Living in "Transparency": exploring the interface of management accounting and the operational at Rautaruukki Plc.

This field study explores how management accounting knowledge became intertwined with operational knowledge within Rautaruukki, a large Finnish steel-producer. It illustrates first how management accounting professionals operate in conditions where a “transparency” of operational detail met growing frustration with “information overload” and “dead figures.” Second, it casts light into how management accounting knowledge becomes verbally mobilized in these conditions - into how management accounting professionals appear as “sensegivers” in the micro-settings where the operationally relevant is elaborated into organizational action. The paper also discusses the problematic aspects of this increasing domination of management accounting knowledge, as an expression of the further quantification of organizational life.