Examining ''The Quantified Customer''

Abstract Accounting has not escaped The Customer's influence in contemporary organizations. Calls have been made for a quantitative knowledge that installs a new calculable space in the name of The Customer. In an organizational setting, a UK sudsidiary of Unilever, the paper traces first the introduction of this quantitative knowledge. The paper examines the order of “The Quantified Customer”, its effects on organizational action, and its disciplinary implications. But this enquiry also uncovers a rival knowledge of The Customer. The resistant local knowledge is mobilized against the new calculable space—changing the trajectory of events.

[1]  John Roberts,et al.  Accounting and control: a case study of resistance to accounting change , 1993 .

[2]  John W. Meyer,et al.  Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony , 1977, American Journal of Sociology.

[3]  M. Ezzamel.  From Problem Solving to Problematization: Relevance Revisited , 1994 .

[4]  M. Alvesson,et al.  Critical Management Studies , 1993 .

[5]  Glenn Laffel,et al.  The customer-Driven Company , 1993 .

[6]  Peter Miller,et al.  Accounting as social and institutional practice , 1996 .

[7]  Jill L. McKinnon.  Reliability and Validity in Field Research: Some Strategies and Tactics , 1988 .

[8]  Rolland Munro,et al.  Accountability and the New Commercial Agenda , 1993 .

[9]  T. Ahrens.  Talking Accounting: An Ethnography Of Management Knowledge In British And German Brewers , 1997 .

[10]  K. Weick.  FROM SENSEMAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[11]  Bernard J. Jaworski,et al.  Market orientation: The construct, research propositions, and managerial implications. , 1990 .

[12]  David Knights,et al.  DISCIPLINING THE SHOPFLOOR: A COMPARISON OF THE DISCIPLINARY EFFECTS OF MANAGERIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND... , 1987 .

[13]  Keith Hoskin,et al.  Boxing Clever: For, against and beyond Foucault in the Battle for Accounting Theory , 1994 .

[14]  W. Powell,et al.  The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis , 1993 .

[15]  M. J. Earl,et al.  From management information to information management , 1986, Trends in Information Systems.

[16]  M. Ezzamel,et al.  Managing It All By numbers: A Review of Johnson & Kaplan's ‘Relevance Lost’ , 1990 .

[17]  Nils Brunsson.  THE IRRATIONALITY OF ACTION AND ACTION RATIONALITY: DECISIONS, IDEOLOGIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIONS , 1982 .

[18]  Keith Hoskin,et al.  Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power☆ , 1986 .

[19]  R. Scapens.  Researching management accounting practice: The role of case study methods , 1990 .

[20]  M. Lebas.  Managerial accounting in France Overview of past tradition and current practice , 1994 .

[21]  R. Eccles.  The performance measurement manifesto. , 1991, Harvard business review.

[22]  Mahmoud Ezzamel,et al.  Organizational Change and Accounting: Understanding the Budgeting System in its Organizational Context , 1994 .

[23]  K. Hoskin,et al.  Writing, examining, disciplining: the genesis of accounting's modern power , 1994 .

[24]  Peter Miller,et al.  Accounting, “economic citizenship” and the spatial reordering of manufacture☆ , 1994 .

[25]  Stewart Clegg,et al.  Frameworks of power , 1989 .

[26]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. , 1978 .

[27]  Robert W. Scapens,et al.  Never mind the gap: towards an institutional perspective on management accounting practice , 1994 .

[28]  R. Kaplan,et al.  PUTTING THE BALANCED SCORECARD TO WORK , 1993 .

[29]  Peter Armstrong.  The Influence of Michel Foucault on Accounting Research , 1994 .

[30]  R. Kaplan,et al.  The balanced scorecard--measures that drive performance. , 2015, Harvard business review.

[31]  R. Burgess.  In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research , 1984 .

[32]  D. Leonard,et al.  The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation , 1998 .

[33]  Peter Miller,et al.  ACCOUNTING INNOVATION BEYOND THE ENTERPRISE: PROBLEMATIZING INVESTMENT DECISIONS AND PROGRAMMING... , 1991 .

[34]  Peter Miller,et al.  The Factory as Laboratory , 1994, Science in Context.

[35]  John W. Meyer.  Social environments and organizational accounting , 1986 .

[36]  W. Powell,et al.  The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields , 1983 .

[37]  R. Kaplan,et al.  Linking the Balanced Scorecard to Strategy , 1996 .

[38]  J. Mouritsen.  Marginalizing the customer: Customer orientation, quality and accounting performance , 1997 .

[39]  Keith Robson,et al.  ACCOUNTING NUMBERS AS 'INSCRIPTION': ACTION AT A DISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING. , 1992 .

[40]  M. Polanyi.  Chapter 7 – The Tacit Dimension , 1997 .

[41]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Concept of “Ba”: Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation , 1998 .

[42]  Richard J. Schonberger,et al.  Building a chain of customers , 1990 .

[43]  A. Hopwood,et al.  On trying to study accounting in the contexts in which it operates , 1983 .

[44]  Peter Miller,et al.  Accounting and the construction of the governable person , 1987 .

[45]  S. Clegg.  Weber and Foucault: Social Theory for the Study of Organizations , 1994 .

[46]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 2020, On Violence.

[47]  A. Hopwood,et al.  The archeology of accounting systems , 1987 .

[48]  Nils Brunsson,et al.  Deciding for responsibility and legitimation: Alternative interpretations of organizational decision-making , 1990 .