Accounting talks – how operations managers nuance their frontstage performance with backstage negotiations

Purpose - This paper analyzes the ways in which accounting enables operations managers to enter and perform multiple roles in their interplay with organizational groups on the shop floor and in management, and the associated negotiations that operations managers have with “the self.” Design/methodology/approach - Using field-based studies in a mining organization, the study draws on Goffman’s backstage–frontstage metaphor to analyze how operations managers enter and perform several roles with the aid of accounting. Findings - The findings show that accounting legitimizes operations managers when they cross organizational boundaries, as accounting gives them an “entry ticket” that legitimizes their presence with the group. Accounting further allows operations managers to embrace more than one role by “putting on a mask” to become an outsider or insider in relation to a group. In performing their roles, operations managers exhibit varying attributes and knowledge. Accounting can thereby be withheld from, or shared with, organizational groups. The illusion of accounting as deterministic presented frontstage is not necessarily negotiated that way backstage. Rather, alternatives discussed backstage often become silenced in the frontstage performance. The study concludes that operations managers cross boundaries, embrace roles and exert agency as they navigate with accounting, enrolling it into their performance simultaneously as they backstage reflect upon accounting and its role for their everyday work. Originality/value - This study relies on the frontstage/backstage metaphor to visualize the discrepancies in how accounting is enrolled into role performances and how seemingly categorical fronts do not necessarily share that dominant position backstage.