In our recent European Accounting Review paper, we examine how a family firm professionalized after a private equity fund took over 51% of the shares. Our case illustrates the performative nature of accounting devices like budgets, and highlights how key employees can help render them taken for granted. In this blog, we highlight the key findings from our work.
Prior research established that accounting devices like budgets and KPIs are not neutral, but shape organizations, individuals and worldviews (e.g. Miller & Power, 2013). To some extent, they create the reality that they seek to describe. This is called the performativity of accounting devices (see also Vosselman, 2022).
In our study, we examine how three new accounting devices (management reports, KPIs, and cash flow analyses) shape a family firm after a takeover. Also, we examine how some managers “amplify” the impact of these accounting devices. We follow a suggestion by Power (2021) to focus on organizational actors that he coins “agents of amplification,” who can play an important role in embedding accounting devices.
Prior literature states that accounting devices usually do not play an important role in small family firms (e.g. Hiebl, 2013). Also, we know that a takeover and a related professionalization process of a family firm may go hand in hand with the introduction of more formal accounting devices such as budgets and KPIs.
We study the takeover of family firm FAMFEET by private equity firm PRICAP, and pay specific attention to newly introduced accounting devices. We draw on 18 interviews with the family founders, employees, representatives of the private equity fund, and the new managers to study the changes following the takeover by PRICAP.
In our paper, we zoom in on the role of new managers with a strong financial background. These ‘agents of amplification’ engage in three related practices that amplify the performativity of management reports, cash flow analyses and KPIs. These practices are:
Through these three practices, the newly hired managers (the agents of amplification) help the organization navigate resistance to the accounting devices, while simultaneously emphasizing their benefits and increasing their own positional power.
In addition, our analysis also draws attention to the impact of the accounting changes on the social fabric of the family firm. One interviewee pointed to eroded relations and less commitment among employees, and summarized her observations by stating:
It was all much more personal and now it’s more ‘the way it has to be done’…[laughs]… the way it has to be done in a big company!
We contribute to the accounting literature in two ways. First, we add to the performativity literature by exploring the practices that agents of amplification engage in: specifying, showcasing, and streamlining. Furthermore, we also show how the social fabric of a family firm may change following a takeover and professionalization process.
Second, we analyze a small family firm that professionalizes after a private equity fund took over 51% of the shares. By doing so, we make an empirical contribution, as this event often takes place beyond closed doors. We hope our findings help to better understand accounting in family firms and the role organizational actors can play in amplifying the performativity of accounting devices.
Berend van der Kolk is an associate professor of management accounting at VU Amsterdam.
Bernadette Bullinger is an assistant professor of human resource management at IE University Madrid.
Leon Stam is a research assistant who carried out work for this project while he was at the University of Groningen.
