Professor Norman Macintosh has long been a leading, and at times a dissonant, voice in
critical accounting studies, exhibiting an intellectual dexterity seldom encountered in the
accounting academy. His work ranges from the application of traditional organizational
theories within work organizations to poststructural renderings of capital market exigencies.
Here, we consider and extend Professor Macintosh’s work contemplating the morality
embedded within, and propagated by, management accounting and control systems (macs).
Webegin with Macintosh (1995) employing structuration theory in investigating the ethics
of profit manipulation within large, decentralized corporations. The work highlights the
fundamental dialectical contradictions within these work organizations, demonstrates the
indeterminacy of traditional ethical reasoning, and shows the extent to which macs provide
legitimating underpinnings for management action.Wepropose to extend the conversation
using the tools provided in Macintosh’s subsequent work: a Levinasian ethic (Macintosh et
al., 2009), and heteroglossic accounting (Macintosh, 2002)—both emerging from his poststructuralist
predilections. A Levinasian perspective provides an ontologically grounded
ethic, and heteroglossic accounting calls for multiple accountings representing alternative
moral voices. A critical dialogic framework is proposed as a theoretic for imagining
heteroglossic accounting that takes pluralism seriously by recognizing the reality of irresolvable
differences and asymmetric power relationships associated with assorted moral
perspectives.