Strategies of visibility in contemporary surveillance settings: Insights from misconduct concealment in financial markets

Laguecir, Aziza; Léca, Bernard

doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2018.10.002

Cited by 19 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Robbins and Lapsley, 2015). The power of transparency consists in the function of control from a distance (Edwards et al, 1999;Robbins and Lapsley, 2015), but control might be resisted through the actors' reactions (Laguecir and Leca, 2019). Hence, the study further highlights the actors' reactions to visibility, and more research would be fruitful to examine the internal reactions to the increasing internal (and external) transparency provided by accounting numbers in contexts that are characterized by limited economic rationality and precarious decision-making processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…This imposed organization started to be resented by engineers and people in the field, already busy and who allegedly did not have the time to fill in documents, charts and other accounting documents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the engineers felt that they were losing the control and role they played in the decision-making processes, so they reacted to this form of surveillance through accounting inscriptions (Laguecir and Leca, 2019) by resisting (Siti-Nabiha and Scapens, 2005) the system and un-enrolling from the network, thus becoming dissidents (Callon, 1986). Moreover, the accounting numbers created, in the case of our companies, new fields of visibilities (Robson and Bottausci, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, technical staff also started to realize that all these documents provided managers and the owner with much more visibility about the activity (for example, the whereabouts and use of equipment). The ignorance of fulfilling their role in the creation of inscriptions mainly resulted from avoiding participating in the creation of a detailed, visible account of their activity, hence being a reaction to the increased surveillance arising from the detailed accounts (Laguecir and Leca, 2019).…”

Section: From Interessement To Enrollment: Initiating Changementioning

confidence: 99%

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Dealing with the visibility created by accounting numbers – A case study of cost accounting translation in a transitional economy

Albu

Guinea

et al. 2020

JAEE

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PurposeThis paper investigates the process of translating a costing tool into operational use in the context of a transitional (post-communist) economy, where local institutions challenge the rationality of western methods.Design/methodology/approachBy mobilizing Actor–Network Theory, in particular Callon's four moments of translation, and by drawing data from an interventionist research, the paper focuses on the process of change instilled by the implementation of a costing tool in 20 Romanian construction companies.FindingsThe costing system is initially problematized as a tool for rational decision making. However, the visibility over the accounting figures generated by the costing tool instilled new roles for the cost system to manage internal and external interdependencies. First, two costing datasets were created, one for decision making and one for tax purposes, to manage the relationship with the state taxation authorities. Second, since the costing tool generated visibility over the field practices as well, engineers convinced management to drop the decision-making set of costs. The costing tool ultimately only became used for tax optimization, an originally unintended use, reflecting its translation process.Research limitations/implicationsBy taking an interventionist approach, the paper contributes to theorizing accounting in transitional economies by bringing their economic idiosyncrasies into the analysis.Practical implicationsThe results inform managers about the intended and unintended consequences of management accounting tools and about actors' role in shaping their use.Originality/valueOur research responds to recent calls to study how organizations configure their control systems in a rapidly changing environment and what is the role of management accounting in these arrangements.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: From Interessement To Enrollment: Initiating Changementioning

confidence: 99%

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Dealing with the visibility created by accounting numbers – A case study of cost accounting translation in a transitional economy

Albu

Guinea

et al. 2020

JAEE

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“…The backstage, in this case, refers to the activities and processes conducted by the organisation, while the 'frontstage' refers to the self-impression of the organisation to external stakeholders. As an example of this, Laguecir and Leca (2019) explain how the organisational backstage can be used to conceal misconduct. To quote Whittle et al (2020), the 'frontstage is conceptualised as the place where a more anodyne and sanitised version of the organisation is presented, a version that is detached from the messy and sometimes 'dirty' reality' (5).…”

Section: Organisational Secrecy and Invisible Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The backstage, in this case, refers to the activities and processes conducted by the organisation, while the ‘frontstage’ refers to the self-impression of the organisation to external stakeholders. As an example of this, Laguecir and Leca (2019) explain how the organisational backstage can be used to conceal misconduct. To quote Whittle et al.…”

Section: Organisational Secrecy and Invisible Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifting the curtain: Strategic visibility of human labour in AI-as-a-Service

Newlands

2021

Big Data & Society

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Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS) empowers individuals and organisations to access AI on-demand, in either tailored or ‘off-the-shelf’ forms. However, institutional separation between development, training and deployment can lead to critical opacities, such as obscuring the level of human effort necessary to produce and train AI services. Information about how, where, and for whom AI services have been produced are valuable secrets, which vendors strategically disclose to clients depending on commercial interests. This article provides a critical analysis of how AIaaS vendors manipulate the visibility of human labour in AI production based on whether the vendor relies on paid or unpaid labour to fill interstitial gaps. Where vendors are able to occlude human labour in the organisational ‘backstage,’ such as in data preparation, validation or impersonation, they do so regularly, further contributing to ongoing techno-utopian narratives of AI hype. Yet, when vendors must co-produce the AI service with the client, such as through localised AI training, they must ‘lift the curtain’, resulting in a paradoxical situation of needing to both perpetuate dominant AI hype narratives while emphasising AI’s mundane limitations.

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Organized Decoupling of Management Control Systems: An Exploratory Study of Traders’ Unethical Behavior

Laguecir

Léca

2021

J Bus Ethics

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Strategies of visibility in contemporary surveillance settings: Insights from misconduct concealment in financial markets

Cited by 19 publications

References 44 publications

Dealing with the visibility created by accounting numbers – A case study of cost accounting translation in a transitional economy

Dealing with the visibility created by accounting numbers – A case study of cost accounting translation in a transitional economy

Lifting the curtain: Strategic visibility of human labour in AI-as-a-Service

Organized Decoupling of Management Control Systems: An Exploratory Study of Traders’ Unethical Behavior

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