Lim, Gavin S. Z. (2000) From strategy, to accounting : accounting practice and strategic discourse in the telecommunications industry. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Following Roberts (1990) and Dent (1990). this study investigates the
importance of complexifying the relationship between strategy and
accounting. The genealogical approach of Hoskin et al (1997) provides
inspiration as to the ways in which strategic discourse (itself promoted as
a subject of study by Knights and Morgan (1990,1991,1995)) is
historically contingent upon practices of accounting. I take up this task
of inaugurating the study of accounting practice and strategy discourse,
from strategy to accounting, to develop a new perspective of how their
interaction takes place. This gives birth to a re-reading of the strategy
(and accounting) literatures, from the direction of a constitutive notion of
accounting practices. In particular, the processual and critical schools of
strategy are found to promote conventional notions of accounting as
mirror, as secondary and passive practice, which circulate beneath the
usual level of visibility. Building on this emergent approach, a post-
Foucauldian theory of practices is outlined from a methodological
viewpoint. This approach does not begin from such general categories as
'the individual', 'the social' or 'the economic', and thereby does not follow
conventional understandings of 'doing ethnography'.
The inquiry is empirically situated within the context of a longitudinal
investigation (1997-2000) into the U. K. based part of a global
telecommunications company, Teleco. I discover complex interactions
between accounting practices and the workings of strategy, both as
presence and absence. There is a partial presence of strategy even within
the most 'strategic' parts of Teleco, in conjunction with a growing
absence within those parts most distant from 'the strategy'. Despite this,
or perhaps because of this, the spread of accounting and accounting
based-practices rolls on, albeit in a non-uniform way.
This brings forth the possibility of a strategic accounting, one whose
practices are perhaps most visibly internalised and effected on my very
self, thus adding weight to the rejection within this thesis of the
metaphysical categories of either 'strategy' or 'accounting.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5601 Accounting
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Accounting, Business planning, Telecommunication -- Great Britain, Teleco
Official Date:	September 2000
Dates:	Date Event September 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Extent:	313 leaves
Language:	eng

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