رابطه حسابداری مدیریت راهبردی SMA با فرهنگ عامه

ABSTRACT The relevance of strategic management accounting to popular culture: The world of West End Musicals

This paper contributes to the emergent field of accounting and popular culture (Jeacle, 2012) by its focus on musical theatre; by its contribution to the literature on Strategic Management Accounting (SMA), by extending our understanding of how SMA might apply in popular culture; and to the Strategy as Practice (SAP) literature by underlining the importance of the practice turn in understanding the enactment of strategy in a novel setting. In particular, we extend existing literature on accounting and popular culture by studying the process of selecting and launching musical theatre productions, which reveals a variety of extra-organizational activities in which strategic actions occur. This research examines the applicability of SMA, taking an SAP perspective. Empirically, this argument is supported by case study research of musical theatre in New York City and Toronto, Canada, employing a variety of research methods, including observations and interview data, to investigate the practices involved in bringing new theatrical productions to market.

The particular focus on the strategic decision to initiate and launch new shows has been called the ‘fuzzy front end’ of product innovation (Alam, 2006; Carlsson-Wall and Kraus, 2015; Frishammar et al., 2013), which is about judgement and is informal, approximate and interpretive (Alam, 2006; Frishammar et al., 2013). However, this ‘fuzzy front end’ is ignored in the accounting literature, even though it is essential to successful product innovation (Carlsson-Wall and Kraus, 2015).

In order to address the ‘fuzzy front end’ in the study of strategy by management accountants in the world of theatre we take the perspective of ‘strategy as practice’ (SAP). In contrast to more traditional discussions of strategy in the management accounting literature, this study aims to extend our understandings of what strategy means in practice and how this might inform the practice of strategic management accounting. Popular culture, in this case musical theatre productions, takes us beyond the confines of the typical industrial setting found in most of the literature on strategic management accounting, and thereby offers alternative perspectives on strategizing in organizations.

This paper’s contribution adds to an increasing number of studies by SAP scholars in settings which are wider than in more conventional studies (Vaara and Whittington, 2012). Using an unconventional study setting offers a more nuanced understanding of strategy and what strategic management accounting could be.

Specifically, the empirical material presented below offers insights into the sophisticated manner in which popular theatres enact their strategies. The world of popular theatre is intensely competitive and strategising extends beyond the confines of the organization in a manner which displays a preoccupation with the quality of new offerings or products and their customers’ perceptions of these new offerings in the market place. This attribute – the perceived product quality – has primacy in enacting a strategy for successful theatre productions. This finding offers a distinct contrast with extant literature on ‘the customer’ in management accounting literature. Within industrial economics, the customer who is willing to pay the asking price for a product is represented by that willingness to pay. However, in seeking to go beyond prices for goods and services there is an accounting literature in which the customer has been described as a centre of calculative practice (Cuganesan, 2008; Vaivio, 1999), but ‘the customer’ has more frequently been depicted by the proxy of customer services (Cuganesan, 2008; Ma and Tayles, 2009; Ogden, 1997). Neither of the aforementioned offerings has the subtlety of a more nuanced intermediate market such as that found in the world of theatre products. Indeed, the operationalization of the concept of ‘the customer’ has proved complex for manufacturing enterprises and other industrial organisations (Perera et al., 1997; McManus, 2011). This paper offers an alternative route to analyzing and understanding the customer in strategic thinking.

The paper is organized in the following sections. We begin by examining ideas of strategising and strategic management accounting in Section 2. Next we examine cultural industries as a research setting (Section 3) and explain the research approach used in this study (Section 4). We then examine the experiences of musical theatre and present empirical material in Section 5. Finally, we offer a concluding discussion of our findings (Section 6).