THE STRATEGIC AGENDA - ACCOUNTING FOR ISSUES AND SUPPORT

This paper focuses on the significance of accounting to the pre-enactment stage of strategy, approaching it from an ecological perspective. It views organization as an ecosystem, unified only by the minimal level of concurrence necessary for survival, wherein conflicting stakeholders contend for the control of strategy. Its strategic agenda is shaped by the processing of issues and the coalesence of support. Fit among issues and support, rather than any singular rationality or set of intentions, is pivotal. In this context, because both planned and unplanned occurences can have effect, the question of who controls strategy is open. Therefore, accounting data and systems can take on roles not anticipated when they were originally conceptualized. Examples are given of why an ecological view of the relationship between accounting and strategy breathes life into the notion of accounting as reality construction, and numerous questions are posed to suggest future research. © 1990.