Challenging the dominant economic agency theory of corporate governance with a new discourse drawn from
institutional theory, the paper analyses how management accounting is implicated in corporate governance. The
proposed institutional theory of agency links the micro-institutions of the organization that are informed by the practices
of management accounting with external institutional players and stakeholders. The paper identifies emerging
narratives in which the management accounting profession has recognised a distinctive, post-Enron set of sensibilities.
Although techniques drawn from strategic management accounting can be adapted to embed better corporate
governance practices, the institutional theory of agency identifies tensions between the heroic CEO narrative and
the routinization of strategy implicit in strategic management accounting.