Artificializing accounting numbers: a sensemaking perspective in times of crisis
研究危机中人们如何利用相互矛盾的会计数字来理解和合法化行动，基于美国某政府间组织的预算危机案例，发现人工化会计数字是管理者为战略决策辩护而构建的社会过程。
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how people use competing accounting numbers to make sense of and legitimize actions in a complex environment in times of crisis. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes the implementation of a standardized budget model at a USA intergovernmental organization, by relying on a triangulation of data sources, including face-to-face interviews, direct observations, and archival documents. The organization faces one of the greatest crises it has ever experienced. An accounting team and a human resources team make sense differently the same reality–staffing. The sensemaking perspective framework is utilized to provide a theoretical structure for the analysis. Findings The understudied organization undergoes constant evolution during the budgetary crisis; data reveal different forms of cues, which activate the sensemaking process, such as fading and compressed cues. Although compressed cues subsequently emerge, they play a more crucial role in managers' enactment than pre-existing fading cues. Artificializing accounting numbers refer to the social process of constructing compressed cues or artificial artifacts that are neither wrong nor right, neither soft nor hard and not useful for peoples' sensemaking but used to legitimize managers' strategic decisions. Practical implications This artificializing process explains the people's resistance to policy implementation. Furthermore, the multiplicity of cues provides useful information for regulators and managers to understand uncertainty during a crisis. Originality/value This study presents a rare case of an international third sector organization amid a budgetary crisis. Among few studies referring to numbers as sensemaking resources, this study focuses on the importance of systematic power and corporate power relative to the process of sensemaking.