From Categorical Imperative to Learning by Categories: Cost Accounting and New Categorical Practices in American Manufacturing, 1900–1930

Abstract

Organizational scholars increasingly appreciate the role of categories as bases of order or “cognitive infrastructures” in markets. Yet they construe categories as disciplinary devices. They understand category formation, implementation, and revision as the purview of professionals. And they tie those processes to notions of institutional development that sharply distinguish settled from unsettled or disordered eras. We challenge these conceptions through a historical study of how manufacturers, associations, and cost accountants broke from the disciplinary functions of accounting categories underlying mass production to create new categorical schemes devoted to learning, innovation, and improvement. Reformers reconfigured the uses of categories in markets, mobilizing classifications to spark reflection, experimentation, and improvement among firms by perturbing taken-for-granted assumptions. They also redesigned the practices of producing, implementing, and revising categories. Manufacturers themselves produced and routinely revised classifications through collective deliberation, while accountants served as their consultants, rather than autonomous authorities who monopolized category formation and implementation. In so doing, reformers forged foundations for upgrading markets and fostering competition based on innovation and improvement in a variety of industries. Based on these findings, we extend existing research beyond categorical imperatives to highlight how categories also serve as cognitive infrastructures for learning, discovery, and innovation in markets.

Citation

Schneiberg, M. and Berk, G. (2010), "From Categorical Imperative to Learning by Categories: Cost Accounting and New Categorical Practices in American Manufacturing, 1900–1930", Hsu, G., Negro, G. and Koçak, Ö. (Ed.) Categories in Markets: Origins and Evolution (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 31), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 255-292. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2010)0000031011