Within public sector accounting research, the question of how “costing” is implemented and how it transforms professional “caring” work has been widely studied and debated. Studies have, for instance, pointed to contextual variables that make cost information more or less useful in professional decision making. However, in doing so, scholars also assume that decision making follows a linear path that can be informed and transformed by cost information. In this paper, I take it as my starting point that both costing and caring vary as they are combined in professional decision‐making processes. I use the broad and processual definition of calculation from the work of Callon and Muniesa to analyze how distinctions about vulnerable children's situations are made relevant for the choice and delimitation of social services. This allows me to investigate how, when, and where distinctions between costing and caring are drawn rather than assuming that costing and caring are preexisting and stable practices that can be put to use or not.

PurposeThis paper investigates how different and sometimes conflicting approaches to performance evaluations are hybridized in the day-to-day activities of a disciplined hybrid organization–i.e. a public child protection agency at the intersection between the market and the public sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a one-year ethnography of how employees achieve to qualify their work as “good work” in situations with several and sometimes conflicting ideals of what “good work” is. Fieldwork material was collected by following casework activities across organizational boundaries. By combining accounting literature on hybridization with literature on practices of valuation, the paper develops a novel theoretical framework which allows for analyses of the various practices of valuation, when and where they clash and how they persist over time in everyday work.FindingsThroughout the study, four distinct registers of valuation were identified: feeling, theorizing, formalizing and costing. To denote the meticulous efforts of pursuing good work in all four registers of valuation, the authors propose the notion of sequencing. Sequencing is an ongoing process of moving conflicting registers away from each other and bringing them back together again. Correspondingly, at the operational level of a hybrid organization, temporary compartmentalization is a means of avoiding clashes, and in doing so, making it possible for different and sometimes conflicting ways of achieving good results to continuously hybridize and persist together.Research limitations/implicationsThe single-case approach allows for analytical depth, but limits the findings to theoretical, rather than empirical, generalizability. The framework the authors propose, however, is well-suited for mobilization and potential elaboration in further empirical contexts.Originality/valueThe paper provides a novel theoretical framework as well as rich empirical material from the highly political field of child protection work, which has seldomly been studied within accounting research.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze how accounts of costs and accounts of needs are shaped, connected and made durable in the day-to-day practices of welfare professionals. Design/methodology/approach Throughout a year, the author traced the work of connecting costs and needs across and beyond the organizational boundaries of the accounting and child protection departments in a Danish local government. Over the course of the study, accountants realized that the budget was overspent and this, accordingly, gave insights into what was done to make accounts more durable. Findings This paper shows that multiple accountabilities are made possible through the ongoing and practical work of shaping, connecting and making accounts durable. This fragile process fails when connections between separate aspects of organizational work are not made visible. Research limitations/implications This paper attempts to convey the potentials of a symmetrical approach for organizational ethnography. In this way, it does not, for instance, address prevailing budget limits or regimes of cost control. Originality/value Insights into how accounts are shaped into meeting multiple and diverging demands for accountability are rare in both the fields of management accounting as a practice and research on social work practice.

I denne artikel undersøger vi et spørgsmål, der ofte bliver diskuteret i praksis og i forskning. Nemlig, hvordan forandrer nye digitale teknologier den offentlige forvaltning af velfærdsydelser? Men frem for at rette blikket mod selve ”den nye teknologi”, undersøger vi, hvordan samspillet mellem organisationen og den nye teknologi bidrager til at skabe nye arbejdspraksisser. Med inspiration fra Science and Technology Studies analyserer vi, hvordan et nyt databaseret screeningsredskab til socialt arbejde forandrer sig i samspillet med den organisatoriske praksis, det bliver forankret i. Analysen baseres på kvalitativ empiri fra otte kommuners arbejde med at implementere screeningsredskabet til at understøtte familieplejekonsulenters vurderinger af trivsel og læring hos børn, der er anbragt i pleje. Analysen viser, at arbejdet med teknologien udvikler sig på tre markant forskellige måder, der varierer fra en individbåret-, til en stramt systematisk- og over i en tværfaglig arbejdspraksis. På den baggrund argumenterer vi for, at udvikling og implementering af teknologier til at databasere socialt velfærdsarbejde ikke skal anskues som neutrale og universelle løsninger, men derimod som nye arbejdspraksisser, der skal udvikles i tæt samspil med medarbejdere, arbejdsgange og betingelser.