Call for papers for a special issue of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal "Accounting and the Visual" Academy of Accounting Historians : Application for 2007 membership;Application for 2007 membership

              Call for papers for a special issue of
Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal:
“Accounting and the Visual”
This special issue aims to contribute to a recent and steadily grow-ing
interest in organizational visual images and methodologies with par-ticular
application to the field of accounting. In essence, the practices of
accounting for and auditing organizational activity relate to visualisation
– rendering tangible and intangible values visible in the form of reports,
charts, graphs, diagrams, and pictures for instance. These artefacts can
fruitfully be studied from a visual perspective as being traces of – and
drivers for – organizational action, processes and culture, as indeed can
organizational artefacts more generally. Likewise, the changing image
of accounting as a profession can be read visually, for example trends in
corporate architecture, space and accountants’ professional identity.
The extent to which organisations trade on their image in such
­societies
is also worthy of attention. Branding, organizational and/or
corporate aesthetics management, and the construction of symbolically
redolent buildings are all visual activities, and ways of accounting for
the visual is also a theme we might usefully engage with. For example,
in New Zealand, the ‘arts bonus points’ scheme allows organizations to
gain more favourable planning decisions if they agree to invest in and
display publicly accessible artworks in their buildings – importantly,
these points are tradable, effectively creating a market that leads to the
concept of an ‘aesthetic bottom line’ (Monin and Sayers 2006). In ad-dition,
accounting and management control processes can be studied
visually through the use of documentary photography, photo-elicitation
techniques and respondent-led photography.
In sum, as contemporary societies become defined by their ‘visual
culture’ and technological advancements mean that ‘the image’ becomes
all-important in every sphere of life, so organizational and accounting
scholars must engage with these developments theoretically, empirically
and methodologically. To date, the role of images and the visual world
has been strangely overlooked in organizational research despite having
a healthy provenance in the social sciences more generally, and a promi-nent
profile across arts disciplines and associated cultural studies. This
special issue aims to begin to rectify this neglect .
With these ideas in mind, we invite contributions that address any
aspect of the visual and accounting, whether theoretical, empirical or
methodological. We would particularly welcome creative, innovative
­approaches
to the topic. An indicative, but not exhaustive, list of what
we see as potential questions or approaches of interest is given below:
• Financial reporting as visual artefact
• Reflections of the image-dominated society within accounting