(p.16) Foucault was a late entrant to organization studies, but his presence was already being felt in British accounting studies. During the 1970s, accounting in universities moved away from its excessively technical and vocational studies orientation and embraced the social sciences. The currents that were running through 1970s sociology found their way into accounting through intermediaries such as David Cooper, Anthony Hopwood, Tony Lowe, Peter Miller, and Tony Tinker. Accounting as a social science was borne, and in the 1980s, Foucault was to have a major impact on this subdiscipline of management.

(p.26) The story of the rise of Foucault in British organization studies is one of the remarkable stories in the discipline. Consecrated as one of the major thinkers in the field, promoted and debated by a number of key theorists, and routinely appearing in prestigious journals, the star of Foucault is one that has shone brightly over the past twenty years. It is perhaps interesting to speculate what organization studies might look like now had another philosopher, for instance, Baudrillard, Derrida, or Habermas, been adopted? Skeptics who see mere ornamentation when they read Foucauldian organizational analysis would argue that very little...