Institutional agents missing in action?: Management accounting at non-governmental organisations

Brendan Clerkin; Martin Quinn

doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102276

Institutional agents missing in action?: Management accounting at non-governmental organisations

Brendan Clerkin^*, Martin Quinn

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

The objective of this paper is to establish the management accounting role of finance managers at international development non-governmental organisations and their role as institutional agents. Through empirical evidence from three case organisations, the management accounting role of finance managers is shown as primarily reporting on spending of specific donor grants, rather than providing insights which could help maximise the overall social impact of their organisation. This dynamic potentially limits the social impact of accounting in such organisations, and potentially in the wider sector. The findings suggest finance managers, by focusing on donor-compliance, do not act as ‘definers’ of institutional elements of management accounting.

Original language	English
Article number	102276
Number of pages	16
Journal	Critical Perspectives on Accounting
Volume	80
Early online date	19 Jan 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102276
Publication status	Published - 09 Oct 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The paper has benefited from the views of anonymous reviewers. We are also grateful to the three organisations and the people who contributed to this research.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

Institutional Agent
Management Accounting
Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)
Social Impact
Uganda

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Accounting
Finance
Sociology and Political Science
Information Systems and Management

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Institutional Agents Missing in Action?: Management Accounting at Non-Governmental Organisations
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. This manuscript is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits distribution and reproduction for non-commercial purposes, provided the author and source are cited.
Accepted author manuscript, 823 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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abstract = "The objective of this paper is to establish the management accounting role of finance managers at international development non-governmental organisations and their role as institutional agents. Through empirical evidence from three case organisations, the management accounting role of finance managers is shown as primarily reporting on spending of specific donor grants, rather than providing insights which could help maximise the overall social impact of their organisation. This dynamic potentially limits the social impact of accounting in such organisations, and potentially in the wider sector. The findings suggest finance managers, by focusing on donor-compliance, do not act as {\textquoteleft}definers{\textquoteright} of institutional elements of management accounting.",

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Institutional agents missing in action?: Management accounting at non-governmental organisations

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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