Journal ArticleDOI
Books to be practiced: Memory, the power of the visual, and the success of accounting
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In this paper, the authors explore the conditions which allow the emergence of accounting as a performable technique that can spread successfully across economies and societies, drawing on insights offered by studies on the art of memory, Actor-Network Theory, and that broader branch of history known as the history of the book.Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore the conditions which allow the emergence of accounting as a performable technique that can spread successfully across economies and societies. Drawing on insights offered by studies on the art of memory, Actor-Network Theory, and that broader branch of history known as the history of the book, it is argued that the emergence and spread of accounting can be understood by studying the relationships among four interrelated aspects: the nature of accounting as a method of classification for the organisation of thinking and knowledge; its reliance on images and its visual impact; its ‘orthopraxis’ nature, which offers a workable space and time; and the relationships between accounting and the medium through in which it materialises. The combination of these four features explains how it is that accounting is a practice which is homogeneous enough to be recognised as autonomous and heterogeneous enough to attract diversity and create difference. I was motivated to study these issues after examining two early accounting treatises: the Indirizzo degli Economi, by the Benedictine, Pietra (1586) [Pietra, A. (1586). Indirizzo degli economi o sia ordinatissima istruttione da regolamente formare qualunque scrittura in un libro doppio. Aggiuntovi l’essemplare di un Libro nobile co ‘l suo Giornale ad uso della Congregatione Cassinese dell’Ordine in San Benedetto. Mantova: Francesco Osanna]; and the Trattato del libro doppio domestico col suo essemplare, by the Jesuit, Flori (1636) , [Flori, L. (1636). Trattato del modo di tenere il libro doppio domestico col suo essemplare composto dal P. Lodovico Flori della Compagnia di Gesu per uso delle case e dei collegi della medesima Compagnia nel Regno di Sicilia, in Palermo, per Decio Cirillo]. Along with studies examining the emergence of modern management as a result of an economic need for rationalisation, the paper offers material for reflecting on a concomitant rationale which views innovations in the method of organisation, visual presentation, medium of communication, and praxis, as the mayor forces in the diffusion of accounting in both historical and contemporary settings.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Visual Dimension in Organizing, Organization, and Organization Research: Core Ideas, Current Developments, and Promising Avenues
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present five distinct approaches to feature visuals in research designs and to include the visual dimension in scholarly inquiry, and introduce methodological and theoretical roots of visual studies in a number of disciplines that have a long-standing tradition of incorporating the visual.
Journal ArticleDOI
The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe
TL;DR: Over the last fifteen years many of these traditional and sometimes competing kinds of bibliography have been drawing together into a new historical genre represented by a growing volume of monographs and journal articles and complete with the now obligatory French label as a seal of academic respectability-histoire du livre, best translated perhaps as "the historical sociology of the book".
Journal ArticleDOI
Effects of actor‐network theory in accounting research
Lise Justesen,Jan Mouritsen +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how Bruno Latour's version of actor-network theory has influenced accounting research, and they also show that there is unexplored potential in more recent writings which may lead to further inspiration and research in the field of accounting.
Journal ArticleDOI
Numerische Differenz. Überlegungen zu einer Soziologie des (quantitativen) Vergleichs
TL;DR: In this article, aufsatz behandelt Vergleiche als grundlegende Sozialform and analysiert sie aus einer kommunikationstheoretischen perspektive Verglesiche konnen in unterschiedlichen Medien formuliert sein.
Journal ArticleDOI
The role of internet-related technologies in shaping the work of accountants: New directions for accounting research
Jodie Moll,Ogan Yigitbasioglu +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the accounting literature that focuses on four Internet-related technologies that have the potential to dramatically change and disrupt the work of accountants and accounting researchers in the near future.
References
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The Practice of Everyday Life
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a very different view of the arts of practice in a very diverse culture, focusing on the use of ordinary language and making do in the art of practice.
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Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society
TL;DR: In this article, the quandary of the fact-builder is explored in the context of science and technology in a laboratory setting, and the model of diffusion versus translation is discussed.
and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39
Susan Leigh,James R. Griesemer +1 more
TL;DR: A model of how one group of actors managed this tension between divergent viewpoints was presented, drawing on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years.
Journal ArticleDOI
Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39:
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model of how one group of actors managed the tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings in scientific work, and distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.
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