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The purpose of this paper is to respond to Modell’s arguments regarding the relative usefulness of critical realist philosophy in relation to actor-network theory.

The authors outline the challenges in applying critical realism to critical accounting. The authors then consider Modell’s criticisms of actor-network theory, providing a counterargument highlighting the methodological choices distinguishing actor-network theory from critical realism.

The authors argue that critical realism, whilst providing an interesting addition to the critical accounting research project, confronts challenges disentangling intransitive and transitive forms of knowledge. Actor-network theory is presented as a way of examining accounting practices as local associations, providing practical opportunities to study (the assembly of) “the social”.

Methodological diversity is to be explored, acknowledging the ontological politics of our choices.

This paper is an original commentary contributing to critical accounting research.

The purpose of this paper is to tell the story of the evolution of knowledge exchange (KE) activity within a department in a university in the north west of England and to understand this activity through the lens of actor‐network theory.

Applying the sociology of translation to one qualitative interview shows how different actors were enrolled and mobilized into a KE actor‐network. The process of translation consists of four stages, problematisation, enrolment, interessement and mobilisation of allies which have been applied to the data to tell the story of the KE actor‐network. This is a cross‐disciplinary approach using a theoretical framework from sociology and applying it to a management/organizational context.

This framework brings fresh ways of looking at the importance of KE networks within universities. Although limited to one interview, the methodology allows for an in‐depth reading of the data and shows how resilient and flexible this actor‐network is to withstand and respond appropriately to shifts in policy and subsequent provisions for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise business support.

Building from one case, the paper concludes that this account adds to an historical understanding of how universities become involved with KE activities. The inclusion of non‐human actors allows for a deeper understanding of the actor‐network and shows the importance of actors such as White Papers, pots of funding and physical buildings to the role of KE within higher education.

This study investigates the potential of actor‐network theory (ANT) for theory development on information technology project escalation, a pervasive problem in contemporary organizations. In so doing, the study aims to contribute to the current dialogue on the potential of ANT in the information systems field. While escalation theory has been used to study “runaway” IT projects, two distinct limitations suggest a potential of using ANT: First, there is a need for research that builds process theory on escalation of IT projects. Second, the role of technology as an important factor (or actor) in the shaping of escalation has not been examined. This paper examines a well‐known case study of an IT project disaster, the computerized baggage handling system at Denver International Airport, using both escalation theory and ANT. A theory‐comparative analysis then shows how each analysis contributes differently to our knowledge about dysfunctional IT projects and how the differences between the analyses mirror characteristics of the two theories. ANT is found to offer a fruitful theoretical addition to escalation research and several conceptual extensions of ANT in the context of IT project escalation are proposed: embedded actor‐networks, host actor‐networks, swift translation and Trojan actor‐networks.

Actor-network theory (ANT) is considered to be both a theoretical position and a methodology. ANT has been the centre of vigorous debates regarding its ontological viewpoint but has also been found to have some drawbacks as a methodology. The purpose of this paper is to use a graphical syntax for ANT to describe the development and implementation of a health information system (IS) in order to assess whether the graphical syntax improves the use of ANT as a methodology.

An extensive example derived from a case study, describing the development and implementation of an electronic patients’ records system, is illustrated using this graphical syntax. This serves to makes the actors, translations and black boxes in the case visible.

The syntax is found to help the researcher to conceptualise the research, to highlight assumptions as black boxes and to follow the actor but above all it encourages the researcher to understand the translations being made between actors and to make them explicit. Hence the syntax is found to assist at the analytical phases of a research project. The graphic syntax found to address the criticisms identified for ANT as an IS research methodology.

The proposed graphical syntax assists researchers who use ANT as a methodology. Use of the syntax in education is also foreseen to be practical. The evaluation of ANT-gs in the paper provides an argument for its use but a more reliable argument would be made by collating and analysing feedback from independent modellers who actually use the graphical syntax. This is an important part of future research.

The visualisation of the actor-network provided by ANT-gs provides a relatively simple representation while at the same time it makes key ANT concepts explicit. This is expected to address the issue of superficial understanding of ANT and selective use of its constructs; it makes the actor-network boundaries immediately visible. Thus the paper proposes that ANT-gs will be useful both by IS researchers and as an educational tool but future research is required to verify both these practical implications. The development of a computer-based modelling tool based on this syntax is proposed to facilitate effective and efficient modelling.

This paper proposes a unique tool to support ANT as a methodology. Its use encourages the researcher to focus on constructs that are essential elements of ANT and, by making each of the translation instances explicit, it strengthens the analysis in a way that is true to the view of ANT as a sociology of translation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the actions of the accounting profession, the state, universities, and academics have inhibited the development of South African accounting research.

A multiple history approach using traditional archival material and oral history is used.

Since the late nineteenth-century, a network of human and non-human actors has ensured that accounting education in South Africa retained a technical focus. By prescribing and detailing the accounting syllabuses required for university accreditation, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) and its predecessors exercise direct control over accounting education. As a result, little appetite exists for a discipline based on academic enquiry or engagement with international scholars. While the SAICA claims to support accounting research, this support is conditional on its meeting the professional body’s particular view of scholarship.

The limitations associated with this research are that it focusses on one particular professional body in one jurisdiction. The South African situation provides a cautionary tale of how universities, particularly those in developing countries, should take care not to abdicate their responsibilities for the setting of syllabi or course content to professional bodies. Accounting academics, particularly those in a developing country currently experiencing major social, political, and economic problems, are in a prime position to engage in research that will benefit society as a whole.

Although actor network theory has been used in accounting research and in particular to explain accounting knowledge creation, the use of this particular theoretical lens to examine the construction of professional knowledge is limited. This study draws on Callon’s (1986) four moments to explain how various human actors including the accounting profession, the state, universities, and accounting academics, along with non-human actors such as accreditation, regulation, and transformation, have brought about South African academic disengagement with the discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique centred on the neglect of social structures in the former perspective.

This is a conceptual paper based on a critical reading of ANT inspired by CR.

Although the author does not question the ability of ANT to be imbued with critical intent per se, the author is critical of its tendency to downplay the significance of pre-existing, social structures and the concomitant neglect of enduring and ubiquitous states of structural stability as an ontological possibility. This may lead to an overly optimistic view that naively valorises agency as a largely unfettered engine of emancipation. By contrast, CR offers a deeper and more nuanced ontological conception of how social structures constrain as well as enable emancipation. In contrast to the highly empiricist epistemology of ANT, it also provides an epistemological rationale for going beyond empirical descriptions of how social structures work to advance theoretically informed, explanatory critiques that are better suited for realising less easily observable opportunities for emancipation.

The paper advances the debate about how social structures should be examined in critical accounting research and the relative merits of doing so in advancing emancipatory projects.

The paper is an attempt to contrast ANT and CR as two distinct approaches to critical accounting research and thus extends the debate about what such research is and could be.

This paper illustrates the socio-political nature of accountings, referring to the partial privatisation of the monopoly telecommunications organisation in a lower-middle-income country.

Actor-network theory and an ANTi-history approach are used to trace circumstances and occurrences. Empirical materials include official documents, print media and retrospective interviews with organisation employees ten years on from the privatisation.

Proponents of privatisation used retrospectively constructed historical accounts to problematise the natural monopoly of telecommunications and the government organisation administering it. A restructuring programme followed. Proponents addressed controversies pertaining to the programme thus garnering widespread support for complex and controversial changes. Proponents produced and reproduced accounting artefacts as evidence in these processes of history reconstruction, consequent changes and restoring stability to telecommunications in its reconfigured commercial domain. The proponents used selective, controversial accounting evidence to problematise the government organisation's existence, then to mobilise various actors to reduce and close the controversies previously aroused and reinstate stability in a partially privatised telecommunications company. Although no longer having a monopoly this company still dominates. Dissenters did the same but with little success.

The findings demonstrate the importance of tracing the socio-political process of arriving at the dominant outcome about the past. This assists in making sense of present circumstances and re-imagining the future.

The study demonstrates that, during controversial circumstances, taken-for-granted history, as well as what is thought to have not existed in the past, support the dominant network in gaining advantage over their opponents and black-boxing their perspectives of how things should be.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate nurses’ attitudes, perceptions, and reactions to a new point-of-care information system for documenting nursing care.

A design science research methodology (DSRM) was used to examine the feasibility and usability of a novel nursing informatics solution in the context of acute hospital care. Data were collected using focus groups and non-participant observations. Analyses were guided by the theoretical lens of actor-network theory (ANT).

The findings unpack an understanding of the potential value of a new technology, rather than a binary understanding of positive or negative value. Using the ANT lens, the study reveals the dynamics of the nurse-technology relationships and consequent disruptions throughout the translation process. The findings highlight the central role of negotiation in the socio-technical construction of the hybrid actor-network during the implementation of new technology in acute hospital contexts.

Further studies are needed to investigate the dynamics and complexity of the translation process that occurs during technology adoption, reactions of the involved actors to the emerging network and impacts on their role and work process.

Engaging nurses early during development and testing; aligning the new system’s functionality and interface with nurses’ interests and work practices; and supporting changes to clinical work process to enable an effective heterogeneous actor-network to emerge and become stable.

This study presents a novel use of ANT in a DSRM to understand an enterprise-wide system involving nurses and real clinical settings. The emerged actor-network provides insights into the translation process when nurses adapt to using new technology in their work.

This paper aims to discuss how Bruno Latour's version of actor‐network theory has influenced accounting research. It also seeks to show that Latour's writings contain unexplored potential that may inspire future accounting research.

The paper takes the form of a critical literature review and discussion.

Since the early 1990s, actor‐network theory, particularly the work of Bruno Latour, has inspired accounting researchers and led to a number of innovative studies of accounting phenomena. In particular, Latour's book, Science in Action, has been the primary source of inspiration for accounting research. This means that there is unexplored potential in Latour's more recent writings which may lead to further inspiration and research in the field of accounting.

The paper reviews only a few of the relatively large number of accounting papers that apply actor‐network theory. A different sample might have given a somewhat different picture. Furthermore, it focuses on the influence of Latour's work and refrains from discussing how the writings of Michel Callon, John Law or other thinkers within the actor‐network tradition are used in accounting research.

This is the first extensive review discussing the influence of Latour on accounting research that engages in a critical discussion of under‐explored potential in Latour's recent work.

This article offers an introduction to a theoretical approach which has recently begun to be used by organisational theorists to explain the distribution and exercise of power between organisations and entities within particular spheres, or “networks”. This approach, which has been labelled “actor‐network” theory, argues that focusing on questions of “identity”, particularly questions of self‐identity, depends upon accepting and reproducing a “modern” set of presuppositions. These modern presuppositions are concerned primarily with the creation of stable boundaries and hierarchies, between subject and object, and between self and other. Actor‐network theory proposes that the notion of “agency” offers an alternative “amodern” perspective from which to explore how entities, or actors, influence other actors through the process of translation. Concludes that actor‐network theory, as a meta‐theoretical position and as a methodological approach offers an alternative to existing public relations theory which cannot easily be ignored.