The ambition of this article was to elaborate on the concept of trials of strength by proposing a typology that distinguishes between prototype trials and trials of incompatibility, and by addressing the research question of how accounting inscriptions perform in contested organizational change. Below, we consider in more detail how our paper contributes to the literature, before concluding with some considerations for future research.
5.1. On the Distinction Between Prototype Trials and Trials of Incompatibility
Several extant contributions concerning accounting have reported on trials of strength, often related to the introduction of new accounting systems (Earl, 1978; Briers and Chua, 2001; Miller and O'Leary, 2007; Preston et al., 1992; Revellino and Mouritsen, 2009). These cases involve what we characterize as trials of a prototype. We supplement these earlier contributions by considering the distinction between prototype trials and trials of incompatibility, particularly in the context of a public sector outsourcing case.
Notably, we view our case as an exemplar of both a prototype trial, involving a singular change promoting public sector outsourcing, and a trial of incompatibility, where one option will prevail over an alternative. Our case captures both types of trials of strength and weakness. Initially, it appears to be a singular sector change— a prototype trial— promoting public sector outsourcing. However, as the process unfolds, the trial transforms into a more heterogeneous case of trials of incompatibility, with mutually exclusive options emerging: outsource now or optimize. The decision context becomes more heterogeneous as this new emergent trial of incompatibility develops.
In further trials, additional incompatibilities emerge, particularly regarding methods (e.g., small or large-scale outsourcing?), only to eventually conclude (provisionally) with a more stabilized and homogeneous decision context: a large-scale outsourcing model, initially involving two contracts, and eventually only one contract (i.e., a very homogeneous/monopolistic decision context).
We traced the process of trials of incompatibility and the detour it entailed regarding goals and means, showing how strength was reversed into weakness. The trial of incompatibility is a tiered array of weaknesses. Preston et al. (1992, p. 579) noted that resistance to a prototype can be more than resistance to change. We complement this by proposing that trials of incompatibility can manifest resistance to change as the formulation and development of incompatible change options, enriching our understanding of resistance to change as a dynamic and mutual process. As ideas for change move from one tier of weakness to the next, more actors attach themselves to the change option suited to those ideas— subject to their identity being congruent with the ideas.
For example, outsourcing's weakness in both Trial One and Trial Two was its inability to demonstrate the least cost. However, as the idea of transaction costs survived with fewer weaknesses, outsourcing emerged as the winner in a large-scale formulation that mutually excluded internal provision.
Although the extant literature on accounting in organizational change invokes trials, it has not yet extended this important and fundamental concept by considering types of trials. By applying the characterizations of prototype and incompatibility, we create the prospect for a deeper understanding of how accounting can sometimes be faithful or unfaithful to its proponents. For instance, Miller and O'Leary (2007) identified strong disagreements among actors in the semiconductor industry, but their analysis actually deals with prototype trials, where accounting enabled the change option to become strong. What we demonstrate is that strength can grow from weakness during a trial of incompatibility, where accounting contemplates roles beyond that of an enabling role or mediating instrument. We discuss this further below.
5.2. Accounting as Mediating Instruments and the Versatile Role of Accounting in Trials
As noted by Miller and O'Leary (2007) and Miller and Power (2013), accounting can play a mediating role and be coupled to intended outcomes (goals/ends) to varying degrees. We build on their contributions, as well as those of Christner and Strömsten (2015), Jeacle (2009), and Jordan et al. (2013), by showing how actors mobilize accounting. In our case, this was with respect to efforts to make DDF’s facility operations more cost-effective. The versatile role of accounting— the dynamic shifting of accounting inscriptions between intermediary or mediator roles— helps us understand the case's dynamics, where the implementation of a strategic organizational change became one of goal translation and detour.
Versatility refers to situations in which a prototype trial of implementation transforms into a question of whether the change is worth implementing, and eventually when alternative proposed changes emerge through a trial of incompatibility. A trial of incompatibility, coupled with versatile accounting inscriptions, demonstrates how strength transforms into weakness and vice versa, detouring strategic organizational change.
Our case partly resembles instances conceptualized by Burchell et al. (1980) regarding the role of accounting. However, while Burchell et al. remain within each quadrant of their typology, we trace the connections and dynamics across the typologies within each quadrant. For example, we show that Trial One was entirely about incompatible goals, whereas Trial Two was about both incompatible goals and incompatible methods/means.
This is not merely a case of accounting being an answer machine, ammunition, or an ex-post rationalization tool. Instead, accounting inscriptions can variously perform as combinations of these categories and thus can be described as versatile. As an answer machine, the accounting calculations backfired on those who launched them and turned into an ammunition machine. The ex-post rationalization machine was hardly found in our trials because nobody knew from the outset if or when an outsourcing option would be decided upon and implemented. It was only after the decision and change implementation that ex-post rationalization calculations could be made and circulated.
Further, decisions made may also be weakened, re-made, and transformed due to the versatile role of accounting, which can be associated with surprising moments.
In the case’s surprising moments, clarity is provided regarding the versatile role of accounting and how it can become a mediator (Latour, 1994, 2002, 2005) and a conduit for overflow (Callon, 1998), which is different from its role as a faithful intermediary or mediating instrument. Conceptualizing the ability of accounting to move between being faithful or unfaithful to its proponents contributes to other literatures, which we discuss in the following brief subsection as an indication for future study.
5.3. Contributions to Governmentality and Understandings of Change
Sociologists grappling with the human project have sought answers to societal and organizational change, questioning whether human society has shifted between modernity and post-modernity (Callon and Latour, 1981; Latour, 1993; Miller and Rose, 2008). Although these authors invoke forces much larger than accounting per se, the influence of accounting on such macro changes should not be underestimated (Miller and Power, 2013). In this regard, our work can be an important contribution, illuminating how accounting can associate with various forces— including accounting itself— to influence societal change.
Our case analysis shows that accounting inscriptions are not always compliant with their propagators’ intentions; they do not always stay faithful and only play a role as intermediaries. Instead, they can become unfaithful mediators. It is this versatility of accounting that contributes to its ability to associate with other forces (e.g., new public management, economic theories, social movements, and concerned groups). At the core of this observation lies a contribution to concepts of governmentality.
Miller and Rose (1990) developed Foucault’s (1977) concept of ‘governmentality’ to describe “the role accorded to 'indirect' mechanisms for aligning economic, social, and personal conduct with socio-political objectives” (1990, p. 2). They show how accounting facilitates, in an intermediary/mediating role, action at a distance, adding disciplinary direction to organizational (and individual) participation in society. Accounting is active in establishing knowledge:
“‘Knowing’ an object in such a way that it can be governed is more than a purely speculative activity: it requires the invention of procedures of notation, ways of collecting and presenting statistics, the transportation of these to centers where calculations and judgments can be made and so forth. It is through such procedures of inscription that the diverse domains of 'governmentality' are made up, that 'objects' such as the economy, the enterprise, the social field, and the family are rendered in a particular conceptual form and made amenable to intervention and regulation.” (Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 5).
The contribution of our study to governmentality is to explain that accounting inscriptions cannot always be relied upon to act faithfully to the interests of their proponents. Instances where accounting may or may not be faithful are shaped by trials of strength, where trials of incompatibility are often marked by an increased number of inscriptions. Governmentality is not challenged by these observations but enhanced by the recognition that major reforms are fragile developments requiring constant investments to support accounting inscriptions issued by reform advocates. Further, as shown in our case, despite investments, reforms may be detoured to the point where advocates consider them to be deformed and debased by unfaithful accounting inscriptions. Thus, the shape of governmentality is not guaranteed, but accounting is needed by actors to have their ideas and goals materialize— and those ideas and goals are shaped during trials of incompatibility by accounting calculations that shift unpredictably between degrees of faithfulness. The notion of a versatile role captures these dynamics.
An additional reflection on the contribution to governmentality relates to emotion and how accounting inscriptions can be conduits for changed emotion. Callon’s (1991) term ‘intermediary’ points to dynamic and transformative mechanisms, which Callon (1998) explicated more directly when identifying inscription devices as conduits for overflow. We agree with this and note that important overflows can involve emotions, such as among emerging concerned groups feeling excluded (refer to Skærbæk and Tryggestad, 2010). Like Bourmistrov and Kaarbøe (2013), Boedker and Chua (2013), and Baxter et al. (2018), we recognize the need for more research on the emotional dimensions of human-non-human associations in actor-networks. Our case analysis also shows that emotions are dynamic; joyful feelings of success can be replaced with feelings of betrayal, exclusion, despair, and failure. These emotions are not independent of the accounting inscriptions but seem closely associated with the versatile role of accounting during the protracted trials of strength, involving both prototype trials and trials of incompatibility, where accounting inscriptions influence emotions and vice versa.
