Accounting, ambiguity, and the new institutionalism

The New Institutionalism is a recent development in organization theory with great relevance to accounting research. New institutionalists view accounting practices as one of a larger set of features that can legitimize organizations through construction of an appearance of rationality and efficiency. Ceremonial adherence to legitimate norms may have little material impact because formal organizational structure is decoupled from actual organizational processes. Whether substantial decoupling undermines organizational legitimacy, who the key audiences for organizational appearances are, and the relation between technical and institutional factors, are key issues that remain unsettled in new institutionalist research.