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Paradoxical puzzles of control
and circuits of power
Paradoxical
puzzles
João Oliveira
University of Porto School of Economics and Management,
Porto, Portugal, and
Stewart Clegg
University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
425
Received 10 February 2015
Revised 18 August 2015
Accepted 21 August 2015
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to clarify a paradox in an organisation: in the past, formally powerful
“central” actors confronted important limitations in their relations with formally less powerful actors.
However, three innovations – the financial accounting module of an enterprise resource planning (ERP)
system, a corporate centre (CC) and a shared services centre (SSC) – substantially changed and
re-centred network power relations. The authors adopt a critical discourse to explain this paradox,
contributing to the emerging literature on SSCs and bridging the management control and power
literatures.
Design/methodology/approach – An in-depth, processual, actor-network theory-inspired
three-year case study of a large Portuguese manufacturer.
Findings – As the intertwined accounting-related innovations were (re)mobilised by actors,
dynamically adjusting to unfolding repercussions, control and power effects emerged, enabling
enhanced organisational steering.
Research limitations/implications – Based on a single case, this paper highlights effects of
managerial technologies, in particular ERPs and SSCs, on control and power relations, and refines
Clegg’s model for future research.
Practical implications – The transactional, low value-added activities typically performed by SSCs
should not lead to underestimating their potentially profound organisational consequences. However,
the surrounding socio-technical network is decisive for the emerging, inter-related repercussions.
Originality/value – This paper explains the relative capacity of actors to influence the practices and
configuration of the organisational network structurally, fixing power relations within the
socio-technical network through innovations in the accounting area, in particular ERPs and SSCs. By
revising Clegg’s circuits of power framework, this paper contributes to understanding possibilities and
limits of accounting techniques in management control procedures.
Keywords ERP, Shared services centre, Power, Management control, Actor-network theory,
Obligatory passage point
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Power relations are everywhere in organisations but, in the past, were rarely addressed
(Pfeffer, 1992, p. 8; Kanter, 1979). In the management control literature, this relative lack
of attention is surprising (Burns, 2000; Carter et al., 2010; Clegg et al., 2006; Ribeiro, 2003;
The first author acknowledges the support of the University of Porto School of Economics and
Management, the University of Dundee, the Gulbenkian Foundation and the IBM PhD Fellowship.
Qualitative Research in
Accounting & Management
Vol. 12 No. 4, 2015
pp. 425-451
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1176-6093
DOI 10.1108/QRAM-02-2015-0023
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Siti-Nabiha and Scapens, 2005), as power relations constitute management and
organisational control. The traditional definition of power as “a resource to get things
done through other people” (Fleming and Spicer, 2014, p. 239) mirrors the traditional
definition of management, and management control practices are necessarily founded
on power relations designed to obtain outcomes through organisational relations,
linking organisational levels and functions, including the core disciplines of
management accounting and control (Jakobsen, 2012).
Power is an essentially contested concept, one whose multiple faces (Clegg and
Haugaard, 2009; Lukes, 2005) play out in sites of organisational politics (Fleming and
Spicer, 2014; Foucault, 1998). Fleming and Spicer (2014, p. 279) note debate about “how
power functions (whether it operates in an episodic or systemic fashion)” and suggest
that episodic and systemic dynamics are “two dimensions of the broader construct of
power”. These dimensions underlie Clegg’s (1989) “circuits of power”, a seminal
framework whose “explicit mechanism for tracing the exercise of power” (Lapsley and
Giordano, 2010) allows researchers to identify and understand both how power shifts
across actor networks and how power generates such networks.
In this paper, we address the management and organisational control literature, in
particular, the emerging stream focusing on Shared Services Centres (SSC). The
“paradoxical puzzle of being in control yet not in control” as well as “how organizations
are being steered” (see the Call for Papers for this special issue) link to major
accounting-related innovations. We encountered an empirical paradox of power that we
analysed using Clegg’s (1989) “circuits of power” to explain the relative capacity of
various actors to influence organisational relations. In particular, we highlight the role
of intertwined assemblages of innovations related with accounting and management
control – in particular, the financial module of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
system, a relocated corporate centre (CC) and a new SSC. These innovations co-produced
dispositional and action effects across the network, providing an opportunity for a rich
understanding of traditional central control in the context of the emergence of new
organisational capabilities and forms, providing a more powerful, nuanced and in-depth
understanding than merely assembling simple lists of “impacts” or “critical success
factors”. In so doing, we re-specify Clegg’s framework. Contributing to recent calls to
solve disagreements on how power operates (Fleming and Spicer, 2014), we clarify how
the structural circuits of power may emerge and operate, hence enhancing the adoption
of this (revised) framework in future research.
The paper begins by discussing alternative conceptualisations of power and briefly
sketches how ERPs and SSCs have been positioned relative to power in organisations.
Three research questions are then elaborated regarding the case study organisation.
First, why and how were formally powerful, central actors, seemingly in control of
strategically contingent resources, limited in power relations? Second, why and how did
these actors introduce and mobilise technological and organisational innovations for
change? Third, how did these technological and organisational innovations reconfigure
the relations of power among actors? The design of the research is sketched
next, before introducing the case organisation and the three accounting-related
innovations. These innovations and accompanying changes in the circuits of power are
investigated and the repercussions identified in terms of changes in power and
practices, in accounting and beyond. Building on the analysis, we discuss the roles of
ERPs, CCs and SSCs as innovations within the network of management control and
propose several developments to Clegg’s framework, before presenting the main
conclusions.
2. Power, ERPs and SSCs
Conventional organisational conceptions of power privilege the effects that power
produces when exercised; in other words, they consider “power as cause”, as an
exogenous variable, where power is exercised over some agent(s) or situation(s), with
strategic contingencies theory (Hickson et al., 1971) being the classic case. Control of
resources is seen to be the source of power being exercised over other actors in a
zero-sum game; this sense of “power over” underlies the traditional notion of control and
one-dimensional power (Lukes, 2005). In the resource-based approach (Donaldson,
2001), power is conceptualised as a structurally generated “ability or capacity, which
may or may not even be exercised” (Lukes, 2005, p. 109; Dean, 2013; Göhler, 2009 on
“power to”). Most frequently, this conception sees power exercised over one agent by
another (Dahl, 1957). However, power can also be seen as positive, as a capacity to
produce effects, with evident similarities with the accounting and control literature’s
wider notion of organisational control as “causing to happen” (Dermer, 1988, p. 26; Seeck
and Kantola, 2009).
A key question from this framework is “what causes the [contingent] capacity of
some actors to produce outcomes”, seeing power as a “capacity for collective action”,
“relationally attributed or available” to given actors “within a collective capable of acting
in concert” (Ribeiro, 2003, pp. 63-64, emphasis in the original). Clegg et al. (2006) note that
particular agencies’ “power to” achieve objectives often requires “power over” other
agencies and that “power to” may also require directing and even imposing constraints
on agencies, without implying that they will be worse off (such as when conducting an
orchestra or controlling traffic). Effective (and additive) “power to” in organisations is
thus complemented by (equally additive) “power with” (Follett, 1995). Therefore, power
includes not only the capacity to control agencies’ compliance with desired standards
but also the capacity to frame the overall organisational direction and coordination of
interrelated agencies.
Following Foucault (1975/1977), Callon (1986) and Latour (1997, 2005) developed
alternative actor network capacity concepts of power. Foucault conceived of a capillary
form of power, tracing its effects flowing through dispersed social relations generating
control of specific resources. The relational power of an actor is based on ever-shifting
networks and subjections through technologies of administration, surveillance and
assessment. Actor-network theory’s (ANT) distinctive ontology includes both human
and non-human actors, “collectively referred to as actants […], all […] participants in a
network of heterogeneous components” (Volkoff et al., 2007, p. 834; Ahrens and
Chapman, 2007; Quattrone and Hopper, 2006).
“Obligatory passage points” (OPPs) (Callon, 1986) represent devices (rhetorical and
material) channelling and framing the “conduct of conduct” (Dean, 2013) in specific
situational contexts; actors seek to maintain, gain or deny strategic advantage by
controlling or contesting the meaning and control of these OPPs. OPPs also fix the rules
guiding actors’ actions and constrain available possibilities. When successful, OPPs
lead to a (temporary and partial) stabilisation or fixity of such rules, though
permanently challengeable as actors continuously deploy their strategies of and for
power.
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Building on these concepts, Clegg’s (1989) framework of “circuits of power” depicts
three circuits through which power flows. First, the episodic circuit captures visible
exercises of power by actors in particular, day-to-day encounters, seeking to obtain
outcomes favouring their definition of interests. These exercises depend on the
configuration of the network of relations stabilised through the other two circuits. The
circuit of social integration captures prevailing rules of practice shaping actors’
dispositions to behave in certain ways and includes rules of meaning and membership:
rules of meaning guide actors in making sense of the world, events, others and
themselves, hence shaping the actors’ knowledge which, in turn, underlies their
(re)actions; rules of membership frame considerations about actors’ appropriate
behaviour, in the context of identity assumptions and claims, given their (actual or
desired) status as members of certain groups. Finally, the circuit of system integration
consists of “material conditions”, based on techniques of production and discipline, such
as production machinery, information systems, organisational structures and business
processes – hence conveying power as facilitative, productive and positive. Together,
rules of meaning and membership and techniques of production and discipline that
become OPPs frame the institutional field in which actors episodically exercise power in
specific interactions. Clegg’s (1989) analytical (rather than normative – Dean, 2013)
account of how power operates has been extensively applied (Clegg et al., 2006),
including in management accounting and control (Carter et al., 2010; Lapsley and
Giordano, 2010; Mutiganda, 2014; Ribeiro, 2003; Ribeiro and Scapens, 2006).
Applying Clegg’s (1989) model to accounting and management control provides a
framework for understanding dynamic interplays between power relations in
organisations and interdependent management control devices shaping patterns of
governmentality (Dean, 2013; Foucault, 1991), whether complementary or substitutive
(Grabner and Moers, 2013; Kärreman and Alvesson, 2004). Governmentality refers to
the organised practices through which subjects are governed. The concept of
governmentality has been extensively applied in the accounting field (Ahrens and
Chapman, 2007; McKinlay et al., 2010; Spence and Rinaldi, 2014), as accounting controls
are a significant practice in local regimes of governmentality, framing mentalities and
rationalities through their techniques.
The management control literature has long researched the innovation of ERP
systems, but is only recently addressing the innovation of SSCs. ERPs, as widespread
integrated business software, are central to management control (Grabski et al., 2009;
Granlund and Malmi, 2002; Sánchez-Rodríguez and Spraakman, 2012; Scapens and
Jazayeri, 2003). ERPs are devices that enable (and restrict) different configurations of
management control and resistance (DeChow and Mouritsen, 2005; Lodh and Gaffikin,
2003; Quattrone and Hopper, 2005, 2006; Wagner et al., 2011). Emergent actor-networks
form assemblages (Latour, 2005) within intra-organisational power relations and
configurations, defining OPPs in contentious and a priori unpredictable ways
(Quattrone and Hopper, 2005).
SSCs are increasingly relevant as a new organisational form in global operations and
governance (Gospel and Sako, 2010; Herbert and Seal, 2009; Seal and Herbert, 2013). As
an alternative to outsourcing, SSCs combine “a market-style, customer-centred outlook
with in-house management direction and control” (Herbert and Seal, 2012, p. 83). SSCs’
hybrid, multiple alternatives of scope and independence (Bergeron, 2003) result in
variable potential outcomes in terms of management control and intra-organisational
power relations (Gospel and Sako, 2010). Linkages and interdependencies between
ERPs and SSCs adoption and development (Gospel and Sako, 2010; Joseph, 2006)
occurring in management control (Herbert and Seal, 2009, 2012) have been researched
from transaction cost and the resource-based perspectives (Gospel and Sako, 2010), as
well as from structuration theory (Seal and Herbert, 2013). Seal and Herbert (2013)
highlight that further research regarding control issues around SSCs, in particular
through non-functionalist approaches, would be timely. Our concern is with how ERPs
and SSCs change power relations, promote governmentality and “internal control” as
well as new ways of “organisational steering”.
3. Research design and questions
A paradox inspired this paper: at the end of the 1990s in the case organisation, “central”
and formally authoritative actors lacked power in their relations with “local”, less
formally authoritative actors, situated in subsidiaries, particularly at a plant level.
Albeit the central formal authority, they were routinely outflanked by other loci of
power in the organisation. By the mid-2000s, the relations of power had changed
significantly, prompting the researchers to question “what causes power relations to
change?” (Clegg, 1989; Seal, 2003). We theoretically address this empirical puzzle,
focusing on shifts in actors’ relational power, through in-depth investigation of
organisational change processes; using a naturalistic, interpretive research approach
(Ahrens et al., 2008), we generated case-specific, qualitative data with a processual
perspective. The explanatory case study method was used to study organisational
change processes in a holistic, longitudinal and retrospective way. The single unit of
analysis (Yin, 2009) was the large organisation “IndCo” (fictitious name), with
headquarters in Portugal and production facilities in several countries. The fieldwork
extended from March 2005 to April 2008.
Multiple data sources were used to allow triangulation and construct a “chain of
evidence” (Hopper and Major, 2007, p. 68). Understanding unfolding and long-term
organisational change requires both longitudinal and retrospective perspectives. Traces
left by the actors’ strategies enable one to “follow” the actors retrospectively. Most
information was obtained through 54 semi-structured interviews with 29 actors as well
as observation of 9 meetings and presentations, a total of over 110 hours of data (see
Appendix). Virtually all interviews were recorded and transcribed; presentations were
partly transcribed, according to their research relevance. Extensive notes were taken
regarding direct observation during several days spent in the information technology
(IT) department open plan office and during coffee and lunch periods at headquarters
and local plants. Internal documentation including project plans, reports, presentations
and user manuals were obtained, as well as a large number of publicly available sources
of information. Relevant extracts and insights were copied from over 1,000 pages of
transcripts and observation notes into a large file organised by themes. Cross-links
between the documents enabled an integrated view over the data.
We used purposeful, snowball sampling to select relevant actors. At the time of the
interviews, five respondents worked as plant directors or plant controllers; 9 (out of 21)
centrally located actors had previously held positions at various local levels, such that
14 actors had worked in local contexts. Three external IT consultants were also
interviewed. Many interviewees had a long company history: more than one-third had
been at IndCo for 18 years or more; 50 per cent had 12 years or more service while 90 per
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cent had 6 years or more (see Appendix): this historical embeddedness enabled the
recovery of past traces, with the usual caveats about historical reconstruction,
concerning the passage of time (Judt, 2012, p. 395). In addition, the change process was
still unfolding (e.g. new SAP modules were being implemented during the fieldwork),
facilitating a grounded approach to data collected before the technology was totally
“fixed, known and unproblematic” (Preston et al., 1992, p. 564). In addition to general
triangulation across and within various data sources, internal validity (Silverman, 2005)
was improved by most respondents being interviewed multiple times: two-thirds of total
respondents were interviewed between two and four times. The results of often lengthy
intervals between interviews allowed for cross-checking (occasionally conflicting)
insights across respondents[1].
4. Power and innovations at the case organisation
4.1 The case context
“IndCo” began its activity more than half a century ago in Portugal. IndCo’s products are
well-established, simple, low in technology and relatively homogeneous and
undifferentiated. IndCo has grown mainly through acquisitions: first, in Portugal and,
later, starting in the late 1980s, internationally. In the early 1990s, it acquired a large
Spanish competitor and in 1998 it acquired a very large, financially stressed and
technologically out-dated European competitor, substantially increasing IndCo’s
world-wide presence (to preserve anonymity, the only countries identified are Portugal
and Spain). The latter acquisition and an industry recession led, in the early years of the
twenty-first century, to reduced margins, creating financial difficulties, until IndCo’s
management developed turnaround programs and the industry recovered. However, the
global economic crisis at the end of the decade affected the company’s performance
again.
“Mr A” was IndCo’s chairman and majority shareholder for several decades. During
the period researched (mid 1990s-2008), he was the ultimate and undisputed source of
formal authority in IndCo and its group. However, after the acquisition of the Spanish
competitor, most top management – with the notable exception of Mr A – moved to
Spain, where a CC was developed, replacing the previous CC in Portugal. Several
interviewees reported that by 1998, in practice, the main decision centre was located in
Spain. Mr A, as well as other top managers in Portugal, although still the ultimate
decision makers, now had less opportunities to obtain knowledge and intervene in the
daily management of the business. Significantly, some centrally driven initiatives
involving work practices and information systems failed to produce the desired effects
of centralisation in IndCo. As a former director put it, “plant directors were the Lords at
IndCo”, successfully resisting the introduction of changes not suiting their interests.
Given central actors’ formal power and control over resources, their limited
effectiveness emerged as an empirical puzzle that begged suitable explanation.
The diversity of local markets (small and separated due to high transportation costs)
and IndCo’s history of acquisitions created a decentralised, autonomous and diverse
company, both at plant and country levels during the 1990s. The acquired companies
typically preserved some local organisational structures and capabilities in commercial,
purchasing, financial, accounting and IT areas. In spite of its focus on a single industry
and ambition to define strategies and control centrally, IndCo lacked global “cohesion”,
being “an amalgam of plants, not a company” (senior manager, 2006). It was a
substantially decentralised organisation, even for the multi-divisional form model
(Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1993; Clegg et al., 2011). Finally, considerable diversity of IT
solutions, management practices and prevailing rules and beliefs existed across local
sites and also vis-à-vis the centre. However, after 1999, the CC was gradually transferred
to IndCo’s headquarters in Portugal, and a SSC was created at the same site.
Next, we deploy Clegg’s (1989) framework: first, to account for power up to the late
1990s, based on the episodic, social integration and system integration circuits; second,
we account for the innovations introduced in IndCo; and third, we analyse the
repercussions of innovations for circuits of power.
4.2 Phase 1: accounting for power up to the late 1990s
4.2.1 The episodic circuit of power. In the episodic circuit of power, in which power by
decision occurs, particular attention must be devoted to Mr A. The long-standing,
extremely wealthy majority shareholder and chairman had the greatest formal control
of organisational resources – a key basis of the episodic circuit. Mr A’s capacity to
achieve objectives in concrete social interactions was not in doubt, and his orders were
typically followed[2]. However, outcomes do not rely exclusively on such episodic
exercises of power: the field of power is one in which concrete interactions meet
embedded circuits of social and system integration.
4.2.2 The circuit of social integration. Local rather than company-level issues were
generally prioritised, representing rules of membership towards the local level. In an
extreme case, in a particular country, plants competed among themselves over the same
customer orders, damaging global profit margins. Another example was sticking to
plant-specific rules regarding the timing to confirm product availability and orders,
varying from a few hours to a few days, to the detriment of the commercial activity of the
company as a whole. Despite central actors organising regular meetings with managers
involved to promote uniformity, few changes actually occurred and plant-level logics
and priorities tended to prevail. Social integration was resolutely local. Within the
financial area, some actors enacted (i.e. complied with) local rules concerning reporting
timings but did not enact rules concerning the (tighter) timings to report to the CC. More
generally, financial directors in each country were mostly concerned with locally
oriented information and requirements (“They gave total and absolute priority to
country-level reporting, not to internal group reporting” – senior manager, 2005).
Prevalent rules of meaning tended to favour local definitions of objectives and
interests. In the financial area, accountants in different plants and companies attributed
different meanings to particular accounts and might classify given transactions using
different accounts and criteria (for example, whether particular machine parts were an
asset or a period cost). In the operational area, product references and commercial
brands differed both across countries and even within the same country. Consequently,
the enactment of different rules of meaning (i.e. what accounts, transactions and
products meant across IndCo) created difficulties in processes involving multiple units.
4.2.3 The circuit of system integration. IndCo’s information systems and
organisational structures and processes worked as techniques of discipline and
production. Until the late 1990s, the information systems architecture was a bricolage of
dispersed systems. An operational system encompassing logistics and production was
developed in-house in the late 1980s, highly tailored to fit specific requirements of local
businesses and users. It was installed in each site, and as it allowed development of
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site-specific functionalities, it did not impose uniformity. Furthermore, disparate
production equipment did not provide detailed information to central actors to improve
efficiency in other plants. Financial accounting was supported by different commercial
packages across countries, using different accounting structures (charts of accounts),
making remote access difficult or impossible. Headquarters had to rely on information
produced and sent by each local team, manually entered into the central software,
Hyperion Enterprise for Reporting.
Management accounting and control activities were supported by two systems:
Excel spreadsheets and Hyperion Enterprise for Management, the consolidation
solution supporting management control at headquarters. At plant level, Excel
spreadsheets, partly specific to each site, usually developed by the local plant controller,
calculated and reported product costs and variances. Additionally, plant controllers
used an interface to import product costs to their local level Hyperion application; they
then emailed that local application output to headquarters management controllers, who
introduced it into their central Hyperion application. Central actors commonly
expressed concerns about diversity in local practices and systems as being difficult to
identify and overcome:
There was a procedure manual for management control. But not all plant controllers did it the
same way. Sometimes, people had different visions due to having completely different figures
about something, because the figures were not even comparable – although people believed
they were (IT manager, 2005).
Not all companies were taking advantage of [a financial functionality of the legacy operational
system], because they preferred to do it through other tools, like Excel. Some people from
headquarters said that that should happen. But then, in practice, it didn’t happen, because they
couldn’t pass that message almost as a law, as obligatory. And so plant controllers kept
thinking “OK, as long as this is not compulsory, we won’t do it” (IT manager, 2005).
Financial and management accounting had limitations for central actors who produced,
interpreted or used organisation-wide consolidated information for purposes of decision
making, coordination and control. Different IT solutions, charts of accounts and
practices caused significant difficulties and reliability concerns in consolidation
activities. “When I’m working on an Excel spreadsheet, I can remove a cell [intentionally
or not], and that’s it” (IT manager, 2005).
In a nutshell: IndCo was a decentralised and diverse organisation, information
systems supporting production, financial accounting and management accounting were
not integrated at a local level, and importantly, local and central accounting systems
were also not integrated. Collectively, these techniques limited the capacity of central
actors to access, interpret, validate, control and compare local information. Central
oversight was limited in scope and depth, episodic and dependent on locally produced
information that was often not timely, comparable, reliable or verifiable. Extant rules
favoured local definitions of objectives and interests. Limited detailed control over local
actors and corporate-wide visibility and knowledge limited the capacity to intervene
effectively at local levels.
4.2.4 Extant circuits of power and their provisional nature. Formal power of decision
did not determine power relations. Despite overwhelming formal control over decisions
and deployment of resources, the central actors’ power limitations emerged from
characteristics of the structural circuits of social and systems integration. Collectively,
these features reduced central actors’ structural capacity to discipline and guide
decisions and actions throughout the company.
IndCo had a traditional multi-divisional organisational form (Chandler, 1962; Perrow,
2014), with mostly high-level responsibilities retained at headquarters. However, until
the late 1990s, the inherent limitations attaching to significant decentralisation of
activities and decision rights did not hinder success. IndCo’s remarkable historical
growth had been based on this “amalgam” of largely autonomous, loosely controlled
sub-units, which operated in small, relatively self-contained “natural” markets, within
the competitive and technological context of the time. In addition, Mr A strongly relied
on Portuguese key directors based in Spain with whom he kept a close relationship. The
informal “people-based” approach in part redressed the shortcomings of centrally
oriented information systems, processes and structures, although its effects were
restricted to a high hierarchical level:
Follow-up was much more based on a relation of personal trust between – let’s put names on
this – Mr A and, in Spain, [Mr X], rather than in an organised system working more or less
independently from people A, B or C occupying whatever function (senior manager, 2008).
As stated by a plant director working at IndCo for over 20 years:
It was a bit surprising: [after the early 1990s acquisition of the Spanish competitor], we might
expect increased control, but this did not happen, because it was not needed. Only later [after
the 1998 acquisition] we started a tighter control stage (2008).
The 1998 acquisition of a troubled large competitor marked, as already mentioned, the
start of a financially stressed period, while an increasingly sophisticated market
required greater coordination. As discussed next, the three major innovations marking
the new “controlling” stage were triggered by distinct motivations. These innovations,
although initially somewhat separate, became mutually supportive in co-assembling a
new organisation underpinned by the emergence of a new organisational centre, with
new power relations and possibilities.
4.3 Phase 2: accounting for innovations
Our second research question enquires “why and how did central actors introduce and
mobilise technological and organisational innovations?”. Three system integration
innovations were introduced between the end of the 1990s and the start of 2001: an ERP,
a CC and a SSC.
4.3.1 The first innovation: the adoption of SAP FI. In 1997, IndCo decided to replace
existing financial accounting solutions in some sites to avoid a potential “Year 2000”
bug. IndCo opted for SAP software and its ERP financial accounting module, SAP
Financials (SAP FI), to be implemented in all Portuguese entities, a process soon
extended to two other countries and then to all other countries (except one) until 2001.
SAP FI, as initially designed in IndCo, included various features promoting
company-wide uniformity and central vision – an initial orientation supported, first, by
a decision of IndCo’s group regarding the consolidation solution and, second, by beliefs
and rules within the IT Department. A group-wide norm required the SAP FI model to
interface with the consolidation solution Hyperion, functioning as an “obligatory
passage point” (OPP) constraining the “conditions of possibility” of the development of
financial accounting solutions:
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There was a group-wide norm imposing Hyperion. All sub-holdings had to use that tool and
those data structures. That group-wide norm, right at the start, worked both in favour of the
project (since the SAP template of the first implementation project developed that interface
functionality) and against the project, when someone wanted to get away from that
straight-jacket (IT consultant, 2005).
At the start of the project there were no explicit organisational concerns but when the
system went live the historical preference for diversity became evident. Three initial
technical options allowed diversity to emerge across countries, contradicting the
objective of promoting uniformity. First, a different production server was installed in
each country. Second, since each country had an independent chart of accounts, it could
be changed without affecting the others. Third, local IT actors were given the technical
possibility to change local configurations – in particular the local chart of accounts in
their local server.
Initially, the implementation team did not anticipate major consequences from these
options. However, local actors’ usage of the system, after it “went live”, soon led to
divergence of the models across the sites. The implementation team, aligned with
centrally located actors, realised that this divergence would not facilitate consolidated
activities and analyses. The implementation of the SAP commercial module, started
shortly after, made clear that diverging SAP FI modules across IndCo would greatly
complicate communication with the commercial module:
Each country started diverging in a different way. We were lucky that we started
implementing the commercial modules in Portugal and right after that in another country,
which made us realise: “Be careful, there will be problems”. So we quickly revised our initial
options. And the SSC was also the moment for that (IT manager, 2007).
The team returned to the design stage and (re)mobilised the package differently to
enforce uniformity: a single server in Portugal; a parallel accounts solution[3]; capacity
to modify the country-level charts of accounts restricted to central actors in Portugal.
The same IT manager concluded:
Initially, whenever there was a roll-out in operational modules, there were always problems in
SAP FI that I had to solve. But later, with the single chart of accounts, the roll-outs required
almost no intervention of mine (2007).
As Quattrone and Hopper (2005, p. 753) argued:
[m]echanistic depictions of ERP projects based on linear and predictable progress towards
predetermined ends ignore organisational members’ goals. Organisations must tolerate
variety and negotiate order under uncertainty with consequences for control and order.
Although some interviewees considered this divergence drift (and its correction) as a
mere IT issue, its consequences for shaping conditions of possibility in the accounting
and control domain were much broader. It defined which alternative courses of action
were offered (or denied) to actors, delimiting the scope of human agency of local actors
and whether accounting models and practices could evolve differently across locations.
After its remobilisation, SAP FI became an OPP since no other tool existed to carry out
financial accounting tasks and it started “routing” all local actors through the same
path, through the same standardised structures.
Although SAP FI became an OPP, the decentralised execution of financial
accounting activities by local actors limited SAP FI’s effectiveness in producing
uniform, comparable information. Even with SAP, there was still a lack of criteria
consistency in posting accounting transactions, late reporting of local information to the
centre, and some local sites adopting less strict control processes, even lacking some
elementary control mechanisms. The lack of enactment by local actors of centrally
defined rules, regarding accounting records, reports and controls, compromised
consolidation work and ultimately affected central actors’ capacity to control and take
decisions – albeit to a lower extent than before. Centrally defined rules failed to become
OPPs in the circuit of social integration, limiting the power of central actors in this
circuit; only with the creation of a SSC (the third innovation, analysed below) were
central actors’ ambitions about SAP FI attained.
4.3.2 The second innovation: the relocation of the CC. Countering the established
belief that Spain had become IndCo’s organisational centre during the 1990s, in 1998 the
CC and its top managers were brought back to Portugal, to the same location as Mr A.
However, even with the support of Mr A and his control over resources, the process of
restoring the CC in Portugal was slow and gradual.
With SAP FI at that time only emerging in financial accounting and no innovations
in management accounting, short-term ambitions were also limited to gradually
creating an organisational structure aligned with central actors’ surveillance and
control objectives. Such an innovation was not only symbolic (the shift of “a centre” from
Spain to Portugal) but it also changed IndCo’s actor-network, by introducing a new
collective actor and an increasing number of CC managers. However, as explained, SAP
FI had only reduced, while not eliminating, the problems regarding information
timeliness, reliability and comparability, which continued to be unsatisfactory to central
actors. At this stage, a SSC was created.
4.3.3 The third innovation: the creation of a SSC. The SSC was introduced in 2001 to
perform heavily transactional financial accounting activities (e.g. data posting and
reconciliation) centrally in Portugal. A new corporate model, with three areas, was
implied: the Strategic Business Units, focused on sales and/or production in defined
geographical areas; the CC, focused on global, company-wide issues; the SSC, providing
services to the Strategic Business Units.
Mr A was the key proponent of the SSC, backed by other central actors. The decision
to create the SSC was coterminous with the decision about its location in Portugal, on the
same site as IndCo’s CC and IndCo’s group headquarters. Cost reduction was expected to
derive from lower labour costs, elimination of duplicate activities, economies of scale
and faster and more systematised operations, achieved through continuous learning. In
addition, there was a large skilled labour market and substantial competence and
organisational and technological structures in place in key areas, such as IT, finance,
accounting and legal support. Finally, improving accounting information quality was
mentioned as the primary objective by interviewees from central accounting and finance
areas. Respondents outside accounting and finance, less affected by low accounting
information quality, emphasised cost reduction and considered the SSC mostly as a
“plant of transactions” (IT manager, 2007), proving standard, commoditised services
(see Seal and Herbert, 2013).
A key member of the SSC implementation team indicated one factor that was:
[…] definitely decisive: […] the fact that IndCo’s Centre of Decisions was in [city C]-Portugal:
with the SSC, the information supporting the decision-making process would be centralised
[…] and, therefore, should be situated as close as possible to those who need it the most […].
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The very location promotes a greater control by the CC of the administrative and financial
processes carried out by the SSC (Unpublished report).
With a clear aim to reinforce central actors’ control objectives and structural power, the
new corporate model had a strong central component, transferring significant human
resources and processes from business units to the SSC and CC and representing a
marked evolution from the previous multi-divisional form (Seal and Herbert, 2013).
Local actors’ resistance to the SSC during both its implementation and its early
stages of operation remained high, based on the perception that the elimination of local
teams would reduce autonomy. The lower level actors declared redundant afforded
extremely high resistance, with no cooperation with the implementation team. However,
resistance from remaining local employees and managers gradually diminished. Some
interviewees explained the change in actors’ dispositions as being based simply on the
passage of time; however, relying on this as an explanatory factor alone is simplistic,
since time and its effects are non-linear (Quattrone and Hopper, 2005). Local actors’
resistance to the SSC was a particular case of a broader phenomenon: the traditional
misalignment between local and central actors. The reduction of resistance needs to be
understood within the wider context of the emergence, consolidation and acceptance of
an organisational centre and its objectives and rules, involving various innovations and
repercussions in the circuits of power, discussed next.
4.4 Phase 3: repercussions of innovations in circuits of power
We now explore the third research question: how the three innovations led to
repercussions in the circuits of system and social integration, influencing rule
acceptance and enactment, reconfiguring the relations of power and in particular
increasing the power of central actors. Figure 1 integrates the case insights in a visual
narrative and contributes, in the ensuing section, to further theoretical developments.
We first analyse interdependencies in the development of the innovations in the
facilitative circuit of power (at the top of Figure 1) and then discuss the role of
non-human actors (on the left side), before considering the more direct innovation
consequences from the perspective of central actors (on the right side). Finally, we
analyse the central area, depicting interrelated repercussions on local actors, with a
particular focus on the dispositional circuit of social integration. Ultimately, all these
repercussions affected practices and increased central actors’ positional relations of
power.
4.4.1 Redefining the socio-technical network through the co-development of SAP FI,
the CC and the SSC. The upper section of Figure 1 depicts the innovations in the circuit
of system integration (SAP FI, the CC and the SSC). These innovations redefined IndCo’s
organisational field in social, legal and technological terms, constituting new individual
and collective, human and non-human actors. Significantly, the SSC entailed the virtual
disappearance of many local accounting actors. The CC and the SSC were charged with
explicit group-wide concerns to achieve cost efficiencies (in the case of the SSC) and
produce information and insights crucial for central actors.
Complementarity and reinforcement between organisational and technological
innovations, between human and non-human actors strategically situated and designed
to be OPPs, was evident in the linked evolution of the CC and SAP FI. The early stage of
development of integrated systems initially compromised the possibility of the CC
adopting a radical and “completely distinct logic” (Senior manager, 2005). Moreover,
Central actors introducing innovations in circuits of social and system integration
Extant obligatory passage points (OPPs)
SAP FI
(+ other technological
innovations)
Corporate Centre (CC)
Shared Services
Centre (SSC)
Technologically
embedded rules
Organizationally
embedded rules
Concerning local actors (mostly)
Scope of agency
Production &
direct benefits
Compatibility
of objectives
(Dis)incentives for
(non)compliance
Resources scarcity
Control within
organizational
normalcy
Control as natural
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Concerning central actors
Integrated, detailed, timely,
comparable information
Visibility
Dispositions to accept rules / self-discipline
Rules accepted by human actors
Rules enacted by
non-human actors
Rules enacted by human actors
External
rule control/
discipline
Decision
making
Favourable outcomes for central actors in specific socio-technical relations (episodes)
SAP FI was not enough to ensure central visibility, based on timely and fully
comparable information, even after additional mobilisation to align it better in support
of central actors’ objectives. The interdependency varied with developmental stages.
Initially, the embryonic state of each limited possibilities for development of the other;
later, as each innovation matured, mutual reinforcement occurred. A similar
interdependency later emerged between SAP FI and the SSC: SAP FI was crucial for the
SSC’s creation and operations (cf. Herbert and Seal, 2012) but the concentration of most
accounting activities at the SSC facilitated further development of SAP FI:
It works both ways. Without a single system and technological platform, an SSC would never
exist. But the SSC facilitates uniformity and developments in technological platforms;
everything is a lot easier, because there is a global [organisational] platform here. (Senior SSC
manager, 2007)
These innovations were interdependent in terms of organisational repercussions. Their
power effects depended on their capacity to become OPPs within the actor-network.
Complementarity was the main type of interdependency between control devices and
substitution was present only to a minor degree (Grabner and Moers, 2013), mostly as a
backup to address control failures (since no OPP is totally impossible to outflank),
echoing the more general finding that new forms of control tend to be added to
supplement and complement extant forms, rather than substitute them (Kärreman and
Alvesson, 2004).
Figure 1.
Tracing circuits of
power: from
innovations to rules
and practices
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The organisational innovations (the CC and the SSC) were particularly relevant. Most
research emphasises technological innovations but in this case the introduction of a
single technological innovation (SAP FI) produced only limited repercussions. On the
contrary, the power repercussions emerged, in non-linear ways, from the combined,
reciprocal and cumulative repercussions of all innovations within the entire network. It
was not enough to assemble resources, or to implement information systems, or to create
organisational structures. Organisation was critical (Clegg, 1989) and the actor
networks the crucial consideration – hence the multiple linkages between the three OPPs
at the top of Figure 1.
The embeddedness of rules in SAP, technologically redefining agency and rules
enactment, went well beyond technological considerations (Oliveira and Quinn,
forthcoming; Volkoff et al., 2007). Rules (transactional rules or behavioural rules, related
to roles) were structurally defined and embedded in both technological and
organisational innovations. Later, throughout the analysis of the right and central parts
of Figure 1, we discuss the organisational embeddedness of rules, particularly in
processes conducted through the SSC, and whose effects emerge in combination with
technological actors. Organisational embeddedness of rules promoted organisation and
day-to-day functioning becoming structurally based on the enactment of certain rules
by all actors, particularly those subject to control through various mechanisms
impinging on actors’ dispositions, in the circuit of social integration.
4.4.2 Redefining agency and enacting rules through technology. The left side of
Figure 1 depicts key structural constraints technologically imposed on local actors,
redefining the scope of local agency, by selective extension and restriction. Two major
choices regarding mobilisations of technology were deployed. The first choice related to
information systems’ fundamental architecture. SAP FI became the single financial
accounting solution for local actors and, later, the parallel accounts solution was
adopted, with restrictions for local actors. The definition of user profiles excluded local
actors from creating accounts and posting transactions; by defining what each actor
could and could not do in the system, human involvement and agency was shaped – and
excluded. As Carter et al. (2010, p. 585) note, “by limiting enrolment and involvement to
certain actors, the micro-politics […] get played out”.
A second choice was embedding business rules within SAP during current
operations, beyond the SAP FI module, to ensure certain sequences of actions were
followed (e.g. no production could be planned without the prior definition of a
product code and costing). Other rules automatically removed the possibility of
agency from certain actors and attributed it to others (e.g. when a client’s credit limit
was exceeded). Therefore, central actors created structural conditioning (the first
cycle of social change proposed by Volkoff et al., 2007). Rules technologically
embedded in SAP acquired a “material aspect”. Later, during the second cycle of
social interactions, “there are no choices to be made” by individuals while the
technological actant SAP produced “direct” repercussions – what Volkoff et al.
(2007, p. 840) labelled “first-order effects”, depicted by the vertical arrow on the left
side of Figure 1. SAP directly enacted technologically embedded rules. Therefore, at
an episodic level of action, of specific socio-technical relations and episodes
(depicted at the bottom of Figure 1), favourable outcomes for central actors were
promoted without requiring central actors directly to deploy “naked power” (Clegg
et al., 2006; Lapsley and Giordano, 2010).
4.4.3 Direct benefits of innovations to central actors. The innovations introduced, in
particular SAP FI in its intertwined relation with the CC and the SSC, and the
technological and organisational embeddedness of rules benefiting central actors’
interests, granted central actors increased visibility and panoptical scrutiny. In the
circuit of system integration, this had two main effects (depicted on the right side of
Figure 1): “direct” disciplinary effects derived from monitoring and improved
decision-making.
A parallel accounts solution granted central actors greater visibility over local
figures, reducing the possibility of data manipulation, since local systems could now be
accessed and details verified (rather than final figures being sent by local actors, with
limited possibilities of verifying reliability). The IT-based process supporting the
accounting workflow included the central posting of documents. Documents received in
local sites were digitalised immediately to support the entire accounting process
through the IT solution IXOS, allowing central verification/authorisation of all
transactions through a number of checkpoints. Purchases of fixed assets used an IT
solution, named IDAR, to ensure prior authorisation. Payment of a fixed asset purchase
required prior posting of an invoice, necessitating prior creation of a record for the future
fixed asset in IDAR, in turn requiring prior authorisation. Deviance from centrally
prescribed processes is detectable as the entire process is carried out by the SSC. The IT
solutions IDAR and IXOS became additional machine-based obligatory passage points
tightly linked with other actors (SAP FI, the SSC and the CC) and tightly woven with
organisational processes. Finally, although the SSC had a control role, some subtle
manipulation remained difficult to capture in its mainly transactional focus; in this case,
the Management Control area of the CC (rather than the SSC), supported by information
systems, could detect and query possible manipulation.
Visibility over company-wide figures by central, higher-level actors also allowed
benchmarking, better informed decision-making and greater intervention. Innovations
enabled enhanced scrutiny by central actors to acknowledge previously unnoticed
issues, question existing arrangements and consider changes. In particular, SAP FI’s
(re)mobilisation towards uniformity and centralisation facilitated further fundamental
organisational changes. In this sense, these consequences, along with expected cost
savings, enabled typical modernistic innovations with the aim of improving
company-wide efficiency and effectiveness.
4.4.4 Changes in local rules of meaning and membership. SAP FI (and other related IT
tools), together with the CC and the SSC, helped change rules of meaning and
membership, mostly not by addressing rules and dispositions directly. Instead,
proposed rules were embedded in the technological and organisational innovations and
the way they operated as a mutually reinforcing network.
We will now explore the central area of Figure 1, depicting multiple repercussions
among local actors ultimately leading to favourable outcomes for central actors (at the
bottom of Figure 1). There were self-disciplinary repercussions of visibility, based on
enactment of rules of membership by local actors. As a direct enabling effect for local
actors, a parallel accounts solution provided locally needed reports (such as tax reports)
and the possibility of creating local accounts (although a constrained possibility, as
discussed below). Since, as already stated, SAP FI’s common structure alone was not
sufficient to achieve the desired level of consistency in rules of meaning, organisational
structure, in particular the SSC, was crucial in two highly related ways. First, the SSC
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disseminated knowledge about the global accounting structures among local actors.
Second, the SSC became an OPP through which any attempt to materialise deviations
from centrally defined rules of meaning had to pass. In particular, defined SAP user
profiles restricted creation of new accounts to only a very few actors, all from the SSC.
Local actors’ ambitions to create new accounts were informed to the SSC, evaluated and
approved (or, by general policy, tended not to be approved) – ambitions which, if
centrally unconstrained, had the potential to (re)create diverse rules of meaning.
Therefore, by restricting the scope of agency (cf. Figure 1) and direct enabling and
disciplinary repercussions, SAP and the SSC contributed to changing rules of meaning
and membership.
In an indirect way, SAP FI’s enabling role promoted the enactment of new rules of
membership. The IT-supported financial control of purchasing, particularly of fixed
assets (monitored through the IT solution IDAR), included rules such as not exceeding
budgeted values and obtaining authorisation prior to ordering, when required. IDAR
provided the SSC with disciplinary visibility and enactment of these two rules of
membership. Innovations enabled disciplinary visibility and the enactment of desired
rules (Ribeiro, 2003), collectively forming a disciplinary network, with OPPs that local
actors had to use to carry out activities and be recognised as “good” organisational
members. Successful membership work (Munro, 1999) meant working in an aligned way
with these OPPs, with control rules embedded in these OPPs strongly promoting
self-discipline. Local accountants had to use the only available tool, SAP FI, to perform
financial accounting. Plant managers needed local actors to enact all required
purchasing procedures; otherwise, payments might be blocked by the SSC, endangering
regular supplies to plant and production activities. Finally, production actors needed
product costing defined, so that a production order could be introduced in SAP.
Therefore, SAP and the SSC became essential for local actors’ administrative and
physical production (cf. Figure 1).
These technological and organisational OPPs frequently produced benefits (cf.
Figure 1) not only for central but also local actors. SAP FI was more sophisticated than
previous solutions and SAP production modules benefited local actors by promoting
better knowledge and control, through virtually on-line information and high visibility
over production processes. Even with regard to IDAR, an OPP with a strong control
purpose, local actors also acknowledged benefits. The SSC also produced local benefits.
After an initial major disruption (and downsizing) in local units, the remaining actors
gradually started experiencing benefits. For example, a plant controller considered that
the SSC “helped a lot” by drawing attention to financially important aspects possibly
unnoticed by local actors subject to daily pressures, bringing some “reassurance
because I know there is someone verifying the correction of the work” (2008). As one
plant director put it:
We are subject to a discipline that sometimes can be seen as a constraint preventing an attack
on an urgent situation. But that doesn’t happen, because if something has to be bought, we buy
it anyway, with or without SAP, with or without authorisation, and we’ll be accountable later.
When something is urgent, no one places administrative limitations. [Gesture representing a
call to the boss, with tacit approval] Indeed, there is more control, we are more “controlled”
(between commas), but that doesn’t create any problem. It doesn’t bother me that someone is
looking at what I do. Because I don’t do any more, or any less, because of that. It’s natural that
such a large company has a control system. It’s normal, logical, reasonable. (2008)
The mobilisation of certain OPPs promoted some central and local objectives becoming
compatible (cf. Figure 1). For example, SAP FI parallel accounting benefited central
actors able to draw on the common chart of accounts; simultaneously, information in
locally relevant formats, drawing from the country-level charts of accounts – hence not
implying the loss of previous features – could be drawn on, a “heteromogeneity”
(Quattrone and Hopper, 2006) expressing a “win-indifference” situation. Overall, mutual
benefits were key to fostering consent, cooperation and commitment underlying a
positive and productive view of power and management control (Kärreman and
Alvesson, 2004; Seeck and Kantola, 2009).
Regarding (dis)incentives for (non)compliance (cf. Figure 1), there was a concern to
minimise additional workload while complying with central rules. Examples were the
parallel accounting solution (in which local actors enter data only once and then SAP
automatically enacts the equivalence rules between charts of accounts) and the usage of
“user-exits to obtain detailed information without an added workload for the user, which
the system performs and the user doesn’t even realise” (IT manager, 2007). The opposite
incentive was also found: noncompliance entailed substantial additional work for local
actors – in addition to entropy on organisational processes, as discussed above.
After the creation of the SSC, associated with heightened compulsory requirements
by increasingly powerful central actors, local actors became much more selective about
allocating their increasingly scarce resources, including time (Wagner et al., 2011) (cf.
Figure 1), producing only compulsory information to central actors. For instance,
“‘shadow’ accounting systems” (Seal and Herbert, 2013, p. 198), typically based on
Excel, were disappearing. Local enactment of rules with an exclusively local perspective
and usefulness not aligned with central actors’ objectives, using scarce resources, would
likely be detected and countered. The awareness of this risk promoted self-discipline
through the enactment of a “rule of anticipated outcome” (Bachrach and Baratz, 1963),
which adds to the self-discipline brought by the panopticon view from centralised
systems.
Both centrally and locally, actors perceived the existence of control as “natural” (cf.
Figure 1), entailing acceptance and enactment of some centrally defined rules. Some
control measures are “something one cannot be against”, “‘imperatives’ no one can
oppose” (Busco et al., 2007, p. 130; Quattrone and Hopper, 2006): they were
taken-for-granted, providing an important support in the circuit of social integration for
increasing control through system integration. Control became a pervading feature of
organisational processes, exercised in a capillary and continuous way by a network of
actors, rather than merely and exclusively exercised by a given, identifiable entity to
which control functions had been attributed (Clegg, 1989; Foucault, 1975/1977). The
same plant director again:
Nowadays, which appears to be the stage with the highest control, I feel that we have highest
independence to work at the plant. Control does not remove action potential. They are simply
watching what you are doing. It’s a control that controls, it’s not a control which imposes a
straightjacket and you can’t do hardly anything without authorisation. Our activity is as
always. At least, in my case. There are colleagues [other local actors] who feel differently.
(Plant director, 2008)
Organisational processes constitute the normalcy of organisational life: without
processes (with variable formalisation and structuration) there is no organisation.
Although referring to the normalcy of organisational processes may seem mundane,
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once innovations were introduced in the circuit of system integration, the OPPs
promoting the interests of central actors became effective because they became
embedded in re-engineered organisational processes within the new actor network
configuration. Control OPPs became an integral part of many organisational processes
in the daily workflow, with control becoming a part of organisational normalcy (cf.
Figure 1). Organisation is an essential element of power (Clegg, 1989; Lapsley and
Giordano, 2010) and power becomes most effective through its normalisation (Clegg
et al., 2006). Accepting the existence of central control and rules provided a very basic
but fundamental basis for agreement between organisational actors. That enhanced
control became part of organisational normalcy suggests that actors may be less likely
to notice particular interests underlying control. Therefore, mundane normalcy is where
researchers should look for power – even if, or precisely because, it is less visible.
5. Theoretical developments
5.1 ERPs, CCs and SSCs as innovations within the network of management control
This case provides insights on the close relationships between ERPs, CCs, SSCs and
management control. In line with Quattrone and Hopper (2005), the ERP was important
for the effectiveness of the CC as a control entity, a capacity that was achieved neither
immediately nor as a result of a linear implementation of the package. Instead, central
control only gained reliability after unanticipated remobilisations of the software and, in
particular, after the actor-network was further reconfigured and the circuits of power
were structurally changed. The elimination of many local, plant-level accountants and
the creation of the SSC, a new collective actor closely aligned with central actors, was
essential, along with additional non-human actors such as document management
software. A new assemblage of human and non-human actors was required (Latour,
2005). Therefore, this case furthers our insights on the potential but also the limits of
technology as a control tool (Dechow and Mouritsen, 2005; Joseph, 2006; Quattrone and
Hopper, 2005).
While consistent with Gospel and Sako’s (2010) account of how previous ERP
developments affected SSC development, this paper goes further by highlighting not
only that the ERP was an indispensable condition for the very existence of a SSC
(Herbert and Seal, 2012), but also that the SSC greatly facilitated further development of
the ERP. Interdependencies between these innovations (and the produced control)
concern not only their daily operation, but also their development. They limit the
conditions of possibility of the organisational field. The transactional scope of the SSC
activities at IndCo (and at most SSCs – Bergeron, 2003) may suggest downplaying the
SSC strategic and structural reach, in line with an interviewee’s derogative description
of the SSC as a mere “plant of transactions”, further reinforced by a “factory-like
appearance” (Seal and Herbert, 2013, p. 201). On the contrary, the SSC potential as a
control tool is grasped only by considering how it became an OPP difficult to outflank
due to its centrality to organisational processes (Herbert and Seal, 2012), across an
assembled network of complementary (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2004) control devices.
The organisation of actors and processes within the network enabled productive power
to emerge (Clegg, 1989).
The potential as well as the limits of accounting innovations in shaping everyday
practices in the circuit of system integration are evident. Beyond the direct effects of
these innovations, their described multiple repercussions in local actors’ rules of
meaning and membership were critical in further organising the structural circuits of
power to benefit central actors. This paper provides further evidence of the importance
of soft power to managing the “conduct of conduct” (Dean, 2013) successfully, by
aligning local actors’ rational self-interested behaviour and by promoting the perception
of the inevitability and normalcy of central control. The accounting controls were,
directly and indirectly, key in the creation of local regimes of governmentality, by
framing mentalities and rationalities (Ahrens and Chapman, 2007; McKinlay et al., 2010;
Spence and Rinaldi, 2014).
5.2 Contributions to theories of power: refining Clegg’s framework
As Burns (2014) suggested, accounting and management control researchers should
increasingly go beyond their traditional areas and not only draw on theories from other
fields, such as organisational studies, but also seek to contribute towards them. This
paper, by drawing on power theories to explore changes in organisational control,
makes a useful, albeit incremental, contribution to the literature of power – and hence
further contributes to the management control literature and to bridging both areas.
Some authors adapted Clegg’s graphical framework (Ribeiro, 2003; Taylor, 1995) or
its interpretation and terminology (Davenport and Leitch, 2005; Lagendijk and
Cornford, 2000) but did not revise the framework. Drawing on the case insights, we
suggest an improved representation of the ways that power operates (Figure 2),
modifying several concepts, depictions and linkages of the original framework.
In the revised framework, the OPPs depiction clearly encompasses both circuits of
social and systems integration. OPPs are constituted not only by rules but also by
techniques[4] – those rules and techniques which have succeeded in becoming fixed
within the network (one of the clearest outcomes of the case study), though not all rules
and techniques introduced will succeed. Therefore, the proposed framework removed
the “fix/re-fix” indication (which only existed between rules and OPPs) and depicts both
types of OPPs fixing relations and, as further discussed below, empowering agents in
the network.
The case study revealed how technological and organisational innovations made a
deep impact on socio-technical relations. Innovations in the facilitative circuit of system
integration influence rule acceptance and enactment (dispositional social integration) –
although in non-linear ways, beyond technological determinism. Ribeiro (2003)
consistently links “techniques” to “rules”, in contrast to the technological determinism of
Lagendijk and Cornford (2000) and Taylor (1995). The interdependence of the two
structural circuits is a main consequence of the integrated nature of the framework.
Together, they are involved in the creation of organisation/processes-based or
technology-based OPPs. The notion of interdependence replaces a hypothetical
opposition between social integration as a stabiliser versus system integration as a
destabiliser. Therefore, the original unidirectional downward arrow from rules to
techniques was replaced by a bidirectional arrow. Mutual influence is shaped by the
whole array of extant OPPs, collectively constituted by the multiple rules and
techniques that have become fixed. Extant OPPs, potentially introduced by various
actors with distinct objectives, constitute different conduits of power and may enter into
conflict to become the prevalent passage point(s) while making others “less obligatory”,
easier to be circumvented.
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Episodic circuit of power: based on causal power
Socio-technical
relations
444
Fix/
re-fix
Agencies
Control and deploy
resources
(within standing conditions)
Outcomes
Empower/
disempower
Control / contest
Reproduce/
transform
Structural circuits of power: Obligatory Passage Points (OPPs):
Dispositional power in the circuit of social integration:
based on
Rules of meaning and membership
Figure 2.
Revised framework
of “Circuits of
Power”, based on
Clegg (1989) and
Ribeiro (2003)
Facilitate / restrict
Facilitative power in the circuit of system integration:
based on
Techniques of discipline and production
Transform
Exogenous
environmental
contingencies
Seeing power as relationally attributed to actors, “[t]o the extent that the relational
conditions which constitute power are reproduced through fixing their obligatory
passage points, then possession may be fixed and ‘reified’ in form” (Clegg 1989, p. 207).
Therefore, agents are the entities that can be empowered, through socio-technical
relations – rather than social relations themselves being empowered, as potentially
suggested by the original framework. Consequently, arrows representing
empowerment now flow from techniques and (as unrecognised in the original
framework) rules to agents, going not only through all OPPs but also through the
socio-technical relations at stake.
Clegg depicted “social relations” occurring among agencies in the episodic circuit,
although both human actors and technological actants have agency. Technological
innovations can replace human agents in a recurrent and permanent episodic way.
Therefore, in the episodic circuit the proposed framework conceptualises socio-technical
relations, rather than merely social relations.[5] Moreover, through actors’ acceptance of
proposed rules, episodic exercises of central power are less necessary, being replaced by
appropriate dispositions emerging from accepted rules. So, OPPs in both structural
circuits may replace episodic exercises of power.
Three final developments concern stability and change across all circuits. First,
pressures from episodic level outcomes are now linked with both structural circuits – not
only with rules, as in the original depiction. Second, the term “innovation” was removed
from “innovation in techniques”, to consider both new and extant techniques (as well as
new and extant rules). Third, exogenous environmental contingencies are now also
linked to the episodic circuit – not only to rules and techniques as in the original
framework, which only implicitly included this proposed linkage in its effects through
the structural circuits.
These proposals add and clarify linkages either absent or unclear in the original
framework. We clarify that the structural realm is comprised by all OPPs, constituted by
the rules and techniques that have become fixed. We highlight the interdependence
between rules and techniques, mediated through extant OPPs. We clarify that rules and
techniques that successfully become OPPs, mediated through all extant OPPs, can
empower agencies through socio-technical relations. Success at episodic level can be
achieved through the structural OPPs in the facilitative and dispositional circuits,
dispensing the direct episodic involvement of the actors who succeeded in introducing
those OPPs. Together, these clarifications have significant repercussions as to how
power strategies can be conceived and carried out and shed further light on how power
operates structurally and episodically (Fleming and Spicer, 2014).
6. Conclusion
The paper contributes to two fields. First, it contributes to the literature on power, by
complementing, clarifying and revising several aspects of Clegg’s framework of circuits
of power, enhancing its theoretical and empirical utility. Strategic power typically
depends on the creation of a network of OPPs, complementing and reinforcing each
other. If effective, OPPs cannot be circumvented by actors – at least, not collectively;
therefore, should one OPP be circumvented by actors, should its obligatory nature be
challenged, another OPP is expected to ensure the desired rule following and enactment.
The subjection of the actor is at stake.
Second, it contributes to the emerging literature on SSCs (and related technologies,
such as ERPs) and their organisational control consequences, by providing a novel and
explicit perspective on power issues. The paper is largely supportive of other recent
accounts such as Seal and Herbert (2013, p. 202), and follows their suggestion to expand
their “critical discourse”. As in these authors’ case, structure and working processes
were reconfigured and the bureaucratic order suggested by the iron cage analogy
(DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) became more effective and less easily outflanked.
By providing a detailed account, drawing on Clegg’s theory of power, of the
mechanisms and interrelationships involved, this paper develops this line of
research on SSCs. In particular, it explains how reconfiguring the initially
multi-divisional organisation, through the CC and the SSC innovations, could only
become effective, and can only be understood, within an organised network in which
rules of meaning and membership, supportive of central actors’ interests, became
technologically embedded in an ERP and organisationally embedded in business
processes. The reshaped network not only produced “productive” effects through
company-wide “modernistic” improvements such as quicker and more reliable
accounting information, greater potential for benchmarking and cost savings, but it
also produced governmentality through dispositional effects, supporting central
actors’ objectives. Therefore, SSCs (and ERPs) may produce not only “power to” and
“power with” effects, but also “power over” effects by redistributing relational
power through greater organisational control.
Empirical enquiry into accounting-related innovations not only traced the
circuits of power in a particular organisation but also refined Clegg’ framework. The
paper explores the relative capacities of various actors and provides both a
“genealogy” of power (by explaining the “conditions of emergence of organized
practices and ways of thinking”) as well as an “analytics” of power (“how power
Paradoxical
puzzles
445
QRAM
12,4
446
operates” in particular situations) (Dean, 2013, p. 3). Complex roles played by
accounting and management control practices, rules and structures were
determinants of key organisational features, such as actors’ relational power.
Strategic actors introduced innovations that targeted actors’ acceptance and
enactment of rules. Importantly, willing acceptance and enactment of rules was
facilitated when the innovations and OPPs became indispensable for facilitating
organisational tasks, hence securing membership status (Munro, 1999), even though
divergent interests still remained.
The paper highlighted that the routine, transactional, typically low value-added
nature of activities performed by SSCs should not lead to underestimating their
profound organisational consequences for control and wider relations of power. The
SSC centrality, along with the adopted ERP and a realigned CC, made these innovations
obligatory passage points. Innovation effects were largely emergent, as actors
(re)mobilised by adjusting to unfolding repercussions. The described complementary
interdependencies between technological and organisational innovations, both during
their daily operation and development, contribute to the ongoing debates around ERPs
and SSCs (Gospel and Sako, 2010; Herbert and Seal, 2012; Scapens and Jazayeri, 2003).
Technological and organisational embeddedness of rules benefiting central actors
produced more than just direct benefits for these actors; it also reshaped the scope of
agency and promoted acceptance and enactment of new rules of meaning and
membership among local actors. Ultimately, circuits of power changed structurally in
favour of central actors, reducing the initial paradox of central actors’ limited control
over the organisation.
Notes
1. A 90 minutes meeting with 11 diversified managers, presenting and discussing an initial case
write-up, generated positive feedback about the case analysis and proposed theorisation. A
serendipitous event provided further reassurance about the case accuracy. When the first
author informally sketched the case to a colleague who, unknown to the researcher, had been
IndCo’s director in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she immediately recognised the
organisation and fully agreed with the empirical and theoretical analysis.
2. This capacity of Mr A was noticeable in insights from interviewees, direct observation of
employees’ reactions to Mr A’s indications and the researcher’s personal experience at
IndCo. General knowledge based on publicly available sources also suggested this
capacity.
3. Parallel accounting articulates a common chart of accounts with country-level ones, enabling
to produce, simultaneously, a tailored solution to each country and a uniform company-wide
basis.
4. By positioning OPPs only at the level of rules, the original framework may have misled
authors such as Taylor (1995), who associated the creation of OPPs to the circuit of social
integration only.
5. It could be argued, however, that social relations is the broader concept because it
encompasses all possible relations – with technologies, animals, ecologies, etc. – constituted in
and through social, that is, meaningful, relations.
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Appendix
No. of
actors
6
6
4
5
21
Actors’ description and years at IndCo
IT area: CIO director (16 years), SAP FI head
(12 years), 2 SAP operational heads (both 18
years), SAP FI manager (5 years)
CC: 2 directors (13 years and 6 years), 4
controllers (5 years, 8 years, 9 years and 2
years – in late 1980s)
SSC: Director (7 years), reporting team leader
(18 years), reporting team manager (6 years),
accounts payable team leader (4 years)
Managers: CEO (22 years), 2 sales directors
(20 years and 10 years), group board advisor
(9 years in 1990s), group-level director (19
years)
Total central actors
No. of
interviews
18
Times each actor was
interviewed
(1 actor ⫻ 8 times, 1 ⫻ 4,
2 ⫻ 2, 2 ⫻ 1)
11
(1 actor ⫻ 3 times, 3 ⫻ 2,
2 ⫻ 1)
7
(1 actor ⫻ 3 times, 1 ⫻ 2,
2 ⫻ 1)
6
(1 actor ⫻ 2 times, 4 ⫻ 1)
42
Corresponding author
João Oliveira can be contacted at: joao.oliveira@fep.up.pt
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451
Table AI.
Data about central
actors and interviews
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