Wagner+Moll+Newell2011 2

Management Account ing Resea rch 22 (2011) 181–197 Contents list s ava ilab le at ScienceDirect Management Accounting Research j o urnal h o me p a g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/mar Accounting logics,reconfiguration of ERPsystemsandtheemergence of newaccountingpractices: Asociomaterial perspective EricaL.Wagner a , JodieMoll b,∗ ,SueNewell c,d a School of Bus ine ss Admini str atio n, Por tland State Univers ity, 631 SW Har ris on Street,Portlan d, OR 97201, Uni ted States b Manche ster Bus iness School , Uni ver sity of Manche ster , Oxf ord Rd, Manchester M13 9PL, UK c Department of Management , Bentley Uni ver sity , 175 For est Str eet, Wal tham, MA 02452, Uni ted States d War wic k Bus ine ss Sch ool, UK articleinfo Keywords: Enter prise Resour ce Planni ng syste ms Account ing logics Sociomateriality Reconfiguration Legac y asse ts abstract Thispaperextendsourknowledgeon howsoftware-basedaccountingtoolsmightwork effectivelywithinanorganization. Theempirical datathatwefocusonareeventsthat unfoldedfollowingtheintroductionof a n ewERPsystematanIvyLeagueUniversity. We desc ribe anegotiationprocessthatoccurredafterroll-outthatresultedina reco nfigur ation of theERP to integratesomeof thelegacyfunctionalitiesthatwerefamiliartoorganiza- tionalparticipantsandwhichwereconsideredbythemtoprovidea moreeffectivewayto managetheirfinances. Ourcontributiontotheliteratureis not onlytoshowtheimportance of suchpost-roll-out modificationsforcreatinga wor ki nginformationsystem, butalsoto extendpreviousaccountsof non-linearaccountingchangeprocessesby emphasizi nghow thesemodifications aredependenton theparticularentanglement of usersandtechnology (the socio mater ial assemblage)ratherthaneitherfeaturesof thetechnologyortheagency of thehumansinvolved. Moreover, ouranalysisof thecasedatasuggeststhatmanagement accountinginparticularmaynotbeeasilycapturedinERPpackages, evenwherethetech- nolog y archi tectu resaresupposedlydesignedfora par tic ularindustry. Thecasedataalso pointstoissuesof affordabilityandthepowerof communities of practiceasmediatingthe extent towhichthesefamiliaraccountinglogicsmaybecomeintegratedwithintheERP system. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Intr oduc ti on In the face of competit ive gl obal markets and cons tant innovations in technology and business models , change s to accou ntin g infor mati on syst ems are often impl emen ted. In pa rt icular, many organizati ons adopt accounti ng soft- ware pack ages (as varia nts of Ente rpris e Reso urce Plann ing [ERP]systems)to improve the transactionprocessingcapa- bil iti es (Boot h et al ., 2000; De chow and Mourit sen, 2005 ), co-o rdin at e re cord ke ep in g (Ch ap man an d Kih n, 2009), ∗ Corre spondi ng autho r. E-mai l addres ses: [email protected] (E.L. Wagne r), [email protected] (J. Mol l), [email protected] (S. Newel l). reducecostly duplications of data (Dillard and Yuthas, 2006; Sca pens and Jaz aye ri, 2003), enabl e cent rally store d information, making it easier to create di ff eren t type s of financi al rep ort s (Chap man and Chua, 2003) and imp rove fidu cia ry con trol ( Wagne r and Newel l, 200 6). Much of the literature in accounting has assumed su ch te chno logy to be an ‘exo ge nous’ fo rc e of chan ge for accoun ti ng wo rk rout in es (Gra nl und an d Malmi, 2002; Rom and Rohde, 2006, 2007; Sc apens and Jazayeri, 2003 ). From this vi ew, the functi onal it y of the system is set when theadoptingorganization “flip s theswitches ” of thousands of embedded temp lates. Thes e temp late s provi de the orga- ni zat ion wit h a catal o gue of sta nda rd wor k pr acti ce s – the so-c al led ‘bes t practi ce’ logi c purportedly embedded with in the pr od uct (O’ Lear y, 2000; Wa gn er and Ne we ll , 1044-5 005 /$ – see front mat ter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.mar.2011.03.001

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Wagner+Moll+Newell2011 2