In Search of the "Perfect One": How accounting as a maieutic machine sustains inventions through generative 'in-tensions'. (June 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Busco, Cristiano; Quattrone, Paolo
• Is Part Of: Management accounting research. Volume 39(2018)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 16
• Publication Date: 2018-06
• Subjects: Accounting -- Maieutic machine -- Collection -- In-tensions -- Epistemic objects; Managerial accounting -- Periodicals; Managerial accounting -- Research -- Periodicals; Managerial accounting -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; Comptabilité de gestion -- Périodiques; Comptabilité de gestion -- Recherche -- Périodiques; Comptabilité de gestion -- Bibliographie -- Périodiques; Managerial accounting; Managerial accounting -- Research; Bibliography; Periodicals; 658.1511
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mar.2017.02.002
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1044-5005

Abstract

Abstract: The paper contributes to the debate regarding the incompleteness of accounting representations and performance measures by highlighting the role that such incompleteness plays by prompting and sustaining a continuous search for perfection which, however, is never achieved. Thanks to the information collected through a longitudinal case study of an Italian mid-size fashion firm, we illustrate how accounting visualizations offer a visual space that generates productive tensions, which sustain this process of scrutiny, questioning and continual search. Theoretically, we draw on the notion of epistemic objects combined with the findings of visual rhetoric in order to explain the role of the intrinsic incompleteness of accounting representations and the visualizations that are produced and referred to in this continuous process of searching for perfection.