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dc.contributor.authorBowden, Bradley
dc.contributor.authorStevenson-Clarke, Peta
dc.date.accessioned2020-11-05T00:45:45Z
dc.date.available2020-11-05T00:45:45Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.identifier.issn1751-1348
dc.identifier.doi10.1108/JMH-07-2020-0042
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/398976
dc.description.abstractPurpose Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other business disciplines. However, in large part, the debates in accounting history and management history, have moved in parallel but separate universes. The purpose of this study is therefore one of exploring not only critical accounting understandings that are significant for management history but also one of highlighting conceptual flaws that are common to the postmodernist literature in both accounting and management history. Design/methodology/approach Foucault has been seminal to the critical traditions that have emerged in both accounting research and management history. In exploring the usage of Foucault’s ideas, this paper argues that an over-reliance on a set of Foucauldian concepts – governmentality, “disciplinary society,” neo-liberalism – that were never conceived with an eye to the problems of accounting and management has resulted in not only in the drawing of some very longbows from Foucault’s formulations but also misrepresentations of the French philosophers’ ideas. Findings Many, if not most, of the intellectual positions associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History – that knowledge is inherently subjective, that management involves exercising power at distance, that history is a social construct that is used to legitimate capitalism and management – were argued in the critical accounting literature long before Clark and Rowlinson’s (2004) oft cited call. Indeed, the “call” for a “New Accounting History” issued by Miller et al. (1991) played a remarkably similar role to that made by Clark and Rowlinson in management and organizational studies more than a decade later. Originality/value This is the first study to explore the marked similarities between the critical accounting literature, most particularly that related to the “New Accounting History” and that associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History in management and organizational studies.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherEmerald Publishing Limited
dc.relation.ispartofjournalJournal of Management History
dc.subject.fieldofresearchAccounting, auditing and accountability
dc.subject.fieldofresearchHistory and philosophy of specific fields
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode3501
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode5002
dc.subject.keywordsSocial Sciences
dc.subject.keywordsHistoric Turn
dc.subject.keywordsANTi-History
dc.subject.keywordsEconomics
dc.titleAccounting, Foucault and debates about management and organizations
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.descriptionC1 - Articles
dcterms.bibliographicCitationBowden, B; Stevenson-Clarke, P, Accounting, Foucault and debates about management and organizations, Journal of Management History, 2020
dc.date.updated2020-11-05T00:12:34Z
gro.description.notepublicThis publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advanced online version.
gro.hasfulltextNo Full Text
gro.griffith.authorBowden, Bradley


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