On interdisciplinary movements: The development of a network of support around Foucaultian perspectives in accounting research

Abstract

This paper seeks to better understand interdisciplinary movements in the making. Our investigation focuses on the processes through which a network of support surrounding Michel Foucault's ideas originally developed in the sociological and organizational stream of accounting research. Drawing on the sociology of translation, we first examine how a network of support emerged around the journal Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), which is generally perceived as the main vector of dissemination of sociological and organizational accounting research. Our investigation then focuses on how Foucault's ideas, a few years after the founding of AOS, came to the attention of a group of accounting academics in the UK – a group in which the editor-in-chief of AOS was a key actor. We also examine how a network of support surrounding Foucault's ideas subsequently developed in the greater accounting research community. Our analysis emphasizes the role of epistemological uncertainty in the constitution of networks of support around journals and ideas, and the role of trials of strength (Latour, 1987) in fuelling or mitigating this uncertainty, thereby influencing actors' interests and commitments to particular networks. Our analysis also highlights the critical role that imitation and social differentiation play in the travel of ideas between scientific fields and the creation of scientific knowledge.

An outlook on behavioural OR – Three tasks, three pitfalls, one definition

“…After an initial focus on behavioural aspects in a fashion similar to research on behavioural decision making (see previous subsection), this discipline has long developed a rich multi-paradigmatic perspective very similar to Organization Studies (see Chapman et al, 2009). This is reflected in the diversity of publications in the flagship journal Accounting, Organizations and Society, which even includes historical research on how areas of society have been transformed by accounting practices (see Gendron and Baker, 2005, for insights into the history of the journal).…”

The marketization of accountancy

“…Callon's moments of translation and actor-network theory provide a set of useful concepts to better understand the processes by which ideas travel and are transformed, and how heterogeneous actors are associated with each other along the way (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996;Gendron & Baker, 2005). In this particular study, this set of concepts allows me to investigate the associations and translations that occurred between professional accountants and marketing experts and, consequently, trace back the complex network that has made the marketization of accountancy possible and taken for granted.…”

“…I examined these transformations and reconfigurations using actor-network theory and, more particularly, Callon's moments of translation, to identify their causes. Callon (1986) offers, with these moments of translation, an analysis perspective that allows for better understanding and shows the process by which some ideas travel among disciplines, transform themselves on the way, and are eventually taken for granted (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996;Gendron & Baker, 2005), such as marketing expertise within the accounting field. These moments of translation illuminate the interplay between interaction and identity representation (Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996).…”

The Rise and Fall of Comprehensive Accounting Theories: R. J. Chambers and Continuously Contemporary Accounting

“…It appears that it was inescapable to mix ANT with the theoretical insights from the interpretive accounting field that emerged in the 1980s. The early adopters had been at the forefront of this field, and it would therefore have been natural for theories used in interpretive accounting research to penetrate into ANT (e.g., see Gendron & Baker, 2005). This penetration may have been both unintentional, through developed biases, and intentional, through the explicit integration of other theoretical lenses prevalent within the group of forerunners.…”