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This paper questions a key assumption in the organizations literature that the dynamism of institutional logics and practice variations is the result of rivalry among logics and actors, of tensions and institutional shifts, and of the agency of institutional entrepreneurs. This study examines in rich historical detail the development of accounting in the Jesuit Order, illustrating how Jesuit accounting started from a rationality that did not presuppose an external ordering principle; instead, Jesuit rationality was unfolding—founded in continuous interrogations informed by common, purposeful procedural logics stemming from rhetorical practices used to classify, recall, and invent knowledge. I examine this concept of unfolding rationality in two areas of Jesuit practices: spiritual self-accountability and administrative accounting and recordkeeping. In this Jesuit rationality, the relationships between means and ends, and how and why behaviors take place, were not anchored permanently in a substantive logic. Instead, procedural logics left individual Jesuits and the community to imagine modes of action in the specific social and organizational contexts in which their missions operated. Jesuit rationality was thus unfolding, a persistent and recursive mode of governing social behavior and searching for organizational order that generated large-scale administrative routines and institutional dynamism while never fully achieving that order. The analysis brings into question our understanding of the historical and institutional genealogies of modern rationality and its taken-for-granted link with Protestant ethics.

This Connexions essay aims to reflect on the nature, rationale, and implications for research and researchers of conducting case studies. It draws on the works of Primo Levi and Giorgio Agamben on the meaning of the testimony and the paradox of Auschwitz: only those who died could fully testify the atrocities of the camp, but they tragically passed away. Thus each testimony presents a lacuna, and one needs to listen to the voices coming from this empty space to comprehend what happened. For organizational scholars, this paradox metaphorically implies that listening to managers and interviewees has nothing to do with telling what could be seen (a fact) and rather relates to what is missing (a lacuna) and thus the issue is one of investigating this absence (this space left empty by whichever testimony). This opens some ethical questions: What is the role of researchers in this investigation? Where does their 'authority' to narrate come from? What are they 'authorized' to recount? And with what consequences? Are researchers ineluctably perpetrators of a domination in the absence (and in the name) of the Other or is there an escape from this?

This paper takes its inspiration from Voth's [2000] work on Time and Work in England, 1750–1830 which argues that the British industrial revolution led to greater production levels not because of an increase in the productivity of labor but because of the larger amount of hours worked per week. This change led to a decrease of free time in favor of worked time. If this was the case, one might argue, accounting played a marginal role either in increasing the efficiency of the work force, or in disciplining the shop floor to guarantee control of the labor process. This paper argues that if accounting is to gain a crucial position in the history of economies and societies 'time' needs to be expressly posited on the agenda of accounting historians for, at the moment, it seems that the link between time and accounting history is missing. The aim of the paper is to show that if a linear, neutral and objective view of time is abandoned then the possibilities to study the organizational, social and even political roles of accounting will proliferate. This view is illustrated by moving from linear views of 'time' ('time spent') to more relative and constructed conceptions ('time counted').

The aim of this article is to contribute to the literature on legitimacy by investigating its material and visual dimensions. By drawing on studies on rhetoric as a means of composing visions of social order and on an historical analysis of accounts in three paradigmatic eras (Roman times, Renaissance and Modernity), it shows how symmetry in accounts constituted an aesthetic code which tied members of a community together in 'socie-ties'. We investigate the rhetorical process of ratiocinatio and explore how the visual and material dimensions of accounts provided social actors with an opportunity to explore their positions and ties within a community. This process augmented social actors' understanding of their current relations by reducing them to a series of entries in an account, thus allowing them to reflect on what it meant to be a legitimate member of a society.

The aim of this special issue is to explore organizing processes in ways which do not assume an a priori existence of space and time. Rather than providing a summary of the papers collected here, this introduction illustrates how Spacing and Timing relate to issues of knowing, organizing, mediation, engagement, alterity and absence/presence. We examine how various actions and practices may be seen as seeking to achieve order but also concomitantly create further openings and orderings. Finally, while this introduction attempts to highlight a range of issues relating to this process, the development of alternative vocabularies, approaches, and insights are required to develop this work further.

Previous researchers have argued that material objects reproduce institutional logics on the basis of their durability, immutability and mobility. In this paper we analyse material objects that secure logics not because they reveal meanings and significations, but because they allow individuals and groups to confront the mystery of institutional values. Drawing on extensive historical sources, we analyse a small material object, a book entitled The Spiritual Exercises, and investigate the institutionalization of a practice for discovering what cannot be rendered material, the ineffable mystery of God's will, as key component of the Jesuit beliefs system. We argue that religious logics require objects that present, rather than resolve, the mystery of institutional values. We extend the literature on institutional logics by considering how mystery enables institutions and their logics to embrace difference, adapt and endure for centuries. Our paper shows that institutional values and goods are ontologically mysterious no-things, ready to be interrogated through objects and procedural logics.

Imagining Business addresses the question of how we visualise organizations and their activities as an important aspect of managerial work, focusing on practices and performances, organizing and ordering, and media and technologies. Moreover, it provides a focal point for the growing collection of studies that explore how various business artefacts draw on the power of the visual to enable various forms of organizing and organizations in diverse contexts.

Benefits are the principal reason why an organization may seek to enact change through programmes and projects. The discipline of identification, definition, planning, tracking and realization of benefits is recognized to be instrumental in achieving organizational strategy. In this study, we describe the results of a cross-national comparison of public sector benefits management (BM) practices in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. It explores 'BM practices in action', considering to what extent 'espoused' or 'mandated' frameworks are actually practised and perceived by their users. Employing qualitative analysis, semi-structured interview data were analysed from 46 participants with experience in sponsoring, managing and/or reviewing government projects. The results expose considerable variation in the adoption and standardization of BM frameworks from inter and intragovernmental perspectives. We evidence a strong focus on benefits identification across the data set, specifically at the outset (the business case stage seeking project approval) and observe deterioration in focus as the project or programme progresses through the authorization (or assurance) approval gates towards close-out and operations. The results further emphasize the prominence of political interest, leadership buy-in, a benefits-driven culture and a transparent benefits reporting mechanism in the implementation of 'effective' BM frameworks

Engagement with diverse social science disciplines is essential to revealing political, social, and institutional challenges that must be addressed to advance effective biodiversity conservation (Bennett et al. 2017; Teel et al. 2018). One challenge that remains insufficiently investigated is frustration with the lack of impact of innovative information tools and systems of accounts aimed at motivating and guiding ecosystem management. The conservation community invests considerable efforts in their creation and experimentation. However, ecosystem-based tools do not always lead to the changes in decision, action, or policy conser- vation scientists expect (e.g., Ruckelshaus et al. 2015). Often, the inability of such information systems to gen- erate expected changes is not due to technical limitations rather than the too fragile articulation between their de- sign and the complex realities of developing strategies and organizing management of ecosystems in a diversity of contexts. Investigating such articulation between an information system and the organizational details of its systematic use is precisely what characterizes an aca- demic field: accounting, which belongs to management as a discipline and often intersects with social sciences or economics.