Interfaces, narrations et légitimation de la financiarisation

This paper examines the justifications management accountants give of their role and position in organizations. We identified four main arguments : their position in the circuit of information, their expertise in accounting and finance, the position given by senior management and their role as an interface between operations and senior management. We show that management accountants use these legitimating accounts to build a narrative that legitimizes financial management, when their intervention is in the same time legitimized by the financialization of organizations. This study thus highlights how narratives produced by specific actors are implicated in the legitimization of the connection of local practices to the global tendency towards financialization.