The effects of uncertainty, trust, structure and resistance to change in the diffusion of management accounting innovations: an agent based modeling approach

This article considers the effects of uncertainty, structure, trust and resistance to change on the success or failure of management accounting innovations diffusion. The diffusion process is examined through a social network of nodes and ties. Ties represent communication channels through which the diffusion flows and nodes represent organizational actors who facilitate or impede the diffusion process. Trust is operationalized through strong ties and structure is modeled with the density of ties within organizational units and ties between organizational units. Uncertainty represents the degree of controversy that is often inherent to management accounting innovation and change. Initially, organizational actors can be in three possible states: adopters, detractors and non-adopters. Innovation adopters or detractors embedded in the organizational network will mobilize their own network of strong ties to convince non-adopters to adopt or reject the innovation. This research aims at exploring the effects of uncertainty, trust, structure and perception of a management accounting innovation on the likelihood of success of the diffusion process. The authors used an agent based modeling approach to simulate the behavior of organizational agents within an organizational context. The results suggest that mechanistic and organic structures are contingently conducive of success in the implementation of management accounting innovation. The likelihood of success depends on the interplay of the controversy of the innovation, the number of the initial adopters or detractors and the trusted component of network ties.