Talking accounting: An ethnography of management knowledge in British and German brewers

The organisational functionings of accounting hinge on its combination with other forms of organisational knowledge in talk. This paper analyses some of the talk observed in paired situations in British and German brewers, to contrast the intertwining of accounting and other expertise and relate it to the enactment of different organisational orders. Through accounting talk, organisational members air their shifting conceptions of order and, thereby, point to its precariousness and ambivalence. The focus on accounting talk emerges as an approach to the study of the organisational practice of accounting which promises insight into the complex processes of enacting the orders which accounting engenders, their flexibility and fragility. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.