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Across industry and academia, there is currently much discussion about the implications of blockchain for accounting. We contribute to these ongoing discussions by critically investigating the claim that blockchain exists as a novel and foundational accounting technology. We do so by examining the central imaginaries associated with blockchain and investigating their incomplete crystallisations in the application of Bitcoin. This leads us to highlight three central features of blockchain accounting related to the changes in modes of organization, governance and trust, which we contextualize in relation to theoretical and empirical work. By doing so, we gain a nuanced understanding of the complex ways in which blockchain accounting and the processes and professional tasks commonly associated with accounting coexist and may interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? 3. What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identi!es a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention.

The paper reports on public sector organisations'/institutions' work to develop knowledge management and intellectual capital statements. Building on experiences collected during 2001-2002 where 26 public sector institutions in Denmark sought to develop intellectual capital statements, this paper discusses their experiences and in particular, it addresses the role of intellectual capital in relation to the development of the new public management philosophy. It is suggested that these public sector organisations use intellectual capital activity to promote themselves as "businesses" with their own strategies and modes of operations. Intellectual capital helps these firms differentiate themselves and develop their own strategic approach to their mode of functioning by showing how they function as enterprises.

Extant literature on target-setting indicates that responding to achievability-related criticisms towards ex ante targets through repair actions are of significance in restoring fairness and maintaining the legitimacy of performance systems. By drawing on empirical materials on responses to unfairness criticisms raised against target-setting practices in a bank, the study shows that such legitimation work also requires responding to equity-related criticisms. Equity implies that, when situations differ, targets must be differentiated to make the intensity of efforts the same. This study shows that legitimately differentiating targets requires an original and highly complex commensuration work. This work is original because compared to prior commensuration studies it concerns the commensuration of efforts and not of entities. This work is complex because it is difficult to account for all differences during target-setting and because such differentiation can be made mechanically and discretionally, each form of differentiation bringing its own source of illegitimacy. Moreover, it is also complex because it is a distributed work, involving numerous actors with multiple concerns. Such commensuration work then appears to be continuous and dynamic. This complements prior studies in target-setting, which have focussed mainly on dyadic relations between a superior and a subordinate and on single-period adjustments to targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]