Investment Decisions in Mega Projects: Bureaucracy and Accounting Control: Preliminary Data Analysis

Abstract

Research in Accounting and development is now an established field. Research in Cultural political economy of accounting and development has made an important theoretical development in this field of research. Identifying this theoretical development this research is trying to identify how public sector/government (organizational) decision making, multitudes of controls, political and cultural institutions are associated with each other in permeating eclectic form of accounting for investment decisions in mega projects in Sri Lanka`s Development. Sri Lanka is developing country and traditional culture with dynamic political environment. This paper derived from Weberian framework introduced by Colington and Covaleski(1991) and the draws the works of Dyball and Valcarcel (1999), Uddin (2009) on traditional societies and tries to respond to the existing literature from the findings of case study. To materialize the study, one of the major mega infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka has been selected for the study. The study is following qualitative tradition and data collection process has consisted with five parts followed by data analysis. Preliminary Data analysis process is being done with themes emerging through interpretation of respondents, organizational and theoretical categories. Findings of the preliminary data analysis shows that there are many bureaucracies within the bureaucracy and it does not lies only with administrative staff as explained by weber. Further different layers and sections of the organizational have different accounting practices which are unknown to the other where minimal or no information link with each other. Cultural Political Economy has identified as the theoretical framework of the study as the studies in this research agenda has reported number of case studies to understand how cultural, political factors and institutions are important in understanding management accounting practices and management control systems of developing countries.