Creating numbers: carbon and capital investment

Abstract

Structured AbstractPurpose -This case study seeks to illustrate the way in which carbon emissions are given calculative agency. We contribute to sociology of quantification with a specific focus on the performativity of the carbon number as it was introduced to the organisation's capital investment accounts. In following an intangible gas to a physical amount and then to a dollar value, we used categories from the sociology of quantification (Espeland and Stevens, 2008) to explore the persuasive attributes of the newly created number and the way it changed the work of actors, including the way they reacted and viewed authority.Design/methodology/approach -An empirical case study in a large Australian water utility drawing on insights from the sociology of calculation.Findings -We present empirics on the calculative appeal of the carbon emissions number, how it came into being and its performative (or reactive) effects. The number disciplined behaviour and acted like a boundary object, while at the same time, enrolled allies through its aesthetic appeal in management accounting system designs. In framing our empirics, we were able to highlight how the carbon number became a visible actor in the newly emergent and evolving carbon market.Research limitations/implications -This paper provides an empirical framing that continues the project of writing the sociology of calculation into accounting.Originality/value -This study contributes to the sociology of quantification in accounting with an empirical framing device to reveal the representational work of a number and how it expands as it becomes implicated in broader networks of calculation.

Improving accountability for farm animal welfare: the performative role of a benchmark device

“…Performativity has been applied as a framework in many disciplines, including philosophy, gender studies, sociology and organization studies (Gond et al, 2015) and it has recently appeared in the accounting literature (for example, Vosselman, 2014;Revellino and Mouritsen, 2015;Vesty et al, 2015). In relation to the functioning of markets, Callon (1998) developed the 'performativity of economics thesis' which states that 'economics, broadly defined, performs, shapes and formats the economy, rather than observing how it functions' (Callon, 1998, p2).…”

Environmental Management Accounting: The Missing Link to Sustainability?

“…The development of new and different tools that would account for sustainability face different issues such as the difficulty to account for different dimensions at the same time, the difficulty of boundaries and scales (organisation, territory …) and the difficulty to include different time horizons within accounting (Antheaume 2013;Gibassier and Alcouffe 2018). For example, there is a lack of accounting tools that allows incorporating long-term effects of environmental decision-making, despite the recent development of green capital expenditure mechanisms (Vesty, Telgenkamp, and Roscoe 2015). As Jones (2010, 130) reminds us 'accounting, as practiced in the modern corporation, is notoriously short-term in orientation, while environmental problems, such as global warming, have very long time spans.…”

Ac-counting for carbon emissions: simulating absence through experimental sites of material politics

“…The role of managers as influential actors aiming to demonstrate their environmental leadership, was also observed by Vesty et al (2015). That research investigated the empirical case of a large Australian water utility, which, in order to improve the techniques it used to assess its infrastructural assets, took into account prevented C02 emissions in its net present value (NPV) model.…”

“…They are matters of concern; that is spaces that reveal things that need to be questioned (Geiger et al, 2014). From this perspective, accounting that affords visibility to CO2 emissions enables an analysis of the emergent and evolving carbon market (Vesty et al, 2015). A "prevented" carbon emissions element, when, for example, a company is allocated a right to pollute but actually emits less carbon than allocated, is present in some studies on carbon markets (Mackenzie, 2009)5.…”

“…Despite isolated attempts (see for example Vesty et al 2015), accounting for prevented carbon emissions remains a major and underexplored issue in environmental management studies. Theoretically it offers elements for challenging the metaphysics of presence as suggested by Giovannoni and Quattrone (2018).…”