD process. Furthermore, in the empirical material gathered, no significant relevance was found in the influence of external structures on the practices that unfolded during the NPD. The use of practice theory and the focus on peoples’ understanding, on what made sense to people to do, on the rules of the NPD process, on peoples’ orientation towards Beta’s aim of achieving innovation, their beliefs, hopes and emotions, are considered here to be much more helpful for the collection and understanding of the empirical material and for the subsequent interpretation of the data. Having offered an explanation of why practice theory was chosen over other theories (specifically ANT and ST), the remainder of this section focuses on the insights underpinning the concept of ‘practices’ building on practice theory as developed by Schatzki.
Different meanings by various authors have been attributed to the concept of practice (Schatzki, 2007; Pilerot and Limberg, 2011). This study refers to practices as being “materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understandings” (Schatzki, 2001b, p.2). Practices are composed of and performed by “open-ended” actions, doings and sayings (Schatzki, 2001a). Moreover, they are arranged by “a pool of understandings, rules, and teleoaffective structure[s]” (Schatzki, 2001a, p.53; see also Schatzki, 2005). The pool of understandings consists of the knowledge of how to identify and carry out the intended actions that “determine what makes sense to people to do” (Schreiber, 2014, p.349; see Schatzki, 2001a; 2005). The rules “constitute explicitly formulated procedures, instructions, laws” (Schreiber, 2014, p.349, see also Schatzki, 2001a; 2005), which lead and determine the course of the activities. Teleoaffective structures refer to the importance of an orientation toward an end, realizing what things are really important. These structures rely on the principle that the actions are underpinned by ends, “beliefs, hopes and emotions” (Schreiber, 2014, p.349), as well as expectations and intentions to pursue and realize (Schatzki, 2005). Understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures are all arrangements considered to be ‘pivotal’ for the development of an order within the interconnections of multiple practices as well as among their “arrangements of people, artifacts, and things” (Schatzki, 2001b, p.6).
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Generally, practices are constructed by individuals (Lowrie, 2014). In that respect, Schatzki emphasizes how the connection between subjects and objects is fundamental during the development of practices (see also Schreiber, 2014). The human agency is within the sayings, doings, and the actions that compose practices (Caldwell, 2012). Additionally, practices may also be based on tacit understandings of the individuals, “comprehended at a bodily level, and enacted in practical ways” (Hodge, 2014, p.168).
The concept of practice, as well as practice theory, has been used by the accounting literature for the interpretation of accounting practices. Ahrens and Chapman (2007a) have referred to practice theory as a means that allows one “to delve into the details of the functioning of subsystems. Practices are about the specific relationships forged between understandings and traditions of social groups and their aspirations and pressing problems” (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007a, p.3). Practices are well understood if their activities are traced carefully (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007a). Practices are not mechanical or repeated activities. “Rather, practices depend on the intended meaningful relatedness between activities with respect to outcomes, clients, practitioners, techniques, resources, strategies, institutions, etc.” (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007b, p.109). When a management control system is conceived of as a practice, it is referred to as a “bundle understood as management control practices plus material and technical arrangements” (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007a, p.10). Specifically, to study and theorize management accounting practices, attention needs to be given to “how people in organizations make specific uses of widely available accounting solutions, how such solutions come to be at their disposal, and how their use might change existing accountings and give rise to new accounting solutions that others can use” (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007b, p.99). Indeed, practices are better understood if the focus of their study lies on their “constitutive activities” (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007a, p.23) and on the people and the “things through which they coexist” (Schatzki, 2001a, p.43). Furthermore, “management accounting practices can enable the resolution of (potential) disagreements because they introduce a common criterion for the evaluation of practices (such as profitability) and/or because they provide a space that allows a workable compromise to be developed” (Jørgensen and Messner, 2010, p.187).
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