{"title":"Digital technologies and accounting quantification: The emergence of two divergent knowledge templates","authors":"Elise Berlinski , Jérémy Morales","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2023.102697","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The opportunities of digital technologies, but also their risks, are shaping organisations and societies. Their influence on the future of accounting is often presented as decisive. In fact, information technologies and accounting are so intertwined that it seems impossible to separate the two. Nevertheless, as practices, they emerge from different knowledge disciplines. We examine the intersection of accounting and information technologies through an ethnographic study conducted in a multinational high-tech company in the process of implementing a new IT system. We pay particular attention to the interactions between accountants and technologists, which we analyse through the concept of knowledge templates. A template based on mobilising formalised knowledge to intervene on the organisation in a systematic way treats technology as a set of solutions for predetermined needs. Conversely, a template that treats technology as an emerging complex imposes modes of coordination based on modularity, traceability, and collaboration. Through sociomaterial interactions, a plurality of templates emerges that influences local practices. This article contributes to the literature by showing that accounting emerges through its entanglement with different bodies of knowledge following potentially divergent knowledge templates. Information technologies therefore pose a challenge to accounting: is it possible to conceive of a modular and radically decentralised accounting? This would be an accounting that accepts the pluralism of representations, orientations, and legitimate organisational discourses. It would be an accounting system with greater emancipatory potential.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"98 ","pages":"Article 102697"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235423001582/pdfft?md5=6b55ce0c381e1876f874fbe845904a34&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235423001582-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235423001582","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The opportunities of digital technologies, but also their risks, are shaping organisations and societies. Their influence on the future of accounting is often presented as decisive. In fact, information technologies and accounting are so intertwined that it seems impossible to separate the two. Nevertheless, as practices, they emerge from different knowledge disciplines. We examine the intersection of accounting and information technologies through an ethnographic study conducted in a multinational high-tech company in the process of implementing a new IT system. We pay particular attention to the interactions between accountants and technologists, which we analyse through the concept of knowledge templates. A template based on mobilising formalised knowledge to intervene on the organisation in a systematic way treats technology as a set of solutions for predetermined needs. Conversely, a template that treats technology as an emerging complex imposes modes of coordination based on modularity, traceability, and collaboration. Through sociomaterial interactions, a plurality of templates emerges that influences local practices. This article contributes to the literature by showing that accounting emerges through its entanglement with different bodies of knowledge following potentially divergent knowledge templates. Information technologies therefore pose a challenge to accounting: is it possible to conceive of a modular and radically decentralised accounting? This would be an accounting that accepts the pluralism of representations, orientations, and legitimate organisational discourses. It would be an accounting system with greater emancipatory potential.
期刊介绍：
Critical Perspectives on Accounting aims to provide a forum for the growing number of accounting researchers and practitioners who realize that conventional theory and practice is ill-suited to the challenges of the modern environment, and that accounting practices and corporate behavior are inextricably connected with many allocative, distributive, social, and ecological problems of our era. From such concerns, a new literature is emerging that seeks to reformulate corporate, social, and political activity, and the theoretical and practical means by which we apprehend and affect that activity. Research Areas Include: • Studies involving the political economy of accounting, critical accounting, radical accounting, and accounting''s implication in the exercise of power • Financial accounting''s role in the processes of international capital formation, including its impact on stock market stability and international banking activities • Management accounting''s role in organizing the labor process • The relationship between accounting and the state in various social formations • Studies of accounting''s historical role, as a means of "remembering" the subject''s social and conflictual character • The role of accounting in establishing "real" democracy at work and other domains of life • Accounting''s adjudicative function in international exchanges, such as that of the Third World debt • Antagonisms between the social and private character of accounting, such as conflicts of interest in the audit process • The identification of new constituencies for radical and critical accounting information • Accounting''s involvement in gender and class conflicts in the workplace • The interplay between accounting, social conflict, industrialization, bureaucracy, and technocracy • Reappraisals of the role of accounting as a science and technology • Critical reviews of "useful" scientific knowledge about organizations
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