Theorizing Practice in Management Accounting Research

This chapter presents an overview of a diverse set of studies that have sought to explore the social, organisational, and cultural specificity of management accounting whilst at the same time theorising the regularities of the management accounting phenomenon. We draw on practice theorising to identify common interests in the wide-ranging interpretive management accounting literature. We discuss in particular the approach and contribution of studies seeking to theorise practice in terms of governmentality, actor networks, systems of accountability, and situated functionality.