Earlier work on aggregate production functions with capital-embodied technology showed that, when firms employ more than one capital type, conditions for partial capital ("equipment") aggregation and for total capital aggregation differ. This paper studies simultaneously existing partial and total aggregates. Existence of a total and one partial aggregate implies existence of the complementary partial aggregate. However, simultaneous existence requires each firm's production function to be strongly separable in its capital subaggregates. The use of subaggregates like "equipment" and "plant" together with an aggregate "capital" thus implies that "plant" and "equipment" are perfect substitutes and is highly questionable.

Although accounting and control systems have increased in both their sophistication and importance as resource allocation decisions have moved more within organizations, resistance and system failure are both common, and there is little evidence that system sophistication is associated with effective performance. Three consonance hypotheses are advanced to explain resistance and system difficulty: accounting and control systems will be implemented easily to the extent that they are (a) consistent with other sources of power in their implications for the distribution of power; (b) consistent with the dominant organizational culture and paradigm in their implications for values and beliefs; and (c) consistent with shared judgments about technical certainty and goal congruence in their assumptions about the degree of certainty about the organization's goals and technology. These sources of resistance are fundamentally structural, and process-based strategies (such as user involvement in design) are largely ineffective in overcoming these problems. This result suggests that power structures and organizational paradigms must be considered in both research and practice dealing with accounting and control systems.