The constitutive role of accounting information in the interaction between politicians and managers

Given the limited adoption of private-like accounting tools in Italian local authorities, we study the use of accounting information (AI) in the interactions between politicians and managers. Drawing on Robichaud, Giroux and Taylor (2004), The Metaconversation: The Recursive Property of Language as a Key to Organizing, The Academy of Management Review, the research aims to show how the role politicians and managers assign to AI constitutes the identity of politicians’ and managers’ communities and of the whole organization. The concept of Metaconversation has informed a case study conducted within an Italian municipality. We investigate how AI, through a discourse analysis of conversations between politicians and manager, can contribute to constitute the identity of politicians’ and managers’ communities.