Knowledge that Transforms

The paper by Bromley & Sharkey (2017) brings to the fore the notion of actorhood as developed in the work of John Meyer and his colleagues, which has been only tangentially mobilised within accounting scholarship. This commentary proposes some reasons for this limited mobilisation and discusses the intellectual value of the concept of actorhood for accounting research and new institutionalism in organisation studies more broadly. In particular, it offers some reflections on how actorhood in new institutionalism, action in actor-network theory and subjectification in the Foucauldian tradition may be placed in a productive dialogue.

The roles of written and visual accounting techniques in establishing conditions of possibility in modern management decision making are well documented. In contrast, this paper looks beyond the “grammatocentric”, and analyzes a practice of oral accounting – the Account of Conscience – that began in the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century, and has persisted largely unchanged to the present day. In this practice, we see historically relevant pastoral practices evolving into techniques of government that begin to resemble modern governmentality. The paper compels a more general consideration of oral–aural practices and their role in constructing relationships of authority and accountability.