Management accounting change as an amplifier of a leadership dispute: an ethnography of convergent and divergent leader–follower relations
通过南欧一家公司的民族志研究，发现两位高管的领导权争议会在管理会计变革过程中被放大，并渗透整个组织，导致会计实践和人员流动出现意外结果。
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in management accounting change processes and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on an ethnographic study in a Southern European company and mobilizes leader–follower relations as a method theory to analyse the observations. Findings The findings show how a leadership dispute between two top managers can be amplified during the management accounting change process and percolate throughout an organization. The authors identify five contested areas where the role of accounting amplifies the leadership dispute by unfolding its reach to other organizational actors. The leadership dispute can shape and reinforce a fragmented organization, with some organizational members creating convergent leader–follower relations while others divert and fragment with an increased turnover. This amplification can lead to unexpected outcomes of the change process in terms of how and by whom accounting is performed. Research limitations/implications The authors propose the study of leadership and followership as an important but, to date, largely neglected theme in management accounting research. Originality/value In contrast to the prior management accounting literature, the paper departs from a leadership-centric and role-based approach and employs a co-constructionist and relational approach to leadership and followership to analyse management accounting change. In addition, it applies and extends Alvesson's (2019a) theory on “divergent relationalities” between the presumed leaders and followers. In doing so, the paper also adds to the leadership field by theorizing and integrating the situation of a leadership dispute in this novel theoretical framework.