Globalizarion, Management Control & Ideology: Local and Multinational Perspectives

In theirs preface, the four editors precise that this book is the result of an academic process which began in December 2003 with a conference entitles “Corporate Management Accounting & Ideology: a multinational perspective”. The object of the conference was to discuss the beliefs, thoughts and ideas related to system of modernity, globalisation as they impact upon various aspects of disciplines of accounting and management. Therefore, not surprisingly, this book gather 15 Chapters written by 17 authors that work in six countries mainly European. The general aim of this book is to gain “an understanding of the tension between the globalisation of systems of modernity and the local ideologies which underlies values, activities and institutions”. This book set‐up on a common conviction and acknowledgment. The acknowledgment is that discourses of globalisation promise economic prosperity get remain rather silent about non economics aspect of good life. The conviction is that economic prosperity might find itself embedded in more profound moral horizons and possibilities for living well.

In their introduction editors esteem that the managerial literature about globalisation focuses excessively on “functional issues and instrumental issues related to notions of corporate success”. This focus is inadequate to “understand globalization as a force at work in our pursuit for the good life”. In fact, the question of the “good life” at all levels (individuals, organizational, national, etc.), underlines the contributions of the book.

Globalization is seen by the editors as “a homogenizing force for standardisation and uniformity that is now superimposed on local policies”. It embeds a logic, rationality, and modus operandi that appear to alien local people or get in tensions with local social phenomenon such as national public administrations or national professions. Globalisation seem implicitly associated‐ or assimilated‐ with modernity or to be more precise “modernities” (pre‐modernity, modernity and post‐modernity). On that point we did not get a precise answer from our reading. Globalisation‐ or modernity‐ manifest itself through an instrumental and calculation rationality (that is only one form of rationality), rationality that is actualised through “modern system, particularly control systems”. The editors underline that auditing and control systems that are associated with the globalisation require a special type of individuals. This fact leads the editors to defend the idea that “modern system must be judged in their relatedness to the viability and quality of human experience in all its profoundness”. From that point of view, authors observe that “a tension inform the relation between modern systems and local communities and societies”. The question of assimilation of global systems by the local levels is, therefore, clearly set‐up. For the editors they are two possible local responses: subordination of the local into the system under the logic of globalization or “rejection of modern system to protect local particularities”. One of the main messages of this book is to affirm the possibilities for a prudent assimilation of global processes into cultures through dialectical processes of “relating to” or “understanding”. This approach leads the editors to introduce the concept of ideology for two reasons. Firstly, control, auditing or management systems are the materialisation of an ideology. Secondly, ideology is connected with values, beliefs, knowledge all that invisible social phenomenon that are interacting – at the local levels – with global management systems. The editors adopt an “affirmative normatively” approach of ideology that considers it serves “hermeneutic, discursive, social and moral functions”. Ideology is the glue that permits to a society to hold and to have a consciousness of itself. Then “ if globalization refers to the reach of a US‐Western European‐centric expansion of economics structures and control systems, then both adaptation to and resistance against globalization can be seen as an attempt to preserve the integrity and the power of ideology as a local phenomenon”

The first part of this book is a set of seven Chapters that are dedicated to the tensions created by the concurrence between the local ideology and modern systems of control. The Chapter 2, by C.E. Arrington, presents the origins of contemporary US ideology. Relatively to the US ethos, the modern control systems that had been developed in America are in ambivalent position. From one hand they are partly the fruits of this US contemporary ideology but, on the other hand, they are not necessary compatible with it and can even be in contradiction or in conflict with it.

The Chapter 3 by H. Norreklit, P. Melander and L. Norreklit describes some problems that have emerged when modern systems are implemented in Denmark. This Chapter shows the conflict between an ideology “of virtue” and the US ideology “of act” that is manifested through social and economic relations structured by contracts.

In Chapter 4, by L. Cinquini, the author explores how accounting and business studies were required to adjust their focus to accommodate the totalitarian and ideology of fascists. But the main message is that ideology is shown to have an enduring character than can span the boundaries of radical political change. As historians and politics science academics show, elements of an ideology can last long and can be recycled with less and more visibility.

With the Chapter 5 by Y. Pesqueux, Dang Pham Huy and F. de Geuser, the opportunity is given to the lector to explore the conflation of Occidental systems with Oriental value structures drawn from Taoist and Buddhist thought. The 3 authors esteems that the oriental thought as Taoism or Buddhism can help the Europe to correct some of the critical tendencies of late‐modern system processes.

R. Kumar's Chapter 6 focuses on how the complexities of Indian subjectivity do not feet to the assumptions that underline Western control systems. This Chapter provides a rare occasion to apprehend how the relation between ideology and self‐identity may yield to systematic and systemic dysfunctions.

The Chapter 7 is a R. Ajami's contribution about the global financial markets that can be considered has an emblematic institution of the globalisation. It gives the occasion to Ajami to discuss about the tendencies of globalisation as it confronts to emerging countries and the cost of globalisation versus the prosperity that modern systems of management promise.

The second part is composed of five contributions that are still on a macro or national level but are more oriented towards management practices as management control or auditing systems as well as in private than in public areas. Globalization or governance is associated by some authors as a dilution of borders between public and private fields. An attention is also dedicated to the professions that are emblematic of the globalisation and its main agent that is to say the accounting and auditing one.

This second part begins with the Chapter 8 by A. Bourguignon who renders intelligible the relation between accounting and ideological functions. The author's framework has two main characteristics. Firstly, it is quite inclusive since it tries to catch accounting and ideology in a same analytical movement. Secondly, it understands accounting as both a practice and a discourse. Under that angle, accounting that is imbibed of ideology has a local anchorage.

Michel Fiol and Fabien de Geuser sign the ninth Chapter in which an original relation is made between managerial technologies and sociology of increasing complexity. The author's thesis is that the growing complexity of management techniques could be an ineffective response to social trends wherein ideology itself has become more complex. After having recalled the risks and the ambiguity to adapt management tools to an ideology of complexity, the two authors offer an example management technology that combines such complexity with pragmatic utility.

The Chapter 10 by Ann. L Watkins and C. Edward Arrington – is an “engaged” Chapter that is dedicated to some changes in the nature of US political theory and practices that are tied with the development of a late twentieth‐century managerialist ideology. The authors' thesis is that the traditional political virtues are eroded by managerial values such as efficiency and are being “colonizing” the space of public welfare and its administration. For the two authors, the public welfare is talked through a corporatist regard for efficient government that is “irrespective of the ends of such government might seek”

With the Chapter 11 by Falconer Mitchell – we are at intermediary level of analysis – the professional one – since it is question of the ideology and the UK management accounting profession. The transitions in social values as well as the inter‐professional competition are transforming the realm and the rhetoric of accounting professionalization. The UK management accounting founded its legitimacy on “opportunism” since it justified its practices and discourses as a response to commercial and social transitions within UK culture. In a sense, we can say that this is becoming a “market fit profession”. The notion of profession is thus seen as fluid and malleable, transforming according to institutional or ideological changes.

The Chapter 12 by Lisa Evans is also at an intermediary level but it uses a historical and an intercultural perspective to study accounting management professionalization. It examines “the political and ideological processes in the pre‐1930s Germany were affected by the older UK and US professions”. Ideology played an important role in professionalization of German accountants and favoured the power, wealth and status of German accountants. This was the fruit of an importation of Anglo‐American values and ideas that were foreign to the values and ideas of other strong institutional professions of that period such as lawyers and medicines. The Chapter also showed how the importation of a professional ideology can help the institutionalisation of a new professional sector.

If the third part is obviously the shortest part – with three Chapters – it may be the one that could appear to someone surprising, in the context of management studies, since the authors use unusual analysis grids – such a philosophical or spiritual – to analyse management systems of control. By contrast to the first two parts, his third one is also characterised by its focuses on the individual or workplace levels.

This last part begins with Inger Askehave's Chapter in which she discusses about the corporate community's appropriation of the metaphors and discourses from New Age ideology and the conscious exploitation of spiritual discourse within the appropriation. The author shows that spiritual discourse can come to promote a particular view of business that shifts the meaning and purpose of workplace activities. It seems, at least for some organization, that rhetoric of new spirituality rather than of profitability seems good for “the bottom line”.

The Chapter 14 – by Anne Ellerup Nielsen and Hanne Norreklit – is dedicated to coaching analysed throughout a textualist approach. The approach reveals discursive tensions across pre‐modern, modern and high‐modern accoutrements to ideology. By using sport coaching as an ideal model of management, an illusion is created in which management situation is articulated through features of sports world like self‐realization, enthusiasm, emotional involvement, and no definitive authorities. The sports metaphor yields a simulacrum for real desire of close emotional relationship and real involvement in meaningful and creative action.

The final Chapter, written by Lennart Norrewick, composed the fourth part. It takes back the introduction thematic of the good life. Modern control system should be subordinated to the quest of a more human world. It is dedicated to the questions of human existence and moral experience. It also treats of the problematic of ideological competition. In the final part, the author analyses the validity of ideology of globalisation and criticizes it as invalid in three aspects: with respect to freedom, to values and to democracy. Since, this three defaults are not thin, the author esteems there is a need to create an ideological dialogue that requires transforming our conception of democracy.

This book merits becoming a reference for at least three reasons. It is a too rare manifestation of an interdisciplinary on the hidden dimensions of globalization. It's also the expression of a European critical thought in a field largely dominated by Anglo‐American analysis. It proposes studies of modern control systems (associated or not with globalization) can be not necessary functional but can be analysed with all can of conceptual framework especially sociological, philosophical or even religious ones. This book will interest academic searching for fresh conceptual air and for the honnête homme concerned by a personal reflection about what is really at stake with globalization beyond efficiency.