This is a critique on the paper Stability and change: an institutional study of management accounting change written by Associate Prof. Dr. Siti Nabiha Abdul Khalid and Proffesor Robert W. Scapens

Purpose

The purpose of this paper, as stated on the first page, is to explore the relationship between stability and change within the process of accounting change. It focuses on the ceremonial implementation of value-based management and how key performance indicators can become decoupled from day-to-day activities which thereby creates a level of stability which can be ultimately contributed to the accounting change.

Theoretical Framework

This paper uses the framework set out by Burns and Scapens (2000) which is mainly based in Old Institutional Economics (OIE).

In this paper institutions are defined as “The shared taken-for-granted assumptions which identify categories of human actors and their appropriate activities and relationships”. (Siti-Nabiha, A. and Scapens, R. (2005), Stability and change: an institutional study of management accounting change, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol 18, No. 1, pg 46)

Burns and Scapens argue that, when a particular management accounting practice is decided on, that over time this practice becomes accepted as “the way things are done”. The behaviour is disassociated from the original reason for the choice of this practice and comes to be applied in a rule-like manner and as a routine activity. The original reasons for adopting this practice are almost forgotten and the practice becomes an unwitting underpinning of the organisations behaviour. This is what they refer to as the behaviour becoming institutionalised.

An accounting routine can be institutionalised in either a ceremonial or instrumental manner. Ceremonial Institutionalised accounting routines are defined as “organisational rituals,