Under de 10 år som har gått sedan Organisation & Samhälle grundades har nästan 200 artiklar publicerats i 20 tryckta nummer. Tidskriften har bjudit in till bidrag författare 15 temanummer och även välkomnat bidrag som handlat om andra ämnen. Nästan 200 artiklar har publicerats i 20 tryckta nummer. Utöver det har intervjuer, krönikor, debattartiklar och ett stort antal bokrecensioner publicerats . I den här texten reflekterar vi över några framträdande och mindre framträdande diskussioner som har präglat tidskriftens första årtionde. 

Accounting scholars are paying increasing attention to the notion of commensuration, or the translation of different objects into common metrics that make the entities that are subject to performance evaluation comparable, and the effects this has on organizational behavior. This body of research draws attention to organizations’ commensuration work, defined as the efforts that evaluated organizations expend in pursuing and dealing with resistance to commensuration, but has mainly explored how such work emerges in response to a single set of comparable metrics such as individual rankings or ratings. By contrast, we ask how commensuration work unfolds in relation to a broader assemblage of calculative infrastructures. Such infrastructures can entail multiple, inter-related performance evaluation procedures that influence organizations’ commensuration work and give rise to complex patterns of reactivity, denoting the propensity of organizations to alter their behavior as they internalize external pressures for performance evaluation. Our empirical findings underline the importance of adopting a multi-layered view of commensuration work, that entails both direct and indirect forms of reactivity, as it unfolds in relation to a broader assemblage of calculative infrastructures. We discuss the implications of adopting such a view for future research on commensuration and related research on performance evaluation. 

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge about the diversity of credibility arrangements in new audit spaces “in the margins” of auditing and the implications of such arrangements.

Method: The paper is based on an in-depth qualitative study of the LGBTQI certification run by the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights (RFSL) during its first decade of business. We have interviewed employees and studied documents at the certification units within the RFSL. We have also interviewed certified organizations. 

Findings: We highlight two features that explain the unusual credibility arrangements in this audit practice: the role of beneficiaries in the organizational arrangements chosen and the role of responsibility as an organizing value with consequences for responsibility allocation of this certification. These features make it possible for the RFSL to act as a credible auditor even though it deviates from common arrangements for credible audit.  

Originality/value: The RFSL certification is different in several ways. First, the RFSL acts as both trainer and auditor. Second, the trainers/auditors at the RFSL have no accreditation to guarantee their credibility. Third, the RFSL decides itself what standards should apply for the certification and adapts these standards to the operation being audited. Therefore, this case provides a good opportunity to study alternative credibility arrangements in the margins of auditing as well as their justifications.  

The paper contributes to the emerging discussions on responsibility implications of partial organization in the world of standards, that is, decided order outside of and among formal organizations around the use of standards (e.g., Arnold, 2020; Gustafsson & Tamm Hallström, 2018; Gustafsson, 2020; Brunsson et al. 2022). More specifically, we are interested in responsibility implications in how sustainability is performed in contemporary markets through sustainability standards and certifications. Rather than focusing on how sustainability standards are implemented (or not) in organizations, the paper answers the recent call by Christensen, Morsing and Thyssen (2017) to examine productive implications of organizational work with sustainability standards in terms of contestation, reflection and innovation around sustainability issues.

Accordingly, we examine if, how and why different modes of organizing standard work construct and shape responsibility in and around organizations complying with sustainability standards. We draw on two empirical studies of certification practices with different degrees of partial organization: one where one and the same organization sets standards and performs certification (the Swedish LGBTQI certification used by e.g., preschools and libraries), and another where different “independent” organizations write standards and perform certification (the Swedish eco-label KRAV for organic produce used by e.g., farmers and retailers). 

Our findings show that the conditions for contestation, reflection and innovation, and thus the performance of sustainability in markets, indeed are affected by the way certification standards are (partially) organized – and thereby the number of organizations involved in partially organizing others – however in more intricate ways than expected.

References

Arnold, N. (2020) Accountability in transnational governance: The partial organization of voluntary sustainability standards in long-term account-giving. Regulation and Governance, 28, 1–17.

Brunsson, N., Gustafsson, I., & Tamm Hallström, K. (2022). Un-responsible organization. How more organization produces less responsibility. Forthcoming in Organization Theory.

Gustafsson, I. (2020). How standards rule the world: The construction of a global control regime. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Gustafsson, I., & Tamm Hallström, K. (2018). Hyper-organized eco-labels – An organization studies perspective on the implications of Tripartite Standards Regimes. Food Policy, 75, 124–133.

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to generate further knowledge about strategic management accounting (SMA) in the public sector context. The authors attempt to do this through a study of SMA work in a public sector agency (PSA), the Swedish Transport Administration (STA). The paper elaborates on the formation of the agency’s strategies and the challenges the agency’s SMA work had to deal with, and focuses its analysis on the interplay between SMA and the characteristics of the public sector as well as how it is constitutive of strategy.

Design/methodology/approach – The empirical material was gathered between 2013 and 2015 and consists of documents that include the STA’s appropriation, mandate, strategic and operational plans, and balanced scorecard, as well as interviews with 35 civil servants at various levels of the STA.

Findings – The study finds that, depending on the performances of PSAs in their specific environment and the influences from the environment’s constituents, SMA may function as an instrument that makes or breaks strategies. The characteristics of the public sector context may therefore affect SMA, and by extension, strategy, in several ways. First, the present case shows that the inherent reduction that the focus of SMA techniques entails, and their inability to deal with the complexity of a PSA’s context, places them at constant risk of becoming strategically irrelevant in the eyes of knowledgeable local managers in a PSA. Second, interventions from the government may override a PSA’s SMA and in effect make a PSA’s strategic focus ambiguous. Third, outside monitoring performed by such actors as the National Audit Office and the mass media may influence a PSA’s SMA work both directly and indirectly when the agency and the government are responsive to the agenda set by such scrutiny.

Originality/value – The paper broadens the scope of earlier SMA research in the public sector by including the specific characteristics of the public sector in the analysis and how accounting techniques may come to compete for strategic placement as they are propelled from within and from without the organization.