AGIR AVEC MESURE Essai pour une raison comptable

The history of accounting, its techniques and the different places they have occupied in the political organization of companies, keep on arousing controversies. First of all, we are highlighting the connections with the reality that the accounting measure establishes, and underline the relations of power which it supports Then, we are wondering about the strength of its statements, that is to say the very capacity of the accounting language to convey miscellaneous representations, the question being to know the extend of its social determination. This article nourishes that debate, by presenting arguments to reinforce the actors in the regulating strength of their technique and in the reasons for standing against its reification and against its diversions. Last but not the least, it illustrates the central place of the human language in the systems of collective action as well as its ability to account for the requests of freedom and justice that it conveys.