Volume 39, Issue 1, 2011
Ülle Pärl
Pages 183-207
A semiotic alternative to communication in the processes in Management Accounting and Control Systems
This conceptual paper addresses Management Accounting and Control Systems (MACS) from a communication process perspective as opposed to a functional
design perspective. Its arguments originate from a social-constructionist perspective on the organization. Its line of argument is that building a social theory
of a social phenomenon such as MACS, demands that attention be paid to the characteristics of the communication process. An existing theoretical framework
that does the same is Giddens’ structuration theory, but it is only partly satisfactory because it refuses to consider communication-as-interaction from a dynamic
contextual perspective, instead falling back on an argument related to the behavioural aspects of agency. An alternative is a semiotic-based communication
perspective that includes context as well as addresses the epistemological level of a MACS theory based on communication. The semiotic model of Jakobson is provided and developed as a specific alternative.