Daniel Martinez | HEC Paris (original) (raw)

Papers by Daniel Martinez

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2022

This study examines the role of an inventory tracking and accounting system in the creation of a ... more This study examines the role of an inventory tracking and accounting system in the creation of a new market for legal cannabis in the US state of Colorado. Inspired by the empirical setting and the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we illuminate different processes associated with the management of flows (of people, aspirations, and things) into, out of, and within the market. Our findings contribute to our understanding of how accounting is implicated in the territorialization of new governable entities. We show how accounting, as a market device, is involved not only in performing economic and other theories, but in populating market spaces with certain elements and not others. Finally, we suggest that our analysis has policy and regulatory implications related to phenomena of contemporary interest such as traceability of global supply chains and the social and economic consequences of tracking and tracing systems.

Voluntas

In this study, we examine the key management and scientific traditions that inform the logical fr... more In this study, we examine the key management and scientific traditions that inform the logical framework, a project planning and evaluation tool that is central to how many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) manage their projects and provide accounts to funders. Through an analysis of USAID reports from the 1960s and 1970s, interviews with the logical framework's developers, and a close reading of seminal texts, we identify how systems theory, management by objectives, and scientific theory informed how USAID problematized its project planning and evaluation practices and how they came to be inscribed into the logical framework as a way to address such perceived problems. We argue that these traditions are important for understanding a particular strand of managerialization that informs international development NGOs, and, more generally, for understanding how funding agencies ''see'' through the logical framework.

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2019

This chapter explores the ways in which a large-scale accounting system, known as Marijuana Enfor... more This chapter explores the ways in which a large-scale accounting system, known as Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting and Compliance, contributes to the construction and organization of a new market for recreational cannabis in the US state of Colorado. Mobilizing the theoretical lenses provided by the literature on market devices, on the one hand, and infrastructure, on the other hand, the authors identify and unpack a changing relationship between accounting and state control through which accounting and markets unfold. The authors describe this movement in terms of a distinction between knowing devices and thinking infrastructures. In the former, the authors show that regulators and other authorities perform the market by making it legible for the purpose of intervention, taxation and control. In the latter, thinking infrastructures, an ecology of interacting devices is made and remade by a variety of intermediaries, disclosing the boundaries and possibilities of the market, and constituting both opportunities for innovation and domination through “protocol.”

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2019

Taking inspiration from studies of performance measurement systems and an understanding of the ma... more Taking inspiration from studies of performance measurement systems and an understanding of the materiality of inscription devices, we examine how a loose network of funding agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assemble a performance and management system out of accountability requirements. As part of the funding process, international development agencies provide NGOs with a series of planning and project reporting requirements such as budgets, operational plans, and strategic plans. Our study focusses on how these requirements' visual features enable users to perform the calculative properties of the performance system, as a whole. Specifically, we learn how a planning and performance measurement device such as the logical framework accumulates financial, chronological , and strategic modes of ordering through a patchwork of interventions to address perceived and unexpected shortcomings. We find that it is not just a matter of adding patches to improve, but also about fostering engagement with the changing assemblage of devices and development concerns. Our study is based on field research in Guatemala and El Salvador and contributes to our understanding of how governing bodies intervene in the constitution of a calculative workspace. By analysing an accounting system's relation with other devices and their modes of ordering and calculating, we learn how a workspace for providing accounts is assembled and engaged with for actors to perform a mode of governing.

Este estudio analiza cómo los requisitos internacionales de financiación y rendición de cuentas e... more Este estudio analiza cómo los requisitos internacionales de financiación y rendición de cuentas en materia de desarrollo están implicados en la desarticulación de un movimiento social. Basándonos en estudios de campo realizados en Guatemala y El Salvador, mostramos y explicamos cómo los requisitos de rendición de cuentas, que abarcan la gestión y las tecnologías jurídicas, financieras y contables, constituyen el campo del desarrollo internacional mediante la regulación de las organizaciones que componen el movimiento social. Destacamos cómo la rendición de cuentas da lugar a un tipo de gobernanza que posibilita el surgimiento de entidades, al mismo tiempo que restringe otras. Nuestro análisis tiene implicaciones para los estudios de gubernamentalidad que han examinado la interrelación de ensamblajes mediante el análisis de cómo estas interrelaciones se llevan a la práctica a través de procesos de territorialización, codificación y sobrecodificación inspirados en Deleuze y Guattari.

This paper examines how international development funding and accountability requirements are imp... more This paper examines how international development funding and accountability requirements are implicated in the so-called disarticulation of a social movement. Based on field studies in Guatemala and El Salvador, we show and explain the way accountability requirements, which encompass management and accounting, legal, and financial technologies, constitute the field of international development through the regulation of heterogeneous social movement organizations. We highlight how accountability enables a form of governance that makes possible the emergence of entities (with specific attributes), while restricting others. Our analysis has implications for governmentality studies that have examined the interrelation of assemblages by analyzing how these interrelations are operationalized at the field level through the Deleuze-and-Guattari-inspired processes of territorialization, coding, and overcoding.

In this study, we examine the ways in which actuarial consultants attempt to motivate their clien... more In this study, we examine the ways in which actuarial consultants attempt to motivate their clients to see pension-related accounting regulations and market volatility as 'risks' that need to be managed through particular risk-mitigating technologies. This study is predicated on 23 interviews conducted with actuarial consultants and their clients and consulting agencies' publically available documents. Taking framing theory and the sociological literature on risk as conceptual starting points, we find that consultants engage in specific framing strategies to persuade clients by rhetorically weaving a series of financial risk objects, financial de-risking strategies, and calls for action. We also find that current and prospective clients sometimes contest consultants' prescriptions, despite the pervasiveness of risk management as the ultima ratio of organizational governance. This contestation occurs, ironically, because adopting de-risking solutions in one area is perceived by some clients as triggering new risks in areas unforeseen by consultants. This research increases our knowledge of how new risk objects and de-risking solutions come into existence and why some risk management practices fail to be diffused within organizations despite the staggering success of the risk management rationality. We explain the latter through the concepts of frame diffraction and overload.

This study examines the nature and role of accounting practices in a network of corruption in an ... more This study examines the nature and role of accounting practices in a network of corruption in an influence-market setting. The study focuses on the Canadian government’s Sponsor- ship Program (1994–2003), a national unification scheme that saw approximately $50 mil- lion diverted into the bank accounts of political parties, program administrators, and their families, friends and business colleagues. Relying on the institutional sociology of Bourdieu, the study demonstrates the precise role of accounting practices in the organization of a cor- rupt network imbued with a specific telos and certain accounting tasks. The study illustrates how accounting is accomplished and by whom, and it shows how the ‘skillful use’ of accounting practices and social interactions around these practices together enable corrup- tion. In so doing, the study builds on a growing body of work examining criminogenic net- works and the contextual, collaborative and systemic uses of accounting in such networks.

This article aims to build on Norman Macintosh's use of eighteen and nineteen century disciplinar... more This article aims to build on Norman Macintosh's use of eighteen and nineteen century disciplinary practices to analyze contemporary management control systems. The paper proposes, drawing from Gilles Deleuze's concept of the " society of control " (1992, 1995), that institutions are no longer crucial sites of normalization; rather, control is pervasive in the open environment through overlapping digital information systems characterized by speed, ubiquity and heightened accuracy. The article suggests that Macintosh's disciplinary studies of management control systems exclude from the analysis what lies beyond the boundaries that circumscribe the panoptic gaze. The society of control is an attempt to contemporize Foucault's discipline and its inclusion in accounting research may offer another set of conceptual tools to theorize management control systems, normalization and forms of resistance that the disciplinary approach has so far not adequately account for.

This article examines four leading multi-stakeholder labour monitoring organizations. All operati... more This article examines four leading multi-stakeholder labour monitoring organizations. All operating in the maquiladora industry, these organizations are viewed in light of the growing global trend toward industry self-regulation, or what has been referred to as the 'global out-sourcing of regulation'. Their Board compositions, codes of conduct and monitoring and enforcement strategies are all examined as a means of tentatively positioning these organizations along an 'egoist-instrumentalist-moralist' ethical culture continuum. Such a framing provides insights into the perceived salience of these organizations' broader stakeholders, the effectiveness of codes of conduct on workplace practices more generally, and the role that ethics plays in the governance and accountability of these increasingly important types of organizations.

Articles: Online and print by Daniel Martinez

Better tracking technology can help to properly legitimize the cannabis industry itself and turn ... more Better tracking technology can help to properly legitimize the cannabis industry itself and turn it into an industry where serious commercial entities can thrive and grow in the future.

In this article we report preliminary ob- servations on two ways in which activ- ities to bring c... more In this article we report preliminary ob- servations on two ways in which activ- ities to bring cannabis ‘out of the shad- ows’ have affected the development and structure of cannabis markets. These observations are based on interviews conducted in 2015 with MED regulators, entrepreneurs, consultants and software designers, as well as visits to retail, man- ufacturing and cultivation facilities in Colorado.

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2022

This study examines the role of an inventory tracking and accounting system in the creation of a ... more This study examines the role of an inventory tracking and accounting system in the creation of a new market for legal cannabis in the US state of Colorado. Inspired by the empirical setting and the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we illuminate different processes associated with the management of flows (of people, aspirations, and things) into, out of, and within the market. Our findings contribute to our understanding of how accounting is implicated in the territorialization of new governable entities. We show how accounting, as a market device, is involved not only in performing economic and other theories, but in populating market spaces with certain elements and not others. Finally, we suggest that our analysis has policy and regulatory implications related to phenomena of contemporary interest such as traceability of global supply chains and the social and economic consequences of tracking and tracing systems.

Voluntas

In this study, we examine the key management and scientific traditions that inform the logical fr... more In this study, we examine the key management and scientific traditions that inform the logical framework, a project planning and evaluation tool that is central to how many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) manage their projects and provide accounts to funders. Through an analysis of USAID reports from the 1960s and 1970s, interviews with the logical framework's developers, and a close reading of seminal texts, we identify how systems theory, management by objectives, and scientific theory informed how USAID problematized its project planning and evaluation practices and how they came to be inscribed into the logical framework as a way to address such perceived problems. We argue that these traditions are important for understanding a particular strand of managerialization that informs international development NGOs, and, more generally, for understanding how funding agencies ''see'' through the logical framework.

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2019

This chapter explores the ways in which a large-scale accounting system, known as Marijuana Enfor... more This chapter explores the ways in which a large-scale accounting system, known as Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting and Compliance, contributes to the construction and organization of a new market for recreational cannabis in the US state of Colorado. Mobilizing the theoretical lenses provided by the literature on market devices, on the one hand, and infrastructure, on the other hand, the authors identify and unpack a changing relationship between accounting and state control through which accounting and markets unfold. The authors describe this movement in terms of a distinction between knowing devices and thinking infrastructures. In the former, the authors show that regulators and other authorities perform the market by making it legible for the purpose of intervention, taxation and control. In the latter, thinking infrastructures, an ecology of interacting devices is made and remade by a variety of intermediaries, disclosing the boundaries and possibilities of the market, and constituting both opportunities for innovation and domination through “protocol.”

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2019

Taking inspiration from studies of performance measurement systems and an understanding of the ma... more Taking inspiration from studies of performance measurement systems and an understanding of the materiality of inscription devices, we examine how a loose network of funding agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assemble a performance and management system out of accountability requirements. As part of the funding process, international development agencies provide NGOs with a series of planning and project reporting requirements such as budgets, operational plans, and strategic plans. Our study focusses on how these requirements' visual features enable users to perform the calculative properties of the performance system, as a whole. Specifically, we learn how a planning and performance measurement device such as the logical framework accumulates financial, chronological , and strategic modes of ordering through a patchwork of interventions to address perceived and unexpected shortcomings. We find that it is not just a matter of adding patches to improve, but also about fostering engagement with the changing assemblage of devices and development concerns. Our study is based on field research in Guatemala and El Salvador and contributes to our understanding of how governing bodies intervene in the constitution of a calculative workspace. By analysing an accounting system's relation with other devices and their modes of ordering and calculating, we learn how a workspace for providing accounts is assembled and engaged with for actors to perform a mode of governing.

Este estudio analiza cómo los requisitos internacionales de financiación y rendición de cuentas e... more Este estudio analiza cómo los requisitos internacionales de financiación y rendición de cuentas en materia de desarrollo están implicados en la desarticulación de un movimiento social. Basándonos en estudios de campo realizados en Guatemala y El Salvador, mostramos y explicamos cómo los requisitos de rendición de cuentas, que abarcan la gestión y las tecnologías jurídicas, financieras y contables, constituyen el campo del desarrollo internacional mediante la regulación de las organizaciones que componen el movimiento social. Destacamos cómo la rendición de cuentas da lugar a un tipo de gobernanza que posibilita el surgimiento de entidades, al mismo tiempo que restringe otras. Nuestro análisis tiene implicaciones para los estudios de gubernamentalidad que han examinado la interrelación de ensamblajes mediante el análisis de cómo estas interrelaciones se llevan a la práctica a través de procesos de territorialización, codificación y sobrecodificación inspirados en Deleuze y Guattari.

This paper examines how international development funding and accountability requirements are imp... more This paper examines how international development funding and accountability requirements are implicated in the so-called disarticulation of a social movement. Based on field studies in Guatemala and El Salvador, we show and explain the way accountability requirements, which encompass management and accounting, legal, and financial technologies, constitute the field of international development through the regulation of heterogeneous social movement organizations. We highlight how accountability enables a form of governance that makes possible the emergence of entities (with specific attributes), while restricting others. Our analysis has implications for governmentality studies that have examined the interrelation of assemblages by analyzing how these interrelations are operationalized at the field level through the Deleuze-and-Guattari-inspired processes of territorialization, coding, and overcoding.

In this study, we examine the ways in which actuarial consultants attempt to motivate their clien... more In this study, we examine the ways in which actuarial consultants attempt to motivate their clients to see pension-related accounting regulations and market volatility as 'risks' that need to be managed through particular risk-mitigating technologies. This study is predicated on 23 interviews conducted with actuarial consultants and their clients and consulting agencies' publically available documents. Taking framing theory and the sociological literature on risk as conceptual starting points, we find that consultants engage in specific framing strategies to persuade clients by rhetorically weaving a series of financial risk objects, financial de-risking strategies, and calls for action. We also find that current and prospective clients sometimes contest consultants' prescriptions, despite the pervasiveness of risk management as the ultima ratio of organizational governance. This contestation occurs, ironically, because adopting de-risking solutions in one area is perceived by some clients as triggering new risks in areas unforeseen by consultants. This research increases our knowledge of how new risk objects and de-risking solutions come into existence and why some risk management practices fail to be diffused within organizations despite the staggering success of the risk management rationality. We explain the latter through the concepts of frame diffraction and overload.

This study examines the nature and role of accounting practices in a network of corruption in an ... more This study examines the nature and role of accounting practices in a network of corruption in an influence-market setting. The study focuses on the Canadian government’s Sponsor- ship Program (1994–2003), a national unification scheme that saw approximately $50 mil- lion diverted into the bank accounts of political parties, program administrators, and their families, friends and business colleagues. Relying on the institutional sociology of Bourdieu, the study demonstrates the precise role of accounting practices in the organization of a cor- rupt network imbued with a specific telos and certain accounting tasks. The study illustrates how accounting is accomplished and by whom, and it shows how the ‘skillful use’ of accounting practices and social interactions around these practices together enable corrup- tion. In so doing, the study builds on a growing body of work examining criminogenic net- works and the contextual, collaborative and systemic uses of accounting in such networks.

This article aims to build on Norman Macintosh's use of eighteen and nineteen century disciplinar... more This article aims to build on Norman Macintosh's use of eighteen and nineteen century disciplinary practices to analyze contemporary management control systems. The paper proposes, drawing from Gilles Deleuze's concept of the " society of control " (1992, 1995), that institutions are no longer crucial sites of normalization; rather, control is pervasive in the open environment through overlapping digital information systems characterized by speed, ubiquity and heightened accuracy. The article suggests that Macintosh's disciplinary studies of management control systems exclude from the analysis what lies beyond the boundaries that circumscribe the panoptic gaze. The society of control is an attempt to contemporize Foucault's discipline and its inclusion in accounting research may offer another set of conceptual tools to theorize management control systems, normalization and forms of resistance that the disciplinary approach has so far not adequately account for.

This article examines four leading multi-stakeholder labour monitoring organizations. All operati... more This article examines four leading multi-stakeholder labour monitoring organizations. All operating in the maquiladora industry, these organizations are viewed in light of the growing global trend toward industry self-regulation, or what has been referred to as the 'global out-sourcing of regulation'. Their Board compositions, codes of conduct and monitoring and enforcement strategies are all examined as a means of tentatively positioning these organizations along an 'egoist-instrumentalist-moralist' ethical culture continuum. Such a framing provides insights into the perceived salience of these organizations' broader stakeholders, the effectiveness of codes of conduct on workplace practices more generally, and the role that ethics plays in the governance and accountability of these increasingly important types of organizations.

Better tracking technology can help to properly legitimize the cannabis industry itself and turn ... more Better tracking technology can help to properly legitimize the cannabis industry itself and turn it into an industry where serious commercial entities can thrive and grow in the future.

In this article we report preliminary ob- servations on two ways in which activ- ities to bring c... more In this article we report preliminary ob- servations on two ways in which activ- ities to bring cannabis ‘out of the shad- ows’ have affected the development and structure of cannabis markets. These observations are based on interviews conducted in 2015 with MED regulators, entrepreneurs, consultants and software designers, as well as visits to retail, man- ufacturing and cultivation facilities in Colorado.