Accounting and control of the labour process|英语论文网

Accounting and control of the labour process

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关键词：Accounting control labour processmanagement con-trol system,

Accounting and control of the labour process
Rob Bryer?
Warwick Business School,University of Warwick,UK
Received 28 November 2002;received in revised form 30 April 2003;accepted 4 June 2003
Abstract
Textbooks and business managers presume that accounting is the most important management con-trol https://www.51lunwen.org/system,but modern scholars think its role and status are problematic.Most argue that althoughaccounting is important,it is inherently subjective and is only one among many control systems.Thepaper uses Marx’s theory of the labour process to argue that accounting is the premier control systembecause it provides senior managers with objective measures of the generation and realisation of sur-plus value that they use to hold workers accountable for the circulationof capital.Prima facie supportfor Marx’s theory is that it gives us a theoretical foundation for textbook presentations of manage-
ment accounting that resolves controversies over the allocation of overheads and the role of accountinginformation in decision-making and performance evaluation.The paper re-evaluates some key aspects
of the‘labour process debate’sparked off by Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital[BravermanH.Labor and monopoly capital:the degradation of work in the twentieth century.London:MonthlyReview Press;1974].It himanagement con-trol system,ghlights misunderstandings of Marx caused by neglect of accounting.It con-cludes that accounting is the key to controlling modernbusinessorganisations in the interests of capital,
that social scientists have too readily jettisoned Marx’s labour theory of value and his theory of class.
?2005 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.
“No other financial principle with which I am acquainted serves better than[theaccounting]rate of return as an objective aid to businessmanagement”(Sloan,1964,p.140).How important is accounting in controlling business enterprises?Accounting textbooksand business managers take it for granted that accounting systems are“vital”(Mackintosh,
?T
el.:+44 247 6522450;fax:+44 247 6523779.
E-mail address:rob.bryer@wbs.ac.uk.
1045-2354/$–see front matter?2005 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2003.06.010552 R.Bryer/Critical Perspectives on Accounting 17(2006)551–598
1994,p.197).They presume accounting is an objective source of information that investorsand management use in a rational,authoritarian way in pursuit of self-evident and widelyshared economic ends.They presume accounting’s overall measure of a business entity’sperformance,the extent to which it carries out its social duty,the rate of return on capital(or‘profitability’),makes it the naturally dominant mode of control.Modern scholars,bycontrast,downplay the significance of accounting even though they acknowledge its ubiquity
and importance.They seek“to undermine the pretensions of the accounting potential of old”(Hopwood,1989,p.149).Many now think“it cannot be overemphasized that accountingis just one technique that is available to assist in the control process,not the totality ofthat process”(Emmanuel et al.,1990,p.98),and not necessarily even the most important
technique.Many stress that accounting is inherently“ambiguous”and lament that“the roleof accounting in organisational control is little understood”(Ezzamel and Hart,1987,p.107).The paper uses Marx’s analysis of the capitalist labour process to challenge this view.
The aim is to show that it is not an“emotive reaction