• Account for different conceptual understandings of markets and technologies produced in recent social science, and relate these to each other
• Analyze empirical examples of markets and technologies as organized achievements
• Critically reflect on the implications of theories of organizing markets and technologies for managing organizations

Accounting technologies and technologies in a broader sense, play a crucial role in organizations and making markets. Rather than being neutral tools to solve problems (or instruments to steer processes), they can be considered transformative of organizational realities. To provide an understanding of the constitutive role of technology in organizing, this course introduces the material and practice turn in social science and organization and accounting studies. The aim of the course is to support students in identifying and analyzing how various (accounting) technologies are part of Strategy-making, Organizational practices, and Leadership/management, and to use these insights in relation to understand how they become part of practices in organizations. In a more popular sense the aim is to learn about how accounting technologies (inscriptions and devices) become part of strategy making or other organizational transformations, to show and discuss specific practices and to learn how practitioners calculate when changing organizations.
The course offers a very broad conception of technology. It places emphasis on technologies for managing economic aspects and the quantification of organizational life, for instance the tools that organizations use to make themselves controllable, transparent and accountable, such as user satisfaction surveys, cost calculations, evaluations, risk management, etc.

Content:
The course covers four dimensions:

1. The material turn in organization and accounting studies is introduced, as a background for understanding the relationships between:
2. Accounting technologies and Strategy (The role of accounting to strategy and the like)
3. The role of technology in organizational transformations and developments (for instance, the role of calculations in outsourcing processes)
4. Technology and Leadership/management (how technologies are used to underpin leadership and management).

The first part of the course introduces various perspectives on technologies and organizing – the so called material and practice turn, and establishes a broad understanding of ‘technology’. We critically examine the claim that technology tends to be left out of the picture when managers discuss strategy, organizational processes and leadership/management in organizations. We then reflect on how we may use insights from the material and practice turn in social science to broaden the view of strategy, organization and leadership. In particular, the notion of performativity – i.e. how economic theories participate in performing organizational practices - will allow us to open up otherwise naturalized technologies and reflect upon how they play a part in the constitution of organizational and market realities.
The rest of the course is divided into three sections, each discussing how strategy, organizational processes and leadership/management are closely intertwined with various technologies. Each session explores a particular type of technology, to provide empirically rich examples of how otherwise unobtrusive elements of organizations and businesses play a decisive role for their constitution and conduct. The cases also serve to illustrate how development and implementation processes may benefit from an understanding of the organizing role of technologies.

Overlap with the course Organizing Markets

Both Organizing Markets (OM) and Organizing Technologies (OT) discuss recent social scientific developments that challenge how organization and markets are usually understood and analyzed. Drawing extensively on Actor-network Theory, OT discusses and analyses the role of management technologies (such as accounting, budget, marketing, and strategy tools) in shaping and transforming the practice of contemporary organization. OM uses recent developments in economic sociology and science and technology studies that challenge the traditional dichotomy between markets and organization. It presents work that analyzes, in different forms, how markets are organized.

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Hayne, C. and Free, C. (2014). Hybridized professional groups and institutional work: COSO and the rise of enterprise risk management, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 39, 309-330.
Tryggestad, K.( 2005).Technological strategy as macro-actor: How humanness might be made of steel. In B. Czarniawska and T. Hernes. Actor-Network-Theory and Organizing, , Liber and Copenhagen Business School Press.

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Skærbæk & Tryggestad (2010). The role of accounting devices in performing corporate strategy. In Accounting, Organizations and Society 35, 108-124
Skærbæk, P. & S. Thorbjørnsen (2007). The commodification of the Danish Defence Forces and the troubled identities of its officers. Financial Accountability & Management, 23(3), 0267-4424
Christensen, M., Skærbæk, P. and Tryggestad, K. (2019). Contested organizational change and accounting in trials of incompatibility. Management Accounting Research.

Christensen, M. and Skærbæk, P. (2010). Consultancy outputs and the purification of accounting technologies. Accounting, Organization and Society, 35, pp. 524-545.