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This study is concerned with students' and lecturer's experiences of learning and teaching introductory accounting within higher education. It seeks to identify the key aspects of what constitutes "learning accounting" and "teaching accounting" for lecturers and students, their conceptions of accounting and the extent to which students and lecturers share experiences in common or differ in their experiences. The research method adopted is that of phenomenography which seeks to identify the qualitatively different ways in which various phenomena are experienced. Since there has been relatively little critique of the practice of phenomenography, this study also seeks to critically review the application of the phenomenographic research method in practice. This review draws on experience within empirically-based phenomenological psychology to propose a revised phenomenographic research approach. This revised approach focuses on the need to bracket presuppositions about the phenomenon under investigation, to develop an empathetic understanding with the experiences of the participants and to report findings in a way which would most fully reveal the nature of that lived experience. Through the application of this revised research approach key aspects of the individual, common and distinctive worlds of students and lecturers are identified. "Learning accounting" and "teaching accounting" are shown, primarily, to constitute the learning of a technique. Yet this emphasis on accounting as the learning of a technique is at variance with other teaching objectives perceived by lecturers to be equally, or more, important. Lecturers perceive the development of conceptual understanding to be of importance. However, they express diverse views about what "accounting" is, they are doubtful about the relationship between conceptual understanding and the learning of the technique and their explanations of accounting concepts often reveal a partial and, arguably incomplete, conceptual framework. In addition, the findings show that students' preconceptions and perceptions of relevance are central to their experience of learning accounting and they reinforce the experience of accounting as being about the learning of a technique. Lecturers' perceptions of those preconceptions and relevance reveal teaching responses based on misunderstandings of the students' experiences. An alternative way of viewing the introductory accounting curriculum is proposed which takes into account the ways in which students and lecturers experience the learning and teaching of accounting.

This thesis is based on participant observation undertaken by the author as an operative in a manufacturing bakery. The problems of control and resistance observed during this period are analysed in terms of their importance in the constitution of the symbolic reality, or order, of the organization. This is offered as an alternative but complementary perspective to the traditional focus of labour process or social exchange theorists, and suggests a potentially fruitful new direction for organisational analysis. The thesis falls into two parts: the first discusses methodological problems, "objectivity" and positivism in "reflexive" sociology, the nature of truth and the importance of community validation; the condition of "verstehen", and the relationships between hermeneutics, ordinary language philosophy, ethnomethodology and structuralism; and the development of poststructuralism, with the associated reconceptualisation of subjectobject relationships, reading, and deconstruction. The methodological argument is that social life constitutes a form, of text and can be approached as a "fiction" - that "method" or "playfulness" is best applied to developing openness and sensitivity to experience whilst developing a critical armoury - seeking to develop our "readings" of social life to their limit of sensitive scrutiny and penetrating enquiry. The second part discusses the observational data more specifically in relation to the creation of and resistance to an organizational symbolic order. The concentration is on marginal data in areas where the symbolic order is emergent and analyses forms of data hitherto neglected in previous treatments. The concept of culture is explored through a critical examination of the consultancy process on a model of primitive sorcery as cultural adjustment; cultural ownership of criteria for organizational membership is examined through formal and informal induction processes; the capacity of humour to function as a non-real framework for resistance to organizational control is illustrated; and the problems of defining and interpreting acts of sabotage as material resistances rather than as having symbolic significance are discussed. The final argument is that the processes of symbolization in organizational sense-making have been neglected in the past in favour of the processes of rationalization. Symbolization in preserving ambiguity furnishes grounds for the maintenance, negotiation of and resistance to the organizational order and it is suggested that this should provide a direction for the future development of post-contingency organization theory.

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Total Quality Management (TQM) is a phenomena of the eighties. According to Pascale (1990), it has received more publicity than any other management innovation. Its level of popularity seems only to be rivalled by the variety of ways it manifests itself to managers and academics. This thesis is an explanatory case study (Hamel 1993; Yin 1994), based on research into one company's efforts to introduce Total Quality Management to their organisation. The research task was to explain the changes being brought about within the researcher's employing company, Ilford Limited, a photographic materials manufacturer, during six years of TQM adoption. The exploration of different perspectives that would explain the organisational changes being studied were primarily driven by a search for 'useful knowledge' (Louis 1983). This work grew from TQM as a quality improvement programme to the use of an ideological perspective and critique, (Bendix 1956; Gramsci 1971; Seliger 1976; Giddens 1979; Anthony 1977; Habermas 1984; Mumby 1988), which could be seen as contextually relevant, (Pettigrew 1985). Bendix defined management ideology as "those ideas which are espoused by or for those who exercise authority in economic enterprises". It will be argued that TQM renews the ideological appeal which is focused on securing managerial commitment to the aims of the organisation. The need for a renewed appeal in Ilford followed an 'array of cost cutting attacks' such as redundancy and reorganisation, in which managers have become as much the victims as the shop floor workers in the past. The effect of this 'victimisation' on the management community in Ilford was significant and led to an increasing alienation of its managers, (Baxter 1982). This alienation was aggravated by a rising cynicism amongst managers and a loss of value previously inherent in their work as a central life interest. The importance of committed managers to the success of the organisation is highlighted by Anthony, who comments that managers will replace the manual worker as the focus for ideological appeal, because they are now "the determinant of productivity". In Crosby's (1979) view, management commitment is 'Step One' in improving quality management and other writers on quality such as Deming (1986) and Juran (1992), would concur that managers are also the 'determinant of quality'. TQM has therefore, two main roles, an overt role as a rational response to poor competitiveness and a covert role of renewing the legitimacy of a management ideology. Both of these roles are examined in this thesis. TQM as ideology is also a critique of the rational management perspective, in Thompson's (1989) words, "ideology is the thought of the other". The derogatory use of the term to indicate a 'false consciousness' and as a hegemonic project that has infiltrated companies with "New Right" ideas of the "internalisation of market relations", has been developed by some Trades Unions and academics, ( Hall, 1988; GMBU Paper 1991; Du Gay and Salaman 1992; Tuckman 1994). This perspective will be discussed in the context of the case study and the search for useful explanations of TQM induced changes at Ilford Limited.

The research is concerned with accounting for the contemporary forms of discourse and practice of business ethics. Through a review of the literature concerning both business ethics and organisational culture it is argued that each literature expresses the contemporary uncertainty regarding how organisational practices and management may be analyzed and understood. A case study of Sheffield Business School indicates that the interest in "managing" organisational culture, along with the contemporary interest in business ethics, can be viewed as reflecting the uncertainties arising from the increased influence of the free market economy upon both business organisations and other organisational forms. It is argued that both the Business School as a cultural artifact, and the contemporary concerns with organisational culture and business ethics reflect the complexities and the uncertainties confronting individual actors living in an era characterised as one of Reflexive Modernity. With regard to business ethics, it is contended that there is a need to locate the phenomenon within an analysis of the socio-economic milieux of Western society. A postmodernist analysis is rejected on the grounds that the concept itself can be located within a Durkheimian analysis which applies the concept of anomie. By drawing attention to the effects of the free market upon other spheres of social life, it is argued that Durkheim provides an appropriate conceptual framework for the analysis of business ethics. That is, business ethics can be viewed as being both an expression of, and reaction to, contemporary anomie. This is also reflected in controversies regarding the parameters of business ethics, and the methodological difficulties encountered in researching the phenomenon. By providing a non-rejectionist critique of free market business behaviour, a Durkheimian analysis of business ethics provides a means of analyzing future developments within the business community and the role of the free market within society, as well as the implications for individual behaviour.

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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.