Accountin& Organizations andSociety Vol. 15. No. 3, pp. 149-170. 1990. 0361~3682f90 S3.00+.00 Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press plc zyxwvutsrqp THE APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF ACCOUNTING: WAGE DETERMINATION IN THE U.K. COAL INDUSTRY* P. D. BOUGEN Rice University and S. G. OGDEN and Q. OUTRAM University of Lee& zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO AbStElCt Histories of accounting have usually concentrated upon its progression and development. This paper focuses instead upon an illustration of the regression and resistance to accounting The evidence suggests that this cannot be explained by some dissatisfaction with the calculative deficiencies of accounting gather, it is only by examining the problems and priorities of the participants actively involved in the situation that the injection and ejection of accounting can be understood. The focus of this paper is on the appearance and disappearance of accounting in a social and economic arena, namely the process of wage de- termination in the British coal industry. In analysing how and why accounting came to be injected and subsequently ejected from this par- ticular process, the study is essentially con- cerned with the instabilities of accountings’ in- volvement with the social. By highlighting an in- stance of both the acceptance and repudiation of accounting the paper seeks to depart signific- antly from the more conventional analysis of the historical progression of accounting. The current encroachment of accounting into a variety of new arenas (Hopwood, 1985) con- tinues at an unabated pace, with such advance- ments often being lauded as symbols of organiza- tional and social progress and developing ration- ality (Meyer, 1986; Miller, 1986). Alleged grea- ter decision usefulness, greater objectivity and greater precision have become the chosen criteria by which its advancement is measured. The appearance of accounting, the roles it plays and its social receptivity too frequently are taken for granted. Not surprisingIy, therefore, account- ing is often assumed to reside harmoniously within the social, with rarely any examination being undertaken of the complexity and signifi- cance of the contextuat locations within which this occurs. Moreover, remarkably little has been said of the possibility of the regression and ultimate rejection of accounting. Hopwood ( 1987, p. 207) has described the general approach of many accounting histories as antiquarian, and has argued that: . . . most of the studies that are available have adopted a rather technical perspective delineating the residues of the accounting past rather than more actively probing into the underlying processes and forces at work. The history of accounting becomes the history of the profession, the development of its tech- niques and the expansion of accountings. Such teleological explanations of the development of accounting view its progress as accounting “be- coming what it should be” (Hopwood, 1987). A new literature has, however, recently emerged (Armstrong, 1985, 1987; Hoskin & Macve, 1986,1988; Loft 1986; Miller & O’Leary, 1987) seeking to examine more critically the ‘The authors are gratehI for the helptil comments of two referees. 149