Please cite this article in press as: Nama, Y., Lowe, A., The ‘situated functionality’ of accounting in private equity practices: A social ‘site’ analysis. Manage. Account. Res. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2014.06.001 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model YMARE-531; No. of Pages 20 Management Accounting Research xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Management Accounting Research jo ur nal homep age: www.elsevier.com/locate/mar The ‘situated functionality’ of accounting in private equity practices: A social ‘site’ analysis Yesh Nama a,* , Alan Lowe b a Accounting and Management Control Department, ESSEC Business School, Avenue Bernard Hirsch – B.P. 50105, 95021 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France b Finance and Accounting Group, Aston Business School, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Private equity Situated functionality Accounting practices Practice theory Site ontology a b s t r a c t This paper contributes to the recent ‘practice turn’ in management accounting literature in two ways: (1) by investigating the meshing and consequently the ‘situated functionality’ of accounting in various private equity (PE) practices, and (2) by experimenting with the application of Schatzki’s ‘site’ ontology. By identifying and describing the role and nature of accounting and associated calculative practices in different parts of the PE value chain, we note that the ‘situated functionality’ of accounting is ‘prefigured’ by its ‘dispersed’ nature. A particular contribution of experimenting with Schatzki’s ‘site’ ontology has been to identify theoretical concerns in relation to the meaning and role of the concept ‘general understand- ings’ and to clarify the definitional issues surrounding this concept. We also identify the close relationship between ‘general understandings’ and ‘teleoaffective structure’ and note their mutually constitutive nature. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Baxter and Chua (2008, p. 225) argue that “research which focuses on how accounting engages/re-engages with various fields may help us to better understand . . . account- ing practices” (See also: Ahrens, 2010, p. 35; Miller, 1998). Similarly, Jørgensen and Messner (2010, p. 203) argue that an increased attention to how accounting intersects with other organizational practices would be worthwhile for accounting researchers. Our research examines the role of accounting in private equity in order to consider these intersections with other organizational practices in a complex financial services setting. Some of the prac- tices performed in financial services firms are unique and at times arcane (Preda, 2007). Some such practices (for * Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 (0)1 34 43 30 29. E-mail addresses: nama@essec.edu (Y. Nama), a.d.lowe@aston.ac.uk (A. Lowe). example: asset management, high frequency trading, etc.) may not be found widely in firms in other sectors. Preda (2007, p. 507) emphasizes the “complexity and empirical richness of finance as a field of inquiry” while recently we have seen increasing interest in studying the role of accounting and accountants in the operations of financial services firms and financial markets (Lovell and MacKenzie, 2011; MacKenzie, 2009; Preda, 2009; Van der Stede, 2011; Vollmer et al., 2009). Private equity (PE) 1 as an industry has become an increasingly significant component of global financial mar- kets. The PE industry has expanded in scale and scope, recently reporting approximately USD 3.5 trillion in global 1 PE firms are specialist asset management firms whose business is to provide medium to long term finance, mostly to potentially high growth unquoted companies, in return for an equity stake (Please refer Sections 3 and 5 for further discussion). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2014.06.001 1044-5005/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.