The 10th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, 11-13 July 2012
Military, ‘Managers’ and Hegemonies of Management Controls: A Critical Realist
Interpretation’
By
Junaid Ashraf and Shahzad Nasir Uddin
Your paper seeks to examine change in the management accounting control practices of a
public sector firm (CAA – The Pakistani Civil Aviation Authority) using a critical realist
interpretation of hegemony (Joseph, 2002). As a consequence, the paper has the following
research question: ‘why and how did management controls change in a Pakistani public
sector enterprise?’. In order to answer this question, the authors carried out a case study in
line with the tradition of critical realism research, which aims at explaining social changes
through identifying structural conditions as well as the agency of different agents. This case
study was based on fifty-four interviews and official documents.
The case is very interesting and it was supported by a considerable amount of data. The
account provided in the paper regarding the process of management control change in the
case organisation was well done and very clear, which helped the reader’s understanding. In
explaining the case, the paper links the management control changes with the emergence of a
new ‘power bloc’ at the national level and at the case firm level, therefore, the military and
firms’ managers were two important players in this new ‘power bloc’. The authors argue that
in order to explain management control changes it is necessary to understand the ‘power
blocs’, as a result, the account of the process of change was divided into two phases: (a)
military as a dominant player; and (b) military and managers as dominant players.
Although the paper provides interesting insights and draws on interesting empirical material,
I believe that the paper could be improved by taking into consideration the following
suggestions:
In the introduction section, the reasons to conduct the research are not strongly stated. The
authors comment that management control change is an important topic for accounting
researchers, and then they state “this research also stems from an interest in understanding
changes to management accounting controls in a public sector firm operating in a less
developed country”. I agree with the authors that the majority of the research about the issue
of change in the public sector has been conducted in developed countries, but this is not a
strong enough argument to conduct this research. I would like to see other motivations to
conduct this research. It would be better if the authors state clearly the theoretical and
practical gaps that they wish to address in this paper.
I suggest to merge the ‘Prior Literature and importance of Research’ section into the
introduction section, this might help to deal with the above point.
In the attempt to demonstrate the theoretical importance of this paper the authors point out on
page 5: “with regarding to notion of hegemony and management control change, accounting
literature is rather small”. The authors should explain the possible reasons for this. I can see
two explanations for the limited research on this subject: (1) the accounting researchers have
not perceived the importance of the notion of hegemony to explain change; or (2) the
accounting researchers do not consider the notion of hegemony important to explain change.
Therefore, in order to improve your argument you should clarify why there are few
accounting studies that draw on the notion of hegemony to explain management control
changes.
In the ‘Critical Realism and Hegemony’ section, you can use the accounting literature on this
subject to show the state of the art in your field by providing some examples of the previous
accounting research based on critical realism and the notion of hegemony.
You can improve the Research Methods section by explaining in more detail how the data
was analysed. You mention many times the acronym CAA, but only on page 15 do you state
what CAA stands for. An important aspect of your paper is the fact that you do not provide
the time of the process of change, that is, there is no time line of the process of change in the
case firm. In the process of change, the dimension of time is very important and your paper
does not provide this vital information which can jeopardise your discussion and the reader’s
ability to understand your main findings.
The sections dedicated to the case study’s results and discussion (from page 13 to 42) are
rather descriptive. I would like to see more discussion about how the case is linked to
previous literature (especially the notion of hegemony, as proposed by the authors) on critical
realism in the accounting field. I have seen no reference to previous works on accounting
change in these sections. The authors have used from page 13 to 42 only three other studies
(Joseph, 2002; Ahmed, 2004; and Gramsci, 1971) to explain and discuss the case of
management control changes. I suggest the authors create a section ‘discussion’ to explain the
case using the previous literature.
In the conclusion section, the authors should discuss the limitations of their paper and provide
directions for future research.
In sum, as I mentioned before, the case is very interesting and has good potential to
contribute to the growing literature on critical realism and accounting change. However, I
encourage the authors to consider the above points to improve the paper. I will be happy to
discuss and clarify any of my suggestions.
I am looking forward to your presentation and discussion at the IPA Conference.