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Companies are increasingly encouraged to frame their sustainability activities and communication around ecological limits, as captured by concepts such as planetary boundaries, climate tipping points or local assimilative capacities. Ecological limits may serve as a scientific basis for defining environmental sustainability targets at the company level and, moreover, inspire companies to align their product portfolios with emerging societal needs related to sustainable transformations. Although corporate environmental reporting is widely researched, little is known about companies' use of the ecological limits concept in their communication.

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Purpose: This paper examines how a particular form of environmental accounting, energy accounting, is negotiated in practice and how energy accounting may act as a productive organizing device in organizational contexts. Energy accounting is considered as performative in organizational practices rather than as a representation of resource use. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a longitudinal case study of the design phase in a construction project. Data collection entailed observational and document studies as well as interviews with those involved in the design processes. This paper draws on actor-network theory, notably the notions of framing and overflowing, in analyzing the role of energy accounting in design processes and in affecting organizational practice. Findings: The paper provides several insights regarding energy accounting in the making, energy accounting's performative role in enacting possible futures, the narrative importance of numbers, and the entangled nature of designing, accounting and organizing practices. Our findings demonstrate the strong links between accounting and organizing. Originality/value: This paper adds to the extant literature on environmental accounting by directing attention to how such accounting practices contribute to forming rather than just informing management decisions. By focusing on how the calculative practices of making such accounts mediate ideas and help assemble new entities, this paper provides useful insights into the performative role of environmental accounting.

Project goals are conceptualized in the construction management literature as either stable and exogenously given or as emerging endogenously during the construction process. Disparate as these perspectives may be, they both overlook the role that material objects used in construction processes can play in transforming knowledge and thereby shaping project goals. Actor-network theory is used to explore the connection between objects and knowledge with the purpose of developing an adaptive and pragmatic approach to goals in construction. Based on a case study of the construction of a skyscraper, emphasis is given to how design ambitions emerge in a process of goal translation, and to how, once these ambitions are materialized, tensions between aesthetic and functional concerns emerge and are resolved. These tensions are resolved through trials of strength as the object—the building—is elaborated and circulates across sites in various forms, e.g. artistic sketches, drawings and models. Given that initial goal accuracy is often seen as a key success factor, these insights have theoretical and practical implications for the management and evaluation of the construction project.Design ambitions, project goals, knowledge, evaluation,

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Within construction, roles are generally thought of in terms of a division of labour, tasks and responsibilities, established through contractual and/or cultural relations. Moreover, roles are also presumed to be relatively stable. Drawing upon actor network theory, roles are re‐conceptualized and it is argued that roles are emergent and that they depend upon the tools and devices with which the project managers are equipped. A case study of the construction of a skyscraper, the ‘Turning Torso’, in Malmö, Sweden highlights the hybrid role of project management. In some instances project management may act as a mediator having qualitative effects on the project while in other instances project management may only be an intermediary, merely speeding up the process by conveying the concerns of others. The concept of qualculative project management is introduced to account for this emerging hybrid role. The analysis shows the ways in which the budget and other devices participates in enacting a qualculative role for project management, while simultaneously being involved in negotiating boundaries between professional roles in construction as well as the qualitative and quantitative properties of the building.Roles, emergence, construction process, project management, budgeting,

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