Prometheus Bound: Accounting and the Creation of the New Science Paradigm

Abstract

The argument presented in this paper is that accounting has been significantly implicated in the changing location of science as a social practice in the United Kingdom during the past two decades. Accounting has facilitated the commodification of scientific knowledge products, making science a closed and private activity rather than an open and codifiable one. This shift has adversely disrupted the preexisting trust in science exhibited by the public. In an ironic twist, it appears that accounting may now offer the prospect of creating a new public governance of science via economic and financial market mechanisms.