STRATEGY, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIAL PROCESSES WITHIN PROFESSIONAL CULTURES - A NEGOTIATED ORDER, ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

As an element of formal organizational structure, strategy has arisen as an icon of an increasingly organization-based society, while the ap plication of technology to perform organizational functions has become an accepted aspect of contemporary life. Combined, strategy and techn ology suggest organizational orderliness, rationality, and efficiency. A variety of literatures has recognized the symbolic role of strategy and technology, as well as professional endeavor, in legitimating org anizational functioning and change, wherein the vested political inter ests of an organization's strategic apex may be veiled by a rhetoric o f objectivity and professionalism. However, this literature has remain ed largely theoretical in nature. An ethnographic field study of the B ig 6 public accounting firms examined the interpenetration of strategy , technology, and internal social processes. It found, for example, th at audit technologies were developed and unilaterally implemented by t he strategic apex of the firms to achieve such stated objectives as en hancing auditor ''efficiency.'' However, the implemented technologies were frequently resisted, transformed, and redirected to serve the end s of the operating core, or practitioner subculture, of the firms. Thu s, strategy, technology, and social process are seen as interpenetrate d within the active political-social milieu that is public accounting.