نهادینه سازی حسابداری مدیریت در شرکت های خانوادگی: ارتباط منطق های چندگانه The institutionalization of management accounting tools in family firms: the relevance of multiple logics

1 Introduction Management accounting scholars over recent years have paid growing attention to family firms, which represent the majority of businesses and employment worldwide and have peculiarities that could affect the use of management accounting tools in daily practice. Researchers have pointed out that a characteristic of family firms is that they tend to have a lower diffusion of management accounting tools, because of widespread family logic at the ownership, governance and management levels (Songini 2006). However, other contributions have stated that formal mechanisms may help the family to better pursue their firm’s interests (Rue and Ibrahim 1995; Sharma et al. 1997; Ward 2001; Schulze et al. 2003). In regard to this issue, some studies have highlighted that the involvement of outsiders/non-family experts in governance and management structures can bring professional norms and values into family firms’ decision-making processes, and call for more research on accounting tools in family businesses to provide new evidence (Salvato and Moores 2010). Based on this advice, in our view it could be interesting to investigate how the introduction of management accounting tools occurs in family firms, paying particular attention to the criticalities that could hinder this introduction. Evidence on this point could contribute further to explaining the poor diffusion of these tools in the family firm context. Drawing on family business literature, we look into how family firm logic interacts with business logic, represented by professional norms and values, and with community logic, related to social conformity and legitimate recognition. Assuming an institutional perspective, these logics provide beliefs and values that guide organizational actors in their practical actions (Friedland and Alford 1991) and help to explain connections that create a sense of common purpose and unity within an organizational field (Reay and Hinings 2009). When multiple logics coexist, the organizational field can be characterized by ‘two or more strong, competing or conflicting belief systems’ (Scott 1995, p. 211). As argued by previous studies (Scott 1995; Chua et al. 1999; Reay and Hinings 2009; Chrisman et al. 2012), limited empirical attention has been paid to the impact of competing logics on actors within the organizational field, in particular when the institutional change is promoted by one logic. In order to shed light on the literature gaps emerging from the analysis of management accounting and family business literature and the scant empirical evidence, this paper, focusing on the introduction of management accounting tools promoted by professionals, aims to enable a better understanding of how they become institutionalized. In doing so, we ask how the institutionalization process is influenced by the convergence or divergence of different institutional logics characterizing the family firm context.