The paper seeks to contrast the roles that have been claimed on behalf of accounting with the ways in which accounting functions in practice. It starts by examining the context in which rationales for practice are articulated and the adequacy of such claims. Thereafter consideration is given to how accounting is implicated in both organizational and social practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for accounting research.

The roles of accounting in organizations and society

Mainstream accounting is grounded in a common set of philosophical assumptions about knowledge, the empirical world, and the relationship between theory and practice. This particular world-view, with its emphasis on hypothetico-deductivism and technical control, possesses certain strengths but has restricted the range of problems studied and the use of research methods. By changing this set of assumptions, fundamentally different and potentially rich research insights are obtained. Two alternative world-views and their underlying assumptions are elucidated-the interpretive and the critical. The consequences of conducting research within these philosophical traditions are discussed via a comparison between accounting research that is conducted on the "same" problem but from two different perspectives. In addition, some of the difficulties associated with these alternative perspectives are briefly dealt with. The history of thought and culture is, as Hegel showed with great brilliance, a changing pattern of great liberating ideas which inevitably turn into suffocating straightjackets, and so stimulate their own destruction by new emancipatory, and at the same time, enslaving conceptions. The first step to understanding of men is the bringing to consciousness of the model or models that dominate and penetrate their thought and action. Like all attempts to make men aware of the categories in which they think, it is a difficult and sometimes painful activity, likely to produce deeply disquieting results. The second task is to analyse the model itself, and this commits the analyst to accepting or modifying or rejecting it and in the last case, to providing a more adequate one in its stead. [Berlin, 1962, p. 191 SINCE the late 1970s there have been signs of unease among academics about the state and development of accounting research. In 1977 the American Accounting Association's (AAA) Statement on Accounting Theory and Theory Acceptance concluded that there was no generally accepted theory of external reporting. Instead, there was a proliferation of paradigms that offered only limited guidance to policy makers. In addition, the Committee was pessimistic that a dominant consensus could The author would like to acknowledge the continual support of Tony Lowe and the helpful comments of Ray Chambers, David Cooper, Anthony Hopwood, Richard Laughlin, Ken Peasnell, Tony Tinker, Murray Wells, David Williams, participants at a Sydney University Research Seminar, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal. Wai Fong Chua is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Manuscript received September 1984. Revisions received August 1985 and February 1986. Accepted March 1986.

Radical Developments in Accounting Thought

The paper explores the relationship among paradigms, metaphors, and puzzle solving showing how organization theory and research is constructed upon a network of assumptions that are taken-for-granted. The metaphorical nature of theory and the implications of metaphor for theory construction are examined. A theoretical and methodological pluralism which allows the development of new perspectives for organizational analysis is suggested. While orthodoxy is based upon a few metaphors characteristic of the functionalist paradigm, metaphors characteristic of other paradigms, which challenge the ground assumptions of orthodoxy, are shown to have much to offer.

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Paradigms, Metaphors, and Puzzle Solving in Organizational Theory.

We appreciate the helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper from Charles Fombrun, John Bryson, William Gomberg, and anonymousASQ reviewers. We also appreciate the support of the Center forthe Study of Organizational Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for release time to prepare this paper. The diverse schools of organizational thought are classified according to micro and macro levels of organizational analysis and deterministic versus voluntaristic assumptions of human nature to yield four basic perspectives: systemstructural, strategic choice, natural selection, and collective-action views of organizations. These four views represent qualitatively different concepts of organizational structure, behavior, change, and managerial roles. Six theoretical debates are then identified by systematically juxtaposing the four views against each other, and a partial reconciliation is achieved by bringing opposing viewpoints into dialectical relief. The six debates, which tend to be addressed singly and in isolation from each other in the literature, arethen integrated ata metatheoretical level. The framework presented thus attempts to overcome the problems associated with excessive theoretical compartmentalization by focusing on the interplay between divergent theoretical perspectives, but it also attempts to preserve the authenticity of distinctive viewpoints, thereby retaining the advantages associated with theoretical pluralism.*

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Central perspectives and debates in organization theory.

Revision of a paper presented at the Sixty-eighth Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, N.Y., August, 1973. I gratefully acknowledge comments on earlier drafts of this paper by Howard Aldrich, Eliot Freidson, Peter M. Hall, Wolf Heydebrand, James Mulherin, Charles Perrow, Richard Riddle, Stephen Turner, Robert A. Day, Mayer Zald, and students in my bureaucracy and theory seminars at the U n iversity of Missouri-Columbia. In preparation of this draft I have particularly benefited from extensive conversations with Mark Wardell and Robert Hagan. None of these are to be blamed for flaws remaining in the argument, and some have disagreed substantially with my position.

Organizations: A Dialectical View.

The ideas contained in this paper were first developed in seminars held by Leon Peres at the University of Melbourne, 1968. 1 also wish to thank Josef Szwarc for his invaluable assistance and Colin Rubenstein and Rudolf Plehwe for their substantive suggestions. Organization theorists have faced many difficulties in conceptualizing organizational goals and understanding organizational behavior through them. This paper suggests that commitment to a goal paradigm has retarded analysis by requiring the disassociation of conceptual scheme from incompatible empirical findings on organizations. Barnard's incentive system analysis is seen as providing the foundations of a counter paradigm, and suggestions are made for its development along the lines indicated by his statement "the individual is the basic strategic factor in organization." Organizations are not viewed as analytically distinctive social units given meaning by their goals, but as arbitrary focusses of interest, marketplaces whose structures and processes are the outcomes of the complex accommodations made by actors exchanging a variety of incentives and pursuing a diversity of goals. @

Petro Georgiou

Papers

The Goal Paradigm and Notes Towards a Counter Paradigm