Structure and agency in an institutionalized setting: The application and social transformation of control in the Big Six

The study reported here drew upon select portions of institutional theory, the sociology of the professions, and structuration theory to analyze the exercise, resistance and transformation of control in Big 6 accounting firms. Its focus is on understanding the interplay between structural and social facets of these firms as shaped by the relative power of their administrative and practitioner agents. We examined these issues by means of an interpretive held study which found that the firms have implemented the formal, structural practice of management by objectives (MBO) as one element in an array of rationalizing strategies in the expectation that MBO would provide an integrated approach to effecting management control. We also found that mentoring has become an important social force shaping, and in Nm being shaped by, the exercise of formal control. It is concluded that the structural and social processes of MBO and mentoring, while serving primarily the administrative and practitioner components of the firms, have become interpenetrated or mutually constitutive in actual practice, each serving a spectrum of interests, functions and purposes. Our results further suggest that, as ongoing processes, MBO and mentoring are infused with power and self-interest, and that they serve as instances of the constraints, media and outcomes of structural and social change within the Big 6 firms. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd