Accounting and

Accounting and Organisation

Change
Organisation Change
Anthony G. Hopwood
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK 7
We live in a world in which there is an acute consciousness of both change
itself and the necessity for it. This is no less true for business and commercial
affairs than for other aspects of social and economic life. We have an
awareness of shiftingtechnologies and their organisationaland
socialimplications.A growing internationalisation of business and economic
life is making us more conscious of globalinterdependencies and their
implicationsfor competition, for corporate decision making, for organisational
structuring and management, and for the shifting location of power and
authority. New knowledges are themselves suggestive of new spheres for
business and economic activity, and new modes of organising them. And
shifting politicalvalues and ideologies have questioned prevailingconceptions
of the spheres of the public and the private, the domains of the economic and
the social, and the boundaries between governmental and business life.
Such developments are mirrored in the financial sphere. Renewed
attention is being given to the financing of new technologies, to the
mobilisation of organisations around more financiallyoriented strategic
postures and to the propagationof the language of efficiencyand profit in
spheres of life where these have been less significant to date. And of course
the financial sector has been one where change has been occurring in its own
right. New financialinstruments have been invented and gained prominence in
practicalaffairs. We are witnessing a growing internationalisation of the
financialmarkets, with all that implies for
the management of both business organisationsand nationalstates. The
financial markets are also now significantlylarger than and increasinglymore
independent
of the markets for real goods and services which they initiallysought to
enable. Indeed we are living in a world where the ratio between the
financial and the real sectors has increased dramatically over the last
decade.
Of course we need to be cautious about emphasising the uniqueness and
magnitude of such changes. I am sure that all ages have so prioritised the
new, thus identifying the discontinuities rather than the continuities which
shape organisational, social and economic life. And sometimes they possibly
have had more reason to be concerned than we. I always think about what
might have been the consciousness of change, indeed the anxiety towards it,
in rnid-ljth
century England. A citizen of that time livingin London would have
experienced the transition from a monarchy to a republic, and back again. A
king claiming absolute rights had been decapitated. A religious revolutionwas in
progress. And, after the return of the monarchy,a plague first exterminated vast
sections of the

This article is taken from the John V. Ratcliffe Memorial Lecture, given at the University of
New South Wales, 6 September 1988.
AAA] population and then a fire destroyed much of London as it was known. Perhaps
3,1 that was change indeed! And perhaps compared with the magnitude of such
disturbances we need to be conscious of the fact that change is appealed to
both because of its presence and because of its perceived desirability, for some
at least. People as frequently highlight change because of their desire for it
as for the fact of it.
Recognising the very ambiguity of the concept of change is not unhelpful when
-8
reflecting on how accounting is caught up in such wider processes
transformation. For, on the one hand, both practitioners and researchers are
now aware that many of the shifting patterns of organisational and economic
of

------- life are impingingon accounting practices, the uses of which are made of
them and the knowledges in which they are embedded. Increasingly
recognising that accounting is not an autonomous phenomenon, other
social, political and
economic factors are now seen as being able to provide bases for accounting
change, often playing a significant role in influencing the course of its
transformation. On the other hand, however, attention is also being given to
the need for accounting to change. Accounting, to some at least, is too rigid
a discipline, protected and buffered from the pressures of the world by
professional conservatism and an inadequate knowledge basis. In the name of
particular new knowledges of accounting, calls are made for the practice of
the craft to change, often in order to provide a new alignment between
accounting and the economic, organisational and social contexts in which it
is perceived to be imperfectly embedded. It is as if the very same
phenomenon is subject both to the reality of change and to a rhetoric of
arguing for it.
Being conscious of such a duality of involvementwith change, I nevertheless
want to consider in a little more detail some of the ways in which accounting
is caught up in wider processes of organisational change. In so doing, I want
to set aside some of the conventional ways in which accounting and change
are related. I am not going to consider the ways in which accounting can
provide relevant information for decision making in change situations. Nor
do I want to analyse how accounting is implicated in processes oriented
towards the re- establishment of control in those situations where the paths
of organisational transformation have been disturbed and disrupted. Rather
I would like to emphasise some quite general roles which accounting can
play in processes of organisationalchange, initiallygiving particular emphasis
to three such roles.
The first of these is the role whichaccountingplaysin creating a quite
particular visibility in the organisation, making things visible that otherwise
would not be. Such a role is clearly not a new one. Jeremy Bentham, the early
19thcentury British utilitarian philosopher, recognised the role which
bookkeeping, rather than accountingper se, can play in
facilitatingorganisationalcontrol. In a discussion of proposals for reforming the
Poor Law, Bentham noted that there were two sciences underlying control,
the science of architecture and the science of bookkeeping. Architecture
facilitates control by the strategic design of physical
space. As was so beautifully illustrated by Bentham's proposals for the
perfect prison (Bentham, 1791; see Foucault, 1977), the Panopticon, the
location of walls, windows and doors can create or constrain patterns of
visibility.By the
careful positioning of barriers, actions and events can be opened up to a wider Accounting and
Organisation
observation and thereby control. Equally domains of privacy can be created, Change
where the eyes of the outside world cannot penetrate. Bookkeeping, according
to Bentham, enables an indirect means of visibility to be created where the
eye could not otherwise see. Records can be kept of what is happening on
the other side of the wall, or indeed on the other side of the world. A possibility 9
for an ever-present observability thereby can be created. And, what is of
particular significance in an accounting context, records can even be kept of --------
phenomena that can never be seen. No one has yet perceived a cost, or a profit
for that matter. They are abstract and conceptual phenomena, creations of the
human intellect, forged and shaped by economic, social and institutional forces.
Not directly visible, they nevertheless can be enshrined in the books of record,
thereby providing a basis for their observation, monitoring and control.
Enabling such a conceptual visibility to be created, accounting can play a
powerful role in organisational and social affairs. It can influence perceptions,
change language and infuse dialogue, thereby permeating the ways in which
priorities, concerns and worries, and new possibilities for action are expressed.
Focusing on accounting's involvementin shiftingpatterns of
visibilityprovides
a powerfulwayof appreciating how the craft can become implicatedin processes
of organisationalchange. It is possible to probe into what a particular organisation
seeks to make visibleby its accountingand other informationsystems.
Moreover, by making some things visible and other things not, an
organisation can strive
to exclude particular visibilities from the officialorganisational agenda. What,
we can ask, is treated in this way, and why? And which groups have the
power to influence the patterns of visibilityprevailingin the organisation?
What bodies of knowledge and sets of organisational practices are involvedin
making some things visible and other things not? How contested are
dominant patterns of visibility? And from where have new visibilities
emerged?
The second role of accounting which I wish to consider is its functioning as
a calculative practice. Accounting is implicated in the objectification of
phenomena, of makingappear real and seeminglyprecise those things that
would
otherwise reside in the realm of the abstract. Profit is an example, as is cost.
Economists can call profit ''p' ', they can differentiate it and incorporate it into
models of firm and market behaviour. They can even change the world in the
name of it. But they do not have to be concerned with the operationalisation
of the concept, with making profit into a fact rather than only an idea.
Similarly for cost. For better or for worse, it has been the accountant who
has been concerned with making the abstract concept into a concrete
instrument of governance in organisations and society at large. The essential
subjectivity of the concept of cost has been reduced by the accountant into a
fact, something which strives to be a calculative embodiment of the abstract
phenomenon, but which often is not.
As with visibility, the power of calculationis potentiallygreat. When
something
comes into the calculative sphere, it very often enables new organisational
interdependences to be created, both with other calculative phenomena and,
through the establishment of more precise means-end relationships, with
AAAJ objectives and rationales that are articulated for organisational action. Relays
3,1 of more explicit interrelationships can be established. A precision is added to
attempts to infuse organisational affairs with particular concerns and agendas.
Couplingsbetween accounting and other aspects of organisational life can
more readily be forged. And a priority can start to be given to the seemingly
factual and precise, thereby shifting forms of organisational debate and the
rationales that must accompany organisational action.
10 The final role for accounting which I seek to emphasise is the active part
it plays in creating a domain of economic action. The abstractions and
objectificationsin the accounting area are created in the name of the economic.
They enable economic knowledges and understandings to be operationalised
and thereby more readily to permeate and shape organisational agendas,
concerns and choices. Through its investment in a calculative form,
accounting
is implicated in enhancing the visibility and salience of economic and
financial phenomena. It provides a powerful means for confronting the
social and the political with the economic. It facilitates the extent to which
economic trade- offs can be made. And it thereby enables a precision and a
seeming objectivity to be given to economic affairs that otherwise would not
exist.
Whilst it would be possible to elaborate further on such roles of
accounting, I hope that I have provided a sufficient insight at this stage that
will enable
me to build on them later. Taken together, they provide a basis for looking at
the role of accounting in organisational and social functioningin rather
different terms from more conventional appeals to its decision and control
functions.
The latter ways of perceiving and understanding accounting take for granted
the centrality of its role in organisational and social affairs. Rather than trying
to probe the factors implicated in the emerging significance of the craft, they
unproblematicallyattribute quite particular functionalitiesto it, often then
trying to provide these with a greater cohesion and organisational and
technical rationality. Rather than building on such traditions of accounting
enquiry, I am seeking to explore at least some of the waysin which the
functions of accounting might have emerged and changed, something which I
see as being of some importance if we are to understand the pressures for
change which are now impinging on the craft.
Of course thoroughly to analyse accounting in such terms is a task beyond
the confines of the present occasion. So I have decided to focus much of my
remainingdiscussionon three themes illustrativeof the involvementof
accounting
in organisational change processes. The first of these relates to some of the
current ways in which accounting is being involvedin bringing market pressures
to bear on internal organisational affairs. Thereafter I discuss a number of the
effects of technological change on the accounting craft. And finally some
brief consideration is given to the relationship between accounting
calculations and economic discourse.

Reweaving the Inside in the Name of the Outside

Accounting has the power to shift patterns of organisational visibility so that
the concerns of the external world can permeate and influence internal
organis-
ational affairs. U sect with care and forethought, accounting thereby can play Accounting and
a role in strategically changing managerial awareness away from the problems Organisation
of just internal interdependences towards a view of the external positioning of Change
the organisation or a particular segment of the organisation. The language,
pressures and requirements of the marketplace can be infused into the
organisation as a result of a strategic realignment of organisational structures,
internal patterns of organisational segmentation and flows of information, 11
including
accounting information. --------
Such uses of accounting information are an increasingly prevalent feature of
modern organisations. Enterprises are being broken down into more units than
is necessary for the purposes of internal co-ordination. They are being broken
down into units where the language of the market, of competitive pressures
and forces and, importantly, of profit can be introduced by calculative,
informational and, not least, accounting means into the internal bureaucracy
of the organisation, mediating internal decision processes and the exercising
of choice. New patterns of managerial accountability are thereby being forged
and new performance measurements articulated. Externally driven flows of
information are entering internal organisational reports through accounting
means. More managers are being subjected to the need to relate to market
forces. Profit is being used as a means for broadening management
responsibilities in such a way that they assume a more widely conceived business
form, rather than one cast in more narrowly defined functional terms.
Information increasingly is being moved across organisations rather than only
up and down the bureaucratic hierarchy. Lateral linkages are being established
across organisational units. Manufacturing activities are being more directly
coupled with marketing spheres of influence. Retailing activities are being related
to wholesaling and the eventual manufacturing process. Product oriented flows
of information are superseding earlier segmented functional reports. Prices
thereby can be more readily related to costs. Costs, in turn, can be related
to product designs and changing patterns of component sourcing. And quality
standards can be tied in with changes in consumer demand. Through the use
of market rather than cost-based internal transfer prices, more competitive
pressures can be brought to bear on internal decision making and the assessment
of managerial performance. And the use of modes of reporting based on overall
product life-cycle performance enables more general business analyses to
permeate organisational debates, introducing both a longer temporal perspective
and concerns with performance that, in showing the implications of competition
and competitive product innovation, are also more market based.
Through such configurations of organisational and accounting changes,
enterprises are in the process of being made more market oriented. More than
a mere processing of new accounting information is occurring, however. The
concerns of the market are more actively permeating the internal functioning
of the organisation. Patterns of visibility are shifting. Information, including
accounting information, is moderating managerial vocabularies, proactively
shaping and changing their conceptions of what is important and what is not.
The new information has at least the potential to change managerial awarenesses.
AAAJ Different organisational linkages can be created and different bases thereby
3,1 established for organisational action. And that is why many organisations are
looking afresh at the power of accounting information.
Both to appreciate and to activate such changes, more than a merely
technical view of accountingis required. To understand what is goingon,
accountingneeds
12 to be appreciated in its organisational context. It needs to be seen not merely
as something that reflects organisationalcircumstances but also as a
phenomenon
that can play a role in changing them. Used strategically, accounting can help
to make organisations what they were not.

Technological Perturbations and Organisational Ripples

Turning to my second illustrationof accountingchange, I wish briefly to
consider the area of technology. Here too I want to argue that an
appreciative organisationally grounded stance is necessary for
understanding what is happening in enterprises today.
The role of new technologies in the office, seen in their widest sense, is
of fundamental importance to understanding accounting processes in
organisations. Indeed it lies behind not only modem management structures
but also the buildings in which they function. Indeed the very skylines of
our
cities now testify to the powerful presence of clerical, managerial and
financial functions in the business sphere. The co-ordinating managerial
function is increasingly vast, one that is increasingly isolated from where
actual productive and service activities take place, and one where the
application and use of modem office technologies have been centrally
implicated in the rise of that "management at a distance" (Latour, 1987).
The area of office technology is perhaps one where we need to be cautious
about overemphasising the role of new computer-based technologies. They are
important. They have resulted and still are resulting in an amazing
intensification of organisational changes. But I still think that there is a need
to be conscious of how they have speeded up rather than established afresh a
number of existing organisational trends. The development of earlier office
technologies - the filing cabinet, means for sorting, sifting, codifying and
classifying information, the typewriter and the copying machine - had
already resulted in the creation of the office as a sphere for managerial work
where the physical realities of the organisation could be abstracted into a
world of files, reports and flows of information. And these changes had
already resulted in massive changes in patterns of organisational influence,
power and authority.
Seen in such terms, the technologiesof the office providea basis for a powerful
form of organisational cartography - a means for representing on paper (or
a screen) in a coherent and abstract manner a vast array of
physicalcircumstances and facts. Like the cartography of old (Latour,
1987), today's realm of
organisational files and reports is based on a massive number of
technological
and organisationalinnovations,few of which were initiallyrelated but all of
which now come together to provide a means for encapsulating the processes
of the organisation in an abstract form and thereby enabling the complex
activities
of the organisation to be represented on pieces of paper and computer screens. Accounting and
And also, like the maps of old, the rise of the organisational cartographic function Organisation
enables a domain of abstract decision making to be divorced from the realities Change
of physical, concrete circumstances. It has made it possible to abstract the
physical production process on to paper and thereby to schedule, to plan,
and to co-ordinate in the office, with orders and instructions being given
back to the physical manufacturing operations. The realm of information is 13
now acted
upon as if it was the realm of facts. The files and reports are trusted, or usually
--------
so. And, so trusted, they enable the world to be changed at a distance from
where action takes place.
Accounting is, of course, centrally implicated in such processes, as is the
financialsector in general. Accountingenables an assembling of complex
physical processes and their abstraction into the domain of paper through the
activities of planning,budgeting, costing and scheduling. More than that,
however,it then provides a basis for radically changing and disrupting the
physical processes in the name of criteria and concerns which are not
directly implicated in the physicalprocesses themselves, such as the economic
and the financial.In such ways the power of accounting can be revealed. The
abstract characterisations which it provides can provide an influential means
for inducing change into organisational affairs.
Accounting, however, is not itself unresponsive to changes in the physical
world which it seeks to represent. Recently, for example, attention has been
placed on the implications of new manufacturing technologies for the design
of accounting systems (Iohnson and Kaplan, 1987). Particularly in the United
States, it is now becoming almost commonplaceto say that the new
technologies have undermined the relevance of the accountings of old. We
must, according to such views, cast the old aside and search for
accountings that are more compatible with the new technological
environment in which we now live.
Such arguments are interesting, but, I wish to argue, there is a danger of
being too enthusiastic and too simplistic in approach, not least if we look at
the organisational processes that are implicated in such technological and
accountingchanges. All that we know from studies of the impact of
technological
change in other areas of organisation and social life (e.g. Sorge and Warner,
1986) suggests that there is no simple technological determinism at work.
The
impact of new technologies is not singular. If such findings hold in the area
of accounting, and I see no reason why they should not, there are unlikely
to be any unambiguous new accountings in the name of which we can
rewrite accounting textbooks. Rather the impact of new technologies on
accounting is likelyto be mediated and influencedby the organisationaland
cultural terrains into which the technologies are introduced.
An illuminatingillustration of such processes at work has been provided by
a comparativestudy of the impact of new manufacturingtechnologiesin
Germany and the United Kingdom. Sorge and Warner (1986)found that the
introduction
of similar changes in manufacturing technologies in the two countries had
different, indeed sometimes even opposite, effects. The technological
change did not have a direct effect. Its consequences stemmed from the
interaction
AAAJ between the new organisational potential which it introduced and the very
3,1 different nature of the organisational and social fabric of the two countries.
Such findings emphasise that it is not possible to understand the implications
of technological changes without considering the organisational and cultural
contexts in which the changes occur. Organisational consequences are not a
direct result of technological changes per se. Rather those changes are mediated
and influenced by the circumstances prevailing in the contexts in which they
- are introduced. It is as if a new technology represents a perturbation that is
capable of creating ripples that diffuse themselves through the organisation
but ripples that have consequences that reflect both the perturbation itself and
14
------- the nature of the organisational terrain into which it is introduced.
Seen in such terms, we are likely, I suggest, to see a range of consequences
for accountingstemming from current developmentsin
manufacturingtechnology, rather than any singular effect. Therefore both to
appreciate and to influence such consequences we need not only a new
technical accounting understanding
but also a more subtle and advanced insight into the organisational dynamics
which mediate and shape accounting changes in particular contexts.

Economic Discourse and Accounting Calculations

For my third illustrationI want brieflyto consider another generator of
accounting
change. For not only can market forces, forms of organisational segmentation
and new technologies influence accounting, but so also can the world of ideas
and bodies of knowledge. Accountingcan be and is being changed in the name
of discursivedevelopments. I particularly want to emphasise the role of
economic
discourse in this process.
One of the dominant features of the world in which we live is the power
of economic thought - a phenomenon which I think future generations
will recognise and study but one which is very much taken for granted
today. Economic thought is in many senses a strange and restless
phenomenon. Although claiming to provide insight into the way the world is,
economics is also characterised by a dissatisfaction with the ways of the
world. Even though it claims to provide a positive rather than normative
knowledge of the world, economics seemingly always wants to make the
world more economic than it is. Market forces are not merely present but
need to be extended. Economic incentives are not merely a feature of the
world but need to be reinforced. The rationality of costing needs to be
enhanced in the name of an economic understanding of it. The world
needs to be told what profit is even though it apparently is orchestrated in
the name of it.
As the latter examples illustrate, such thinking has permeated accounting
thought, not least academicaccountingthought. And it is this restless,
ambiguous feature of economic thought in which I am interested: the
relationships between accounting and economists' claims to know not only
how the world works but also how to make the world better.
Seen in such terms, economic discourse is not merely a reflective
phenomenon, providing insight into the way in which the world is, but is
also a constitutive phenomenon, currently playinga major role in making the
world
more economic than it otherwise might be, forging a reality that is more in
Accounting and
line with our economic understandings of it. Organisation
Such a role of economic discourse is providing a powerful basis for accounting Change
change, particularly but not exclusively in the public sector. The language of
efficiency, value for money, cost effectiveness and the market has entered into
political debate. Organisations are being changed in the name of such an economic
vocabulary and, as this happens, new calls are being made for the extension 15
of modes of economic calculation to objectify and operationalise the abstract
concepts in the name of which change is occurring. Accounting and related bodies
of techniques are important means for such operationalisation, playing thereby
an often significant role in the construction rather than mere revelation of new
domains of economic activity.
For much of the language of economics is rich in ambiguity when used as
a basis for political action rather than a more constrained form of intellectual
activity, as accountants already know only too well from their experiences with
the operationalisation of economic concepts such as profit and cost.
Such ambiguity does not in and of itself constrain the practical use of economic
conceptions, however. The world can be changed in the name of profit without
a precise operational understanding of the concept. Indeed, the public sector
in many countries is being changed in the name of efficiency without there being
any precise and generally agreed definition of that concept. It might even be
that the very ambiguity of the concept provides one basis for its appeal,
particularly in political circles. If we knew precisely what the concept was,
it
most likely would be far less capable of mobilising political
support.
At some stage in the practical use of such concepts, however, the specifics
of operationalisation must be addressed, often by accountants. At such times
it is useful to remember that the ambiguity, generality and abstractness of the
concepts themselves imply that there is no one-to-one relationship between
the concepts and the specific forms of operational calculus to which they
give rise. One is not a mere reflection of the other. Discretion and choice
exist. The technical thereby is partly independent of the abstract and the
conceptual. It therefore is capable of generating its own consequences
and effects, consequences that might have a complex relationship with the
rationales in the name of which the new accountings were introduced.
To the extent that such forces are at work, we must always ask questions
of the precise effects of changes, not least in the areas of efficiency, value-
for- money and cost effectiveness, rather than presuming a mere realisation
of a prior intent.
For efficiencyneed not be a phenomenon associated with any singular
impact. Although appeals to efficiency might seem inherently sensible, the
ambiguity of the concept is such that we must always look at what happens
in its name, not least when the idea is appealed to in political discourse. We
must consider the actual effects that occur rather than merely focusing on
the seeming desirability of the intent that lies behind them. Equally in the
area of economics more generally conceived, we must, I would argue, be
prepared to recognise how a realm of the economic is possibly created rather
than merely revealed
AAAJ and the role which accounting and other sources of economic and financial
3,1 information can play in that process.
Just such processes can be seen at work in health care organisations in many
countries in the world. In the United Kingdom, for instance, until recently there
were few accountings for health. Hospitals and health management organisations
had invested lightly in the accounting craft, in part because health care had

-
not been perceived as primarily an economic phenomenon. Other visibilities
had been given a priority in guiding the management function. That is now in
the process of changing, however. Not least with the development of a

-------
more
16 finely articulated knowledge of health economics (Ashmore, et al., 1989) and
with the political mobilisation of that knowledge, it has become possible to
conceive of health care as residing in the domain of the economic. As that
has occurred, given the restless and proactive nature of so much of
economic thought, proposals have been made to intervene in health care
organisations in the name of the economic knowledge of them. More and
more economic questions have been asked of health, and investments are
now starting to be made in the elaboration and intensification of economic
calculating systems in the area, including accounting systems. And as this
happens, there is at least the possibility that health care organisations
might start to be made into organisationsof more of an economic form than
they otherwise wouldhave been.

Conclusion
Albeit briefly, I nevertheless hope to have illustrated the role which
appreciations
of the organisational nature of accounting can play in understanding
important aspects of the modem organisational world and the ways in which
those relate
to accounting. They can illuminate the dynamic and changing nature of
accounting practices. Accounting can be seen as being actively drawn
upon in the construction of new organisational forms and boundaries.
Focusing on the forces that can impinge on accounting and the ways in
which they can permeate accounting thought and practice, such
organisational understandings have a potential to inform our views of both
how accounting became what it was not and how it might become what it
currently is not. For in a complex and
interdependent world, accounting change is rarely easy to introduce.
Although accounting can provide one of the conduits through which economic
discourse enters into the world of practice, it almost invariably functions in
unanticipated ways. Partial though our new organisational understandings
may be, they nevertheless can provide a way of starting to come to a
more adequate understanding of the ways in which accounting is embedded
in processes of organisational change. Although they cannot give a new
predictability and precision to the accounting craft, I nevertheless think that
our understandings are now sufficient to provide a richer and more
informed basis for guiding accounting in action.

References
Ashmore, M., Mulkay, M.J. and Pinch, T.J. (1989), Health and Efficiency: A Sociology of
Health
Economics, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Bentham,]. (1791), Panopticon; or The Inspection-House, Containing the Idea of a New Principle Accounting and
of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in which Persons of any Description Organisation
are to be Kept Under Inspection, and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Poor-Houses, Change
Lazarettos, Houses of Industry, Manufactories, Hospitals, Workhouses, Mad-Houses and
Schools: with a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle: 'Na Series of Letters, Written
in the Year 1787, from Crecheff in White Russia to a Friend in England, London. Reprinted
in Browning, J. (Ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Part III (1838), William Tate, Edinburgh.
Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Allen Lane, London. 17
Johnson, H.T. and Kaplan, R.S. (1987), Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management
Accounting, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass.
Latour, 8. (1987), Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society,
Harvard University Press.
Sorge, A. and Warner, M. (1986), Comparative Factory Organisation: An Anglo-German
Comparison of Manufacturing, Management and Manpower, Gower, Aldershot.

Journal of Accounting: and Public

Policy
j
I

VOLUME I. NUMBER 3, FALL 1989

Contents

Editorial In Memoriam: Steven 8. Johnson 163

Lawrence A. Gordon and Steven E. Loeb
The Demand for Cost Allocations: The Case of Incentive
Contracts Versus Fixed-Price Contracts l65
Susan I. Cohen and Martin P. Loeb
Public Disclosure of Bank Loan Accounting Information 181
Robert 0. Edmister and Chao Chen
Political Interests and Governmental Accounting Disclosure 199
Gary Giroux
Accounting Issues of Underaround Injtttion of Waste 219
William A. Hillison, William F. Jordan, and Kenneth Pogach
A Call /or Papers Management Control Systems and Public
Budgeting 235
Lawrence A. Gordon
Biographies 237