How to construct an actor-network: Management accounting from idea to practice

This paper reports attempts to introduce management accounting in the Italian Ministry of Finance, in the Municipality of Genua and in the Province of Perugia. The report frames the developments as construction of actor-networks, where local translations of a general idea lead to local variations in practice.This framing reveals that the traditional account of implementation is too simple to grasp all the complexity of introducing new technologies and practices. The actor-network perspective shows also why there cannot exist a prescription for a successful implementation. In all cases under reviews, the actors tried to achieve the same results, mobilizing resources locally accessible to them. The results inevitably differed.