Accounting, the hidden collage? Accounting in the dialogues between a city and its financial institutions

The aim of this article is to promote an understanding of accounting not only as a harmoniously organized painting but also as a collage, since accounting -- like a collage -- can be seen as a jumble riddled with discontinuities. With this in mind, the ways in which accounting is applied in dialogues on the subject of finance between a Norwegian local government and its financial supporters are described. In all dialogues accounting is understood in several, sometimes conflicting ways. The article argues that each understanding reflects harmony in that it represents the perception of reality of the individuals involved. Consequently, a dialogue involving many individuals and different contexts portrays a complex of understandings of reality, resulting in the disappearance of harmony. Because any one accounting report is read not only by different individuals but also in different dialogues, many associations become attached to it. An accounting report thus comes to represent a collage, releasing a complex of associations and understandings. The collage of an accounting report is not on display, however. None of its readers will normally have in mind all the different ways in which all the other readers are understanding it. The accounting report can thus be said to be a hidden collage, in the sense that each reader only sees a fragment of it.