This study explores the risks and consequences of the reliance on visualizations in performance measurement for the sake of the simplicity and actionability of performance information. Despite the mounting interest in the visual aspects of accounting, little is known about what can happen when visuals are so embedded in organizations that they become a key semiotic resource for communicating performance measurement information. Theoretically, we draw from multimodality research to unpack how different semiotic modes (i.e., visuals, text, and numbers) interact in organizational meaning-making. To explore these issues, we conducted a study of the visual practices of one of the largest infrastructure megaprojects in the UK. The paper makes two contributions. Our first contribution consists of qualifying what we call the lure of the visual: A seemingly paradoxical process whereby the increasing ubiquity and reliance on visuals in an organization induces the trivialization of performance measurement visualizations and limits the communicative opportunities they offer to users. In so doing, we offer a substantive qualification of the risks and consequences of visual approaches to performance measurement. Our second contribution to the accounting literature is the theorization of how multiple semiotic modes can interact in performance measurement. We theorize three multimodal relationships between visuals, numbers, and text that shed new light on how performance measurement artifacts generate meaning in organizations.

Wicked problems are complex and dispersed challenges that go beyond the capacity of individual organizations and require a response by multiple actors, often in the form of transnational regimes. While research on regimes has provided insights into such collective responses, less is known about how such regimes may form barriers that hinder and block appropriate responses to addressing wicked problems. Exploring the problematic role of regime-level responses is timely given that many of today’s wicked problems are far from being alleviated and in many instances appear instead to be intensifying. We draw from complementary insights of regime theory and research on institutional barriers to explore our research question: How do regimes form barriers to addressing wicked problems, and which mechanisms sustain such barriers? We explore this question with a longitudinal case study of the transnational regime for refugee protection and its response to displacement in Rwanda. From our findings, we develop a model of dissociation that explains how actors move further away from addressing a wicked problem. We identify four dissociative mechanisms (discounting, delimiting, separating, and displaying) that each create a distinct regime-level barrier. These barriers are distributed and mutually reinforcing, which makes it increasingly hard for actors to find alternative ways of responding to an escalating problem. Our study provides insights for research on regimes and wicked problems as well as studies on institutional barriers. We conclude with policy implications for overcoming those barriers, in line with the wider concerns and motivations of this special issue.

research focuses on the role of quantification and metrics as tools that actively shape organising processes and policy in response to grand social challenges. Rather than examining metrics as merely providing 'evidence' for managers and policy makers, his research places numbers and visualisations in the foreground to understand how notions of knowledge, innovation and accountability are constructed and practiced in such settings.Dr Matteo Ronzani's research focuses on the roles of visualisations and material artefacts in processes of organising and on how metrics and indicators are implicated in the making of transnational governance. ABSTRACTIn this study, we explore how thinking infrastructures can orchestrate collective sensemaking in unstable and socially contested environments, such as large-scale humanitarian crises. In particular, drawing from recent interest in the role of artefacts and infrastructures in sensemaking processes, we examine the evaluative underpinnings of prospective sensemaking as groups attempt to develop novel understandings about a desired but ambiguous set of future conditions. To explore these theoretical concerns, we conducted a detailed case study of the unfolding challenges of managing a large-scale humanitarian crisis response. Our study offers two contributions. Firstly, we develop a theorization of the process through which performance evaluation systems can serve as thinking infrastructures in the collaborative development of new understandings in unstable environments. Secondly, our study sheds light on the practices that support prospective sensemaking through specific features of thinking infrastructures, and we unpack how prospective and retrospective forms of sensemaking may interact in such processes.

In this article, we explore some of the barriers that prevent learning about grand challenges. By grand challenges, we refer to transformational social and environmental issues and the critical barriers toward addressing them. Despite recent research contributions, initiatives, and calls for action to focus on such concerns, relatively little is known about the different barriers that hinder learning about grand challenges. To explore these issues, we draw from Rayner's (2012) concept of uncomfortable knowledge, defined as knowledge that is disagreeable to organizations because it may challenge their value base, self-perception, organizing principles, or sources of legitimacy. Focusing on the example of recent programmatic attempts to advance "responsible education" in business schools, we identify three barriers to learning about grand challenges: Cognitive overload, emotional detachment, and organizational obliviousness. We conclude by outlining several implications on how to overcome these barriers, adding to recent academic and policy debates on how to make

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