Accounting for Competition, ‘Circuits of Power’ and Negotiated Order Between Not-For-Profit and Public Sector Organisations

This study analyses the role of accounting information in negotiating contractual relationships in the framework of circuits of power during a competitive tendering process. The study asks how institutionalised accounting information affects taken-for-granted ways of thinking and acting by institutional actors in negotiating inter-organisational order when analysed using the framework of circuits of power. Field research took place in a Finnish not-for-profit aged care organisation and municipality from 2008 to 2012. The study shows that institutionalised accounting information cannot be taken-for-granted to prevail in obligatory passage points of the circuits of power in negotiating order.