Accounting information system in the water industry : The case of cost management.

Water is a primary human need. The supply of water has not increased in the face of population growth. At present severe pressure exists on water supplies in California and along the river system both in the developed and developing world (especially in the case of the Nile in Egypt). Whatever our policy stance towards the economics of water supply (the liberal market, social democracy and democratic socialism), cost management and processes are central to the water sector. The control or governing ideas within which cost management takes place are the two major concerns of this thesis. These two issues were explored in a case study of the General Organisation for the Greater Cairo Water Supply, focusing specifically upon government policy, administrative controls, the influence of public sector bodies and other customers. Control procedures, the perceptions and experiences of managers (regarding policy choice), cost management policies and practices, environmental demands (both market and physical), were all sought. Data was collected from multiple sources (triangulation) involving interviews, questionnaires, documentation, direct observation and participant observation. The research findings showed that the practice of cost management has developed. Reasons were multi-fold: (a) To keep costs well above revenue (b) To engender a factor-resources cost and technical approach to cost management (for efficiency and optimisation) (c) To deflect any attention away from strategic cost management (d) To engender an organisational belief that ambiguity and unpredictability in the environmental market is impossible to handle (e) To deny the relevance of customer cost/usage efficiency as a matter of systemic significance. This 'evolution of control' is explained through the theoretical context of institutional theory; demonstrating how values, beliefs and modes of regulation have produced a technical and passive non-reactive control system.