Knowledge that Transforms

This paper develops an endogenous model of institutional and professional domain change. Traditional accounts of domain change focus attention on how professional expertise is extended to new areas of practice. This form of domain extension is typically both deliberate and contested. However, domain change can also occur in a somewhat quotidian and uncontested fashion when professional expertise is extended intra-organizationally. We analyze the ways in which the domain of accounting expertise is reconstituted in new social media – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – in Big 4 accounting firms. Using content analysis and interview data we show how social media professionals, in pursuing their own professional project, generate change in the professional domain of accountancy. Our analysis demonstrates that the institutional work of domain change occurs through three related activities: boundary work, rhetorical work and the construction of the embedded actor.

Drawing on the case of accounting for the impact of research in UK universities, and building on key contributions to Accounting, Organizations and Society, the paper explores the conditions under which new accounting systems begin and the unfolding dynamics by which vague performance objects becoming operational. Accounting for research impact involves a radical change in the landscape of UK universities. At the centre of this change process is the progressive construction of the Impact Case Study (ICS) as a new unit of performance accountability for UK universities. Inductively, the emergence of the ICS suggests a fourfold developmental schema for accounting origination spanning field and organization level changes: policy object formation, object elaboration, activity orchestration and practice stabilization in infrastructure. Drawing upon existing scholarship, the paper uses the impact accounting setting to explore the dynamics of this developmental schema and its implications for calculation, subjectivization and the structuring of organizational temporalities. The case of impact in UK universities shows that accounting never simply begins but has multiple conditions of possibility which align as drivers for change at both field and organization levels. The case of impact accounting also reveals the significance of managerial infrastructures during accounting origination and this is suggestive of a future research agenda.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Review of Accounting Studies. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-014-9295-6

This paper examines the process that drives the formation and evolution of disclosure regulations. In equilibrium, changes in the regulation depend on the status quo, standard-setters’ political accountability and underlying objectives, and the cost and benefits of disclosure to reporting entities. Excessive political accountability need not implement the regulation preferred by diversified investors. Political pressures slow standard-setting and, if the standard-setter prefers high levels of disclosure, induce regulatory cycles characterized by long phases of increasing disclosure requirements followed by a sudden deregulation.