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ABSTRACT
Despite changes in the environment and management accounting practices, studies indicate that management accounting systems do not change or change at a much slower rate than expected. The stability of the management accounting systems used by companies may relate to resistance to changing these systems. This study analyzes the factors that contribute to resistance to implementing an integrated management system from the perspective of institutional theory, grounded in the old institutional economics. Methodologically, this study provides a qualitative assessment of the problem and a descriptive analysis of the resistance factors through a case-study approach. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed through content analysis. Two companies were selected for this study due to their differing characteristics. The following seven factors were analyzed for resistance to implementing integrated management systems: institutional power, ontological insecurity, trust, inertia, lack of knowledge, acceptance of routines and decoupling. However, there was no evidence to characterize hierarchical power. The research findings indicate that changing management accounting systems, through the implementation of an integrated management system, faces internal resistance in these organizations. Each factor varies in intensity but is permanently present in these companies, such as ontological insecurity, trust, inertia, lack of knowledge, acceptance of routines and decoupling. These factors are awakened when the change process begins and, if they gather enough force, can stop the change.
Keywords: Resistance. Integrated management systems. Management accounting. Institutional theory. Change.
1 INTRODUCTION
Understanding the factors that provoke resistance to changing management accounting systems can help explain why companies do not promote such changes to these systems (Granlund, 2001). Resistance to change may prevent the implementation of management accounting practices.
Since the 1980s, several management accounting practices have been developed. Other changes have been environmental, such as advances in information technology, technologies for managing organizations (e.g., Business Intelligence - BI, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems - ERPS, etc.), e-commerce, electronic data interchange, and market liberalization, and have changed the way companies conduct their activities. Despite such considerable changes, management accounting practices have changed little (Scapens, 1994).
This study addresses resistance to a particular change in management accounting systems: the implementation of Enterprise Resourcing Planning Systems (ERPS) in two companies. ERPSs are integrated information systems responsible for all information flows in an organization...