Date
2006
Dewey
Direction d'entreprise
Sujet
Competing trajectories; Management control; ethnography
JEL code
A12; M1
Conference name
5th Conference on New Directions in Management Accounting
Conference date
12-2006
Conference city
Bruxelles
Conference country
Belgique
Author
Morales, Jérémy
Pezet, Anne
Type
Communication / Conférence
Abstract (EN)
Our paper is based on an ethnographic approach. One of the authors has conducted an ethnographic study at TechCo, a multinational aeronautic company, during 4 months. Following the actors, actants and allies at TechCo, we will show that two institutional trajectories compete for controlling the organization. Financial and technical rationales confront each other in order to control TechCo. Those two rationales or institutional trajectories are supported by discourses, inscriptions or managerial devices. By examining those discourses, inscriptions and devices, we will try to enlighten control in action through two competing institutional trajectories – financial and technical. This approach, which we qualify as “controlizing”, is necessary to observe practices in the field. Latour (2002) thus observed the manufacture of law. We have observed here the manufacture of control. Controlizing is characterised by the search for a highly hybrid content more than by the study of actors alone, containers (the tools), processes or outcomes.