Premium
Strategy, Technology, and Social Processes With in Professional Cultures: A Negotiated Order, Ethnographic Perspective
Author(s) -
Fischer Michael J.,
Dirsmith Mark W.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1995.18.4.381
Subject(s) - sociology , politics , public relations , orderliness , rationality , ethnography , organizational culture , audit , objectivity (philosophy) , organizational analysis , management , epistemology , political science , economics , law , social psychology , psychology , philosophy , anthropology
As an element of formal organizational structure, strategy has arisen as an icon of an increasingly organization‐based society, while the application of technology to perform organizational functions has become an accepted aspect of contemporary life. Combined, strategy and technology suggest organizational orderliness, rationality, and efficiency. A variety of literatures has recognized the symbolic role of strategy and technology, as well as professional endeavor, in legitimating organizational functioning and change, wherein the vested political interests of an organization's strategic apex may be veiled by a rhetoric of objectivity and professionalism. However, this literature has remained largely theoretical in nature. An ethnographic field study of the Big 6 public accounting firms examined the interpenetration of strategy, technology, and internal social processes. It found, for example, that audit technologies were developed and unilaterally implemented by the strategic apex of the firms to achieve such stated objectives as enhancing auditor “efficiency.” However, the implemented technologies were frequently resisted, transformed, and redirected to serve the ends of the operating core, or practitioner subculture, of the firms. Thus, strategy, technology, and social process are seen as interpenetrated within the active political‐social milieu that is public accounting.