This paper analyses the development of pseudo micro-profit centres (MPCs) at Kitanihon, a Japanese manufacturer. MPCs aim to relate financial and operational concerns by sensitising operators to the financial consequences of their actions and by triggering financial improvements. MPCs, however, also create many small interdependent responsibility centres, which makes it difficult to delegate financial accountability. The paper studies the dynamic construction of relations between financial and operational concerns when structural interdependencies are important. It analyses such construction as a process of mediation. While extant studies focus on how accounting calculations, as mediating instruments, help linking dispersed people, aspirations and domains, the paper studies how accounting requires itself to be mediated to relate financial and operational concerns and to become powerful.

It shows that people, spaces and instruments form a heterogeneous ‘web of mediators’ by which relations between accounting and operations are constructed. It shows how structural interdependencies take part in this mediation of relations. Finally, this study shows that mediation does not link, but transforms mediated entities including accounting, which forms, per-forms and trans-forms along the chain of mediation it helps constituting.

本文分析了日本制造商 Kitanihon 的伪微利中心 (MPC) 的发展。MPC 旨在通过使运营商对其行为的财务后果敏感并通过触发财务改进来将财务和运营问题联系起来。然而，MPC 也创建了许多相互依存的小型责任中心，这使得很难下放财务责任。本文研究了当结构性相互依赖很重要时财务和运营问题之间关系的动态构建。它将这种构建分析为一个中介过程。虽然现存的研究侧重于会计计算作为中介工具如何帮助将分散的人、志向和领域联系起来，

它表明，人、空间和工具形成了一个异质的“中介网络”，会计和运营之间的关系由此构建。它显示了结构性的相互依赖如何参与这种关系的调解。最后，这项研究表明，中介并没有链接，而是转换了中介实体，包括会计，它沿着它帮助构成的中介链形成、执行和转换。