Changes in managerial accounting practices: application of the critical discourse analysis to the family company’s administration report

Abstract

The goal of this study is determine whether the changes in managerial accounting practices can be identified in a company’s Administration Report through the application of the Critical Discourse Analysis. The study is of an exploratory nature, using the qualitative approach and the Critical Discourse Analysis as advocated by Fairclough (2003) to investigate the administration reports of a publicly traded family business between 1998 and 2007. The analysis of representational discourse, considering the meaning of words, shows that the four stages of managerial accounting described by IMAP 1 (IFAC, 1998) were identified in the company’s AR. The analysis of representational discourse focusing on inter-discursiveness found that the company had only one leadership discourse in its AR. In the analysis of the representation of social actors such as employees and customers, the latter were emphatically represented in the AR only in some periods. Thus the Critical Analysis of Discourse, having as its reference the three forms of representational meaning, could identify changes in managerial accounting practices only in the analysis of word meanings, since all of its stages described in IMAP 1 (IFAC, 1998) were identified.

Keywords: evolutionary stages, managerial accounting, critical discourse analysis, administrationreports.