Alessandro Lai

Governmentality rationales and calculative devices: The rejection of a seventeenth-century territorial barter proposed by the King of Spain

Almost 400 years ago, Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantova and Marquis of Monferrato, refused a territorial barter proposed by the King of Spain, who had offered the Isle of Sardinia in exchange for the Marquisate of Monferrato. In 1618, an advisor to the Duke drafted a report to highlight the governmental issues surrounding the island. This Relatione, together with correspondence between the governors and advisors engaged in the prospective transfer, reveals why the Duke rejected the proposal. These sources provide the foundation for a close analysis of the potential effects of the trade on the Duchy’s welfare, as well as the problems associated with its government. Using a model based on the Foucauldian governmentality framework, this analysis reveals that denying the barter was the result of rational behavior, driven by territorial governability aims.

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

Purpose - This paper aims to understand how the principle of materiality gets implemented in integrated reporting (IR) contexts. Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on an interpretation of materiality as a social construction, this research explores the meaning that practitioners attach to the principle during their implementation of it. Following an existing framework for exploring materiality in corporate reporting, this study investigates the meaning by focusing on who participates in determining IR materiality and to whom the IR is addressed. This analysis benefits from in-depth interviews with persons involved in the preparation of IR for a firm that pioneered this form of reporting. Findings - In IR preparers’ view, the meaning of materiality corresponds with the company strategy: The IR describes strategic priorities and related actions and results. Capital providers are the primary intended addressees of the material information. Although several actors engage in IR preparation, the materiality determination process is governed by a specific “IR hub” in strict collaboration with and dependence on the chief financial officer. Research limitations/implications - In an IR context, materiality is intimately connected to the function that preparers assign to the report. Originality/value - This novel research opens the “black box” of the process by which materiality gets defined and then practically implemented in an IR context.

The interplay of knowledge innovation and academic power: Lessons from “isolation” in twentieth-century Italian accounting studies

Accounting scholars investigate the role of academia in the process of knowledge production, highlighting how paradigms may produce negative effects on knowledge innovations, nourish academic elites, and limit fruitful debates. The current article extends this debate by investigating the cultural isolation experienced by Italian accounting scholars during the twentieth century, when accounting academia supported and protected the Italian paradigm of Economia Aziendale. Drawing on a Foucauldian genealogy perspective, this story of Italian accounting studies demonstrates that isolation results from an interplay of broad paradigmatic content and a recruitment policy focused on professors aligned with this paradigm. The Foucauldian perspective helps interpret knowledge innovation, thus enriching the debate about knowledge production, paradigm innovation, and the role of elites in accounting research.

Interactive calibration of a multi-projector system in a video-wall multi-touch environment

Wall-sized interactive displays gain more and more attention as a valuable tool for multiuser applications, but typically require the adoption of projectors tiles. Projectors tend to display deformed images, due to lens distortion and/or imperfection, and because they are almost never perfectly aligned to the projection surface. Multi-projector video-walls are typically bounded to the video architecture and to the specific application to be displayed. This makes it harder to develop interactive applications, in which a fine grained control of the coordinate transformations (to and from user space and model space) is required. This paper presents a solution to such issues: implementing the blending functionalities at an application level allows seamless development of multi-display interactive applications with multi-touch capabilities. The description of the multi-touch interaction, guaranteed by an array of cameras on the baseline of the wall, is beyond the scope of this work which focuses on calibration.

Integrated reporting and narrative accountability: the role of preparers

Purpose: The International Integrated Reporting Council claims that integrated reporting (IR) can enhance corporate accountability, yet critical and interpretative studies have contested this outcome. Insufficient empirical research details how preparers experience accountability while constructing IR; to fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to analyse how the preparers’ mode of cognition influences the patterns of accountability associated with IR. Design/methodology/approach: A functionalist approach to narratives helps elucidate the role that the IR preparers’ narrative mode of cognition plays on accountability towards stakeholders. The empirical analysis particularly benefits from in-depth interviews with the IR preparers of a global insurer that has used IR since 2013. Findings: The preparers’ narrative mode of cognition facilitates dialogue with IR users. It addresses accountability tensions by revealing the company’s value creation process. Preparers’ efforts to establish a meaningful dialogue with a growing variety of stakeholders through broader and plainer messages reveals the potential of IR as a narrative source of a socializing form of accountability. However, financial stakeholders remain the primary addressees of the reports. Research limitations/implications: This paper focusses on preparers’ views; further research should integrate users’ accountability expectations. Originality/value: This paper offers new insights for dealing with corporate reporting and accountability in a novel IR setting.

Natural Interaction and Computer Graphics Applications

Natural Interaction with computers has been a challenging topic of research since the very beginning of the digital era and refers to the possibility, on the user’s part, of exploiting natural abilities to control the machine and interpret its outputs. If in the infancy of computer graphics this meant using visual representation and pen pointing, nowadays more refined techniques are needed to fit the wide range of applications, from home entertainment to virtual and augmented reality. This paper describes some advances in gesture, tangible and surface computing, showing how such interaction models, if treated as a continuum, improve the usability, accessibility and overall experience of computer graphics applications.

Accounting historians engaging with scholars inside and outside accounting: Issues, opportunities and obstacles

Originating in a panel presentation at the eighth Accounting History International Conference, this study offers a reflection on the issues, opportunities and obstacles which may arise when accounting historians engage with other accounting scholars and scholars outside of accounting. Supporting the view that accounting scholars need and should make an effort to engage with other scholars inside and outside accounting, various aspects are considered as enhancing the interdisciplinarity of accounting history research. Then, issues such as researchers and the community, research problems, theories, methods and data are addressed. The opportunities arising from interdisciplinary interactions with a wide range of scholars are then developed. Finally, the potential obstacles are addressed. These obstacles can be overcome by the development of robust communication and the invention of a new genre of discourse and research focus and by working with those outside our discipline and embracing the challenge of the new and the different.

Accounting history in diverse settings - an introduction

It brings pleasure to introduce the special issue theme ‘Accounting history in diverse settings’ and to have been provided with the opportunity to be the guest editors of this issue. It features further developed and refined papers, based on the journal refereeing process, that were initially presented at the eighth Accounting History International Conference (8AHIC), held in Ballarat, Australia, during 19–21 August 2015. In what follows, we address accounting as social practice in diverse settings, discuss the dimensions of diversity, outline the five papers which appear in this issue and provide some concluding comments.