300058 Accounting, Organizations and Society (MA: Organisationssoziologie) (S) (WiSe 2014/2015)

For over four decades, there has been a lively interdisciplinary discourse about the role of accounting and calculative practices in their social and organizational contexts. The journal “Accounting, Organizations and Society” (AOS) has played a major role in bringing about, sustaining and further developing this discourse far beyond an original community of sociologically interested accounting scholars. AOS has pioneered, for example, the use of Foucauldian insights in organizational analyses in what has subsequently come to be known as governmentality studies. Papers published in AOS have also been among the first to extensively utilize approaches from science and technology studies, most notably actor network theory, in the sociological study of organizations and in economic sociology.
The first section of the seminar will be dedicated to reading and discussing a number of classical papers from AOS that have contributed substantially to establishing accounting and calculative practices as topics worthy of more systematic sociological attention. We will then proceed to engage with more recent contributions.
The common theme of all the papers on the list of required readings is the importance of small practices utilizing numbers in bringing about allegedly large structures like organizations and markets, economy and society. The “small” abstractions of accounting rather than the “big” abstractions of social and organizational theory have much to tell us about social and organizational change. Case studies will cover, for example, the role of accounting in the constitution of disciplinary space, the effect of information technologies like SAP on organizational structure and possibilities of control, and the use of social media like TripAdvisor in ad hoc forms of management accounting.
Students are emphatically encouraged to suggest papers from AOS which they would consider particularly congenial to their academic interests to be included in the list of readings to be discussed in class.

Bibliography

Hopwood, Anthony G., 1983: On Trying to Study Accounting in the Contexts in Which It Operates. Accounting, Organizations and Society 8: 287-305

Jeacle, Ingrid & Chris Carter, 2011: In TripAdvisor We trust: Rankings, Calculative regimes and Abstract Systems. Accounting, Organizations and Society 36: 293-309

Power, Michael, 1996: Making Things Auditable. Accounting, Organizations and Society 21: 289-315

External comments page

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/accounting-organizations-and-society/