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Connecting Science to the Economic: Accounting Calculation and the Visibility of Research and Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Keith Robson
Keith Robson
Affiliation:
Manchester School of ManagementUniversity of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
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Abstract

The presence or absence of scientific research in productive organizations is a subject of professional concern to the scientific and engineering community, and of wider interest to political agencies in the United Kingdom. This paper will explore aspects of the economic visibility of scientific practices in productive organizations:how, by whom, and in what contexts research and development practices have been constructed, monitored, and disseminated as economic statistices within and beyond the modern industrial enterprise. The paper will focus on the construction of scientific practices as accounting and economic signifiers within their organizational context:the growth of mechanisms for the connection fo scientific practices to economic calculations. How companies account for R&D has been elevated by particular government agencies through the accountancy bodies, as a way of forging a relationship between economic calculation and the scientific practices of U.K.companies.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 497 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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