Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the intersection between corporate governance and management accounting information within the board meeting of an English further education college. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical fieldwork uses an interventionist approach. Board members’ mental models of a management accounting boundary object are analysed. Findings – The paper supports Parker (2007) and Cornforth and Edward’s (1999) observation that within a board meeting, collaborative “micro-management” type talk is considered to lie outside the acceptable remit of non-executive and executive board member interaction. Such an attitude can prevent an intertwining of management accounting information and other mental models of an organisation occurring. This can preclude management accounting information from rendering an organisation visible, in an expansive manner, within a boardroom. Research limitations/implications – Interventionist researchers working within the black box of the board are encouraged to design more radical and collaborative interventions than the interview/report format used here. Practical implications – Non-executive directors might benefit from being offered the opportunity to interact with management accounting information outside the formal board meeting and committee structure. Originality/value – A deeper understanding of how directors’ mental models, boardroom behaviours and attitudes influence their interaction with management accounting information is offered. Insight into the limitations of using management accounting information in the boardroom is developed.

Introduction

“The intersection of […] corporate governance […] and management accounting [information] has been given little interest from researchers” Johanson (2008, p. 371). This is because the accounting community has tended to study how externally published financial accounting information is implicated in corporate governance, rather than management accounting information (Johanson, 2008). Moreover, the extant literature that considers this intersection (Hough et al., 2015; Michaud, 2014; Manochin et al., 2011; Johanson, 2008; Parker, 2008, 2003) has not “penetrate[d] [fully to] the very heart of director thinking and behaviour” (Parker, 2008, p. 86). As such, the aim of this paper is to investigate how board members, of an English further education (FE) college, understand and use management accounting information – within the specific context of the board meeting. Corporate governance is a situated (McNulty et al., 2013) and socialised (Parker and Hoque, 2015) activity. At its heart lies the board, comprising executive and non-executive directors, who are responsible jointly for the governance of the organisation (Cornforth, 2012). At board meetings (Machold and Farquhar, 2013; Samra-Fredericks, 2000), directors seek to collaborate with each other through discussion (Bailey and Peck, 2013; Forbes and Milliken, 1999), and, where appropriate, non-executive directors monitor and control the actions of executive directors (Sundaramurthy and Lewis, 2003). Effective governance requires a skilful switching between control and collaboration within a board meeting (Nicholson et al., 2017; Roberts et al., 2005) because an over-emphasis on control and monitoring can have a negative impact on board effectiveness (Brennan et al., 2016). This article frames board activity using a control and collaboration perspective recognising that boards engage in other processes and behaviours such as strategizing (Pugliese et al., 2009); boundary spanning (Miller-Millesen, 2003); and resourcing the organisation (Parker, 2003). Non-executive directors are not involved in the day-to-day running of the organisation, and literature holds that non-executives will have a more limited visibility of certain aspects of the organisation than the executives (Brennan et al., 2016). Roberts et al. (2005) note that this difference in visibility impacts both the collaborative and control aspects of governance, highlighting that there is a mundane, yet crucial, driver of effective governance within a board. This is the non-executives’ “knowledge of the [organisation]” (p. S19).