Abstract This ethnography of three Australian hospitals seeks to understand how and why new accounting systems are “experimented” with in organizations. Latour's sociology of translation is adapted to argue that accounting change emerged not because there was certain knowledge of positive economic outcomes but because an uncertain faith, fostered by expert-generated inscriptions and rhetorical strategies, was able to tie together shifting interests in an actor network. The paper also highlights how accounting may ironically be both real and a simulation.

Experts, networks and inscriptions in the fabrication of accounting images: A story of the

Introdu ction 1. First steps 2. The roots of Vichy antisemitism 3. The strategy of Xavier Vallat, 1941-42 4. The system at work, 1940-42 5. Public opinion 1940-42 6. The turning point: summer 1942 7. The Darquier period, 1942-44 8. Conclusions: the Holocaust in France List of abbreviations Notes Index.

Vichy France and the Jews

Abstract Accounting in U.S. hospitals has undergone a number of transformations, particularly at the turn of this century when an accounting based upon principles of cost reimbursement emerged, and then during the late 1960s and 1970s when accounting systems such as the Medicare diagnosis related group (DRG) prospective payment system informed by principles of cost control began to emerge. The purpose of the following analysis is to explore these transformations and the forms of accounting thought and practice which emerged. It is suggested that such an exploration requires the transformations to be placed in their social and historical contexts. This is necessary in order to reveal how changes in accounting thought and practice over the past 100 years are intertwined with changes in medical knowledge and practice, the establishment of hospitals as the primary site for medical treatment, the emergence of private insurance, changing forms of government regulation and changing social and political attitudes towards the cost and provision of health care.

The birth of clinical accounting: a study of the emergence and transformations of discourses on...

Abstract Concern for the natural environment has not occupied a prominent role in accounting scholarship and practice. This paper attempts to redress this omission by investigating the implications for accounting of placing the environment at the centre of the analysis. The paper introduces the principles of this “deep green” position and explores how accounting might articulate them. Whilst there may be no place for what we currently consider to be conventional financial accounting in any “green utopia” the paper does not attempt to operationalise, within a non-green world, certain of the principles of the green position. Emphasis is placed on an accounting's potential for contribution to accountability and transparency in participative democracy, the potential for non-financial accounts of the biosphere and, perhaps most contentiously, the use of current accounting techniques for the operationalisation of an accounting for sustainability.

Accounting and environmentalism: an exploration of the challenge of gently accounting for...

This is an innovative new history of famine relief and humanitarianism. The authors apply a moral economy approach to shed new light on the forces and ideas that motivated and shaped humanitarian aid during the Great Irish Famine, the famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia and the Ukraine, and the 1980s Ethiopian famine. They place these episodes within a distinctive periodisation of humanitarianism which emphasises the correlations with politico-economic regimes: the time of elitist laissez-faire liberalism in the nineteenth century as one of ad hoc humanitarianism; that of Taylorism and mass society from c.1900-1970 as one of organised humanitarianism; and the blend of individualised post-material lifestyles and neoliberal public management since 1970 as one of expressive humanitarianism. The book as a whole shifts the focus of the history of humanitarianism from the imperatives of crisis management to the pragmatic mechanisms of fundraising, relief efforts on the ground, and finance. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Humanitarianism in the Modern World : The Moral Economy of Famine Relief

The Changing Role of the Management Accountants: Becoming a Business Partner

This chapter builds upon accounting history research to show how management has served any types of purposes over centuries, some being laudable and others raising moral and ethical questions. When revealed by God to mankind, accounting appeared as a practical and religious way of solving world dualism. Soul accounting was aimed at reconciling world dualism. Capitalist accounting served as a tool of economic rationality as bureaucracies arose. War accounting was a tool associated with military strategy to win a war. But also, management accounting served dark purposes: rationality and efficiency in the service of the Shoah and colonial oppression.

Historical Perspectives on Strategy, Ethics and Management Accounting

Accounting, capitalism and the revealed religions

This chapter engages in a philosophical discussion on ethics by questioning its learnt or innate nature. Building upon Levinas’ works, it reasons that the discussion is rather on immanence of transcendence and shows that ethics, by proceeding from aesthetics, appears as the offshoot of the self’s ontological construction. Thereby, ethics is immanent and innate but learnt through self-discovery. Ethics becomes transcendental and keeps being learnt through interactions with other selves. Forms of ethics education, even though not compulsory in this construction, can help inform the ethical self on what society values.

Vassili Joannidès de Lautour

Papers

The Changing Role of the Management Accountants: Becoming a Business Partner

Historical Perspectives on Strategy, Ethics and Management Accounting

Accounting, capitalism and the revealed religions

The Ethics of Management Accounting: Innate or Learnt?

Accounting, Capitalism and the Revealed Religions: A Study of Christianity, Judaism and Islam