Accounting numbers as “inscription”: Action at a distance and the development of accounting

Abstract

The numerical form of accounting has been interpreted as a use of metaphor (Morgan, Accounting, Organizations and Society, pp. 447–486, 1988). The dominance of quantification in accounting has also, more conventionally, been legitimated by claims to the representational accuracy of numbers and a model of scientific theory and practice (Mattessich, Accounting and Analytical Methods, Irwin, 1962; Chambers, Accounting Evaluation and Economic Behaviour, Prentice-Hall, 1966; Accounting, Organizations and Society, pp. 167–180, 1980). In this paper the preference for quantification in accounting is explained alternatively in terms of the development of inscriptions that enable action at a distance (Latour, Science in Action, Open University Press, 1987). The development of accounting is considered in terms of a continuing refinement of mobile, stable and combinable inscriptions that expedite long distance control. The paper concludes that studies of accounting metaphor are incomplete if they cannot address the processes that adjudicate the choices and production of metaphor.