Accounting numbers as “inscription”: Action at a distance and the development of accounting

doi:10.1016/0361-3682(92)90019-O

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Volume 17, Issue 7, October 1992, Pages 685-708

https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-3682(92)90019-O Get rights and content

Abstract

The numerical form of accounting has been interpreted as a use of metaphor (Morgan, Accounting, Organizations and Society, pp. 447–486, 1988). The dominance of quantification in accounting has also, more conventionally, been legitimated by claims to the representational accuracy of numbers and a model of scientific theory and practice (Mattessich, Accounting and Analytical Methods, Irwin, 1962; Chambers, Accounting Evaluation and Economic Behaviour, Prentice-Hall, 1966; Accounting, Organizations and Society, pp. 167–180, 1980). In this paper the preference for quantification in accounting is explained alternatively in terms of the development of inscriptions that enable action at a distance (Latour, Science in Action, Open University Press, 1987). The development of accounting is considered in terms of a continuing refinement of mobile, stable and combinable inscriptions that expedite long distance control. The paper concludes that studies of accounting metaphor are incomplete if they cannot address the processes that adjudicate the choices and production of metaphor.

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^☆: This paper was first presented at the Workshop on Accounting in its Organizational and Social Contexts, E.I.A.S.M. Brussels, 6–8 December, 1989. Thanks are due to Brian Bloomfield, David Cooper, Mahmoud Ezzamel, Anthony Hopwood, Peter Miller, Tony Tinker, Hugh Willmott, participants at the Brussels Workshop and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments upon earlier drafts of this paper.

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Accounting numbers as “inscription”: Action at a distance and the development of accounting☆

Abstract

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Accounting Organizations and Society

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Rhetoric and the Invention of Double Entry Bookkeeping

Rhetorica

Introduction

The Rhetoric of Accounting Inquiry

Paper presented to the Congress of the European Accounting Association

Accounting and Human Nature

Paper presented to the Second Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference

Condorcet: from Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics

Varieties and Consequences of Mediaeval Literacy and Illiteracy

Speculum

Accounting Standards: Boon or Curse?

Accounting and Business Research

The Value of the S.E.C.'s Disclosure Requirements

Accounting Review

Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies

A History of Mathematics

The Wheels of Commerce: Capitalism and Civilisation Volume Two

Accounting Standards: an International Perspective

17th Century Political Arithmetic

Isis

People who Counted

Isis

The Roles of Accounting in Organizations and Society

Accounting Organizations and Society

Accounting in its Social Context: Towards a History of the Value Added Event

Accounting, Organizations and Society

Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: the Sociologic of Translation

Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation

Accounting Evaluation and Economic Behaviour

A History of Accounting Thought

The Methodology of Positive Accounting

Accounting Review

Radical Developments in Accounting Thought

Accounting Review

A Calculating People

The Pursuit of Signs

The Domestication of Risk: Mathematical Probability and Insurance 1650–1830

Of Grammatology

Writing and Difference

Positions

Sending: On Representation

Social Research

Social Measurement

Contested Terrain

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

Against Method

Discipline and Punish

Power/Knowledge

The Subject and Power

The Foundations of Arithmetic

The Constitution of Society

Opening Pandora's Box

The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Social Sciences

Pre-modern Financial Systems

The Domestication of the Savage Mind