Exploring the Role of Metaphors in Social-Identity Construction: The Case of the German Controller

This study explores the rhetorical strategies underlying the discursive construction of the German controller social-identity in the mid-1970s. Previous research has shown how management accounting professionals struggle with different role models for the management accountant. This study complements this work by using the case of the German controller to investigate how broader ideas about the management accounting professional are discursively constructed. Based on qualitative interviews with contemporary witnesses as well as an in-depth analysis of articles published in the first practitioner controlling journal, we illustrate how metaphors enabled an interpretive viability and a process of professional inclusion. This, we argue, linked the emerging social-identity of the controller to both the macro-level discourse as well as to the situated experiences of individuals at the organizational level. In this way, we show how the social-identities of management accounting professionals can be constructed without traditional elements of codification regimes. Specifically, we uncover how metaphorical representations of a professional mission can foster the creation of an imagined community among a set of heterogeneous individuals, ideas, and concepts, which helps establish a sense of belonging, and ultimately, institutionalized legitimacy.