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This paper aims to identify the study of cities as an important and neglected focus for accounting researchers.

The paper is based on a case study approach to visualizing and calculating the city.

There is a major preoccupation with the study of cities from numerous disciplinary perspectives. The positioning of cities is reaffirmed as a key part of modes of governing. This reveals tensions between disciplinary approaches based on space and design with the financial imperative of cities managed within a world which is dominated by New Public Management ideas and in which finances have primacy.

The paper is based on one case study, and it demonstrates the need for longitudinal and interdisciplinary approaches to increase understanding of the twenty‐first century city.

The significance of accounting as a technology, which is embedded within the public management of cities is profound. This has major implications both for the design of financial information systems and their capacity for, and the manner of, their interactions with other disciplines in planning and managing cities.

This study is distinct in the manner in which it studies and reveals the importance of accounting in the management of cities. There is an increasing trend to visualize the city and represent it in numbers. This study reveals that accounting provides the most important numbers in shaping and visualizing the city.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of cities develop strategies. The discourse of strategic management has become an obligatory point of passage for many city managers. This paper starts by posing an ostensibly simple question: why do cities need strategies? The commonsensical answer to the question is: because cities compete with each other. This paper aims to problematise the seemingly natural link between cities, competition and strategy. It also aims to explore the role that calculative practices play in creating city league tables that, in turn, function as the a priori condition that generates competition between cities.

This paper is interdisciplinary and draws on the related disciplines of accounting, organization theory and strategy. The argument unfolds in four steps: first, it briefly provides some theoretical background for analysis and relates it back to strategizing and accounting as a calculative practice; second, it scrutinizes league tables as an a priori of competition; third, it discusses the implications of the argument for city management and critical accounting; finally, it concludes with a discussion of the power effects of those calculative practices that shape strategizing in cities through the production of competition.

This paper argues that city strategizing is best understood as a set of complex responses to a new competitive arena, one rendered visible through calculative practices, manifested through city rankings. The paper makes five key contributions: one, league tables reduce qualities to a quantifiable form; two, league tables create an order amongst an heterogeneous ensemble of entities; three, league tables stimulate the very competition they claim to reflect; four, once competition is accepted, individual players need a strategy to play the game; and five, league tables have important power effects that may result in unintended consequences.

The paper contributes to understanding how calculative practices relate to strategy; it explores the organizational environment in which city managers strategize; in addition, it discusses the problem of civic schizophrenia.

The paper seeks to open up an agenda for studying city management, strategy and accounting.

This paper argues for an increased volume of references to Gabriel Tarde and Georg Simmel in the field of organization sociology. The text emphasizes the importance of these two sociologists in understanding the role of imperfection in organizing and the phenomena of fashion and imitation in contemporary organizations. Tarde’s theory challenged the antinomy between continuity and discontinuity, considering finite entities as cases of infinite processes and stable situations as transitory. Simmel’s theory of fashion explores the democratic and democratizing nature of fashion, which satisfies the demand for social adaptation and differentiation. They both saw fashion as a selection mechanism for organizational forms and managerial practices. Furthermore, referring to Tarde and Simmel can help counter the overemphasis on identity construction and the neglect of alterity in social sciences. The construction of identity often overlooks the inevitability of difference and alterity, which are essential aspects of collective projects. Lastly, this paper discusses Simmel’s concept of the stranger and its relevance in analyzing the experiences of foreigners and their potential advantages as “double strangers” in academia and society. The conclusion is that Tarde and Simmel’s contributions offer valuable insights for understanding the dynamics of management, organizing, and social interactions in contemporary organizations.

This paper presents a reflection in memory and tribute to the work and life of Professor Barbara Czarniawska (1948–2024).

We invited those colleagues whom we knew to be close to Barbara to submit reflections about her contributions to academia alongside their memories of her as a person. We present these reflections in the order we received them, and they have only been edited for minor grammatical and punctuation issues to preserve the voice of the contributing authors.

The reflections in this paper represent different translations of Barbara’s academic and theoretical contributions. However, she also contributed to people. While we can count the number of papers, books and book chapters she published, we must also count the number of co-authors, Ph.D. supervisions, visiting professorships and conference plenaries she touched. This (ac)counting tells the story of Barbara reaching out to work and interact with people, especially students and early career researchers. She touched their lives, and the publications are an artefact of a human being, not an academic stuck in an ivory tower.

A paper in Barbara Czarniawska’s honour where some of her closest colleagues can leave translations of her work through a narrative reflection, seems to be a fitting tribute.

This paper aims to describe and explain a contemporary phenomenon.

This is an analysis of research reports and fiction texts.

Universities use mergers and acquisitions to improve their ranking positions, ignoring the effects on research and teaching.

More attention should be paid to current managerial fashions.

An opposition to thoughtless fashion following may lead to positive changes.

If you mean “societal implications”, the state of universities is very important to democratic societies.

These are not for the author to judge.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the origins and development of the “Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Community”, a flourishing international interdisciplinary accounting research community. This scholarly community has emerged over some 30 years from the publication in 1988 of the inaugural issue of AAAJ under the joint editorship of James Guthrie and Lee Parker. This historical account discusses the motivation for establishing the journal and the important publishing initiatives, developments and trends across this period. The study positions the journal as a key thought leader, the catalyst for other Community activities such as the Asia-Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting conference.

The investigation involved a selective review of the contents of AAAJ, particularly the annual editorials published since inception, and other relevant literature, analysis of the main research themes and the most cited papers, and oral history interviews with the joint editors. The future prospects for the AAAJ Community are addressed.

The AAAJ Community has shaped and led developments in interdisciplinary accounting research. Recognised for innovation and with a reputation for nurturing scholars, AAAJ continues to grow in stature as one of the world’s leading accounting journals, challenging the status quo and fostering inclusive scholarship.

The study does not examine the journal’s publication patterns nor assess in detail the research studies that have been published in the journal.

The study recognises AAAJ as central to the development of an interdisciplinary accounting research community, firmly located in the sociological, critical and interpretative tradition also associated with some other leading accounting journals.

Expanding upon the special issue entitled “The special issue: AAAJ and research innovation”, published in 2012, this introduction to the second special issue of the genre is concerned with selected thematic special issues of AAAJ appearing during the second decade of publication from 1998 to 2007. The paper explores research innovation by means of the thematic issues addressed from this decade.

This paper provides a background to this special issue and an outline of the articles included. The issue features seven retrospective/prospective articles written by the guest editors of special thematic issues published during 1998 to 2007, supplemented where appropriate by other co-authors or, in one instance, by a new author team.

The guest editors and other contributing authors sought to identify and discuss the progression of each field since the AAAJ special issue was published, and to assess the impacts of the special issues to this progression, and to propose future research developments in the designated fields.

This commentary on articles published is no substitute for carefully reading these contributions. The papers provide a comprehensive review of key developments in the literature until most recently and explore the opportunities for further innovative interdisciplinary accounting research.

This AAAJ special issue, and the earlier 2012 prototype, constitute a different approach to producing special issues, where the original special issues are revisited with a view to assessing research trends and impacts and to identifying research developments which are ripe for pursuing in each of these interdisciplinary accounting fields.