Abstract
In the last decades, the occurrence of many exogenous events both unexpected and human-led initiatives caused a profound and multifaceted transformation of the landscape in which organizations interact, shaping its social patterns and promoting a greater awareness towards sustainability. Accordingly, organizations need to reconfigure their management accounting and control systems, in order to adapt to such contextual alterations (Otley, 2008), even though the process of change is not devoid of complexity. This research project aims to delve into these challenges, to understand how firms navigate the process of management accounting change in light of the new external (or internal) demands for sustainability, and to suit new social patterns which may condition the organizations’ functioning. In particular, it will explore how individuals contribute to the transformation of management accounting tools when organizational tensions arise due to sustainability and how employees react to changes in management control systems in alternative working conditions promoted by new social patterns.