Discussion of 'accounting and the construction of the governable person'
Article Abstract:
Criticism is offered of Miller and O'Leary's argument that cost accounting is not merely a process of collecting and manipulating data on productive performance. Cost accounting is characterized as a practice involving performing and discussing that is associated inextricably with a matrix of other practices. A hypothetical history of an army recruit is presented, including insights based on the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Implications are offered as they relate to the history of cost accounting. Repression of the individual is seen as a positive organizing force. Cost accounting and all social science represent a discipline in a web of power-knowledge relations. Sovereign power is said to be qualitatively and quantitatively different than the field of disciplinary power as analyzed by Miller and O'Leary. Norms and normative judgments are not to be casually applied to the visible person.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1987
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No accounting for sexuality
Article Abstract:
Five major criticisms are leveled at the paper, 'The Role of Annual Reports in Gender and Class Contradictions at General Motors: 1917-1976': (1) its discussions of gender ignore sexuality and sexual relations, (2) its contingency theory approach leads to particularism, (3) its orientation is too voluntaristic, (4) its orientation is too diachronic, and (5) it fails to consider the nature of readership or the link between authority and authorship in its attempt to say that company reports exercise power in an other-directed fashion. Sexuality is a major aspect of the interaction between men and women within organizational contexts, and sexual relations are a 'frontier' of management control, the suppression of sexuality being one of the initial tasks a bureaucracy undertakes. It also argued that the accounting condition and the desexualization of organizational life are closely related.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1987
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Accounting for rituals
Article Abstract:
Accounts may describe the ties between collaborators within companies rather than the activity of the companies themselves. Such relationships are basically ritualistic, in that they are outward manifestations of somewhat complex realities. The ritual and its underlying 'theology' are anthropocentric rationalizations which may not fully obtain the essence of the reality which they are supposed to demonstrate. Discrepancy between accounting theory and a more holistic, modern world perspective may make such problems especially likely at this juncture. Conflicts tend to be avoided rather than resolved by devices which are fully irrational. The purpose of financial and accounting professionals is both to create new rituals to deal with new circumstances and to accommodate them within the orthodox canon.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1987
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