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Socio-Economic Review Advance Access originally published online on May 21, 2008
Socio-Economic Review 2008 6(4):587-609; doi:10.1093/ser/mwn010
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Rationalization defeats itself: the limits to accounting's framing of economic life

Matthew Gill

Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, MO, USA

Correspondence: m.gill{at}alumni.lse.ac.uk

This paper argues that the development of accounting can be well described as a process of rationalization. However, this need not imply the inexorable homogenization of economic activity, because beyond a certain point, rationalization defeats itself. Highly rationalized accounting leaves its users and creators disillusioned with it and inclined to exploit it as an abstract construct rather than to sustain it as a compelling system of knowledge. The paper explores the implications of this finding both for our understanding of how accounting influences economic life and for the future of the accounting profession.

Key Words: accounting • rationalization • framing • technocratism • disillusionment


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