Translation and sensemaking in the transformation of accounting and finance services: a case study on an airport operator in Malaysia / Mahpudzah Mohamad

Accounting change occurs when an organisation restructures its accounting and finance division as the result of the organisational transformation. This study seeks to examine the ensuing internal change process involving the establishment of new accounting practices, processes and innovations. The strategies undertaken in implementing internal change have technical and social implications. This qualitative study adopts the interpretive single case study approach to understand the internal change process and how the internal processes are stabilised to accommodate the new structure. Data collection comprises of semi-structured interviews as primary data supported by the secondary date from archival records and documents. The institutional setting of the change is on how it affects the social dynamics of actors and how actors rationalise the internal change process. The conceptual framework for this study adopts Actor Network Theory’s (ANT) sociology of translation, and sensemaking to understand the behavioural response to the accounting change. Translation process traces how human actors and heterogeneous materials negotiate and are mobilised to produce institutional effects. Findings of the study show that structure that centralises accounting processes is affected by the interplay of organisational human and non-human factors such as system and processes. Actors’ activities during translation generate artefacts and inscriptions that mediate social relationships during the interplay framed by their institutional rationality, and produce ordering effects that shape the stability of accounting information flow leading to emergence of new routines and innovations. The theoretical contribution of this study highlights a new explanatory dimension on the specific role and contribution of different hierarchical management level in the internal change process. The practical contribution of this study provides an insight on the implementation of government transformation programme in a government-linked corporation in a developing country