Accounting in Domain of 'New Industrial Relations' : Some Preliminary Findings of an Inquiry into an Employee-Owned Steel Mill

This paper describes some preliminary findings of an ethnographic inquiry into a steel mill purchased by its employees through a stock option scheme in the early 1980s to avoid closure by its parent company. A new company was formed with a broad of thirteen directors of whom three represented and were appointed by labor. Subsequent to the change in ownership the company embarked on series of widely acclaimed workplace initiatives including participative management and cultural change. After some years it also undertook a major capital investment program. The focus of the study was on accounting in the context of the new industrial relations formed by employee ownership including the extension of participative management practices and on the capital investment program. A cycle of recovery, decline and gradual emergence from decline in the company's product market during the decade subsequent to the ESOP revealed significant tensions, contradictions and contests over control, in the new ownership structure. These included: the creation of alternative realities by contestants in the law suit over asserted gross negligence; a theme of stewardship enacted, or played out, in the mill and the courts in a complex setting involving an employee initiated law suit; a proxy vote to protect directors against liability for gross negligence, and the unseating of the audit committee chair