A cultural political economy of management accounting controls: A case study of a textile Mill in a traditional Sinhalese village

By D. Wickramasinghe, Trevor Hopper. 2005

226 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A cultural political economy of management accounting, drawing from political and economic history, modes of production (MOP) theory in development studies, and cultural anthropology is used here to inform a longitudinal case study of management control in a textile Mill in a traditional Sinhalese village in Sri Lanka. Successive attempts to impose conventional management accounting failed due to workers’ resistance. Management accounting, an embodiment of capitalist MOP and modern industrial culture, took unexpected roles when confronted by a traditional, rural culture based on Kingship obligations. The Mill was founded by the state as a public enterprise. Government interference into operational affairs was considerable and performance was disappointing, leading to pressures for privatisation. Results improved after privatisation, partly because the Mill adopted more commercial budgeting practices. However, problems of cultural asymmetry were inflamed by a coalition of workers and local managers against foreign owners, who fled when financial irregularities were discovered. The government resumed ownership and budgeting practices of previous eras returned. The conclusion examine the study’s implications for further research on management accounting in the Third World.

Subfields: Management Information Systems, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f8f89fec1c180c48becaa566983cf7a71251e5ab

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In Management Information Systems

1. Shahzad Uddin
2. J. V. Helden
3. Trevor Hopper
4. P. Lassou
5. T. Soobaroyen
6. D. Wickramasinghe
7. M. Tsamenyi

In Public Administration

1. Shahzad Uddin
2. J. V. Helden
3. Trevor Hopper
4. M. Tsamenyi
5. T. Soobaroyen

Citations in the corpus

• Public sector management accounting in emerging economies: A literature review (2016, background): “Drawing on cultural political economy, Wickramasinghe and Hopper (2005) found a strong influence of local culture in shaping centralized MA practices in an SOE located in a village setting, arguing that village culture and religious obligations overwhelmed bureaucratic controls but fused local…”
• Globalisation, accounting and developing countries (2017, background): “Moreover, privatisations may not break undue political involvement with commercial organisations: it can find new avenues such as regulatory capture and tolerating financial irregularities (Hopper et al., 2012; Wickramasinghe & Hopper, 2005).”
• Management accounting in less developed countries: what is known and needs knowing (2009, background): “and the “cultural political economy” in Wickramasinghe and Hopper (2005)”