Interfaces, narrations and the legitimisation of financialisation: The discursive activity of management accountants

This paper examines the justifications accountants give for their role and position in organisations. Through a qualitative study based on observations and interviews, we follow management accountants acting as influential representatives of the financial language in their organisations. Trying to embed financial issues within managerial decision-making, and actively supporting increasing centrality of financial literacy and expertise, these management accountants provide, in the process, ‘legitimating accounts’ of their interventions on operational processes. We group the various arguments they use to justify their influence into four categories: their position in the information circuit, their accounting and financial expertise, their degree of importance in the eyes of general management, and their role as the interface between operations and general management. We show that through these arguments they construct a narrative that legitimises the central role of financial language in their organisation, even though their intervention is legitimised by the financialisation of organisations. This study thus furthers understanding of how the narratives produced by management accountants legitimise the connection of local operations to the broader trend of financialisation.