Ethnographic significance in researching management accounting: Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Applying an ethnographic methodology allows the researcher to show how people’s everyday life is manifested in management accounting and control practices. The chapter reflects on two cases. One studied Bangladesh’s microfinance practices where illiterate women produce ‘oral accounts’ as part of alleviating rural poverty, while the other studied the management control practices of a Sri Lankan tea plantation where tea-plucking women exploited the opportunities of neoliberalism to reconstruct the prevailing system of management controls. Validation is achieved by the interaction of theory with the story. A story may act as an illustration of theory, or a theory may illuminate the story