Book Cover
E-book

Title Accounting and science : natural inquiry and commercial reason / edited by Michael Power
Published Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xvii, 288 pages) : illustrations
Series Cambridge studies in management ; 26
Cambridge studies in management ; 26.
Contents Foreword: The flat-earthers of social theory / Bruno Latour -- 1. Introduction: from the science of accounts to the financial accountability of science / Michael Power -- 2. Making things quantitative / Theodore M. Porter -- 3. Natural and artificial budgets: accounting for Goethe's economy of nature / Myles W. Jackson -- 4. A calculating profession: Victorian actuaries among the statisticians / Timothy L. Alborn -- 5. The factory as laboratory / Peter Miller and Ted O'Leary -- 6. Connecting science to the economic: accounting calculation and the visibility of research and development / Keith Robson -- 7. Governing science: patents and public sector research / Brad Sherman -- 8. On customers and costs: a story from public sector science / John Law and Madeleine Akrich -- 9. A visible hand in the marketplace of ideas: precision measurement as arbitrage / Philip Mirowksi -- 10. Toward a philosophy of science accounting: a critical rendering of instrumental rationality / Steve Fuller
Summary "In recent years policy makers and scientists have become increasingly interested in the economics of science, and in particular in the relationship between accounting and science. This book, originally published as a special issue of the journal Science in Context, explores the intersections between the sociology and history of science and the sociology of accounting. Using a truly interdisciplinary approach the book draws attention to the constitutive role that practices of economic calculation in general, and of accounting in particular, play for the conduct of science and for the forms of economic life within which science is embedded. The contributors explore a number of issues, including the role of accounting as a distinctive form of administrative objectivity; conceptual exchanges between science and business administration; actuarial practices and their claims to scientificity; conceptions of the factory as a form of laboratory; accounting for research and development expenditure; the emerging role of patents in the physical sciences; and models of scientific accountability. One recurrent theme throughout the book is the manner in which forms of accounting practice construct possibilities for thought and action."--Jacket
Notes "Originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1994 as a special issue of the journal Science in Context"--Title page verso
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Accounting.
Management science.
Commercial statistics.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Accounting -- Financial.
Accounting
Commercial statistics
Management science
Form Electronic book
Author Power, Michael (Professor of Accounting), editor.
ISBN 0511002610
9780511002618
OTHER TI Science in context