Account books

Abstract

Using examples from Rome, the Renaissance, and modernity, this chapter takes an historical view on how accounts allow organizations to coalesce. This phenomenon is described as a process of composition where the visual and material spaces of accounts prompt their users to perform ordered classifications of arguments that make organizations tangible. Organizing is thus conceived as the regular encounter between people and artefacts. Such encounters support the coexistence of different interconnected organizings, resulting from multiple engagements with the signs and words in account books, as illustrated by the outcomes of budgetary discussions between engineers and traders in a hydroelectric company.