Guest editorial: Accounting and performance measurement in the age of rankings, quality assurance, accreditation, and excellence frameworks

• Over the past three decades, numbers, particularly those that can be expressed in financial terms, have come to be presented as a form of truth. Today, numbers guide and govern us, and shape and influence who we are, or who we should try to become (Kurunmäki et al., 2016). A few decades ago, this quantifying movement was restricted to a few fields. Today, however, it appears as if no one can escape the movement: higher education, health care and the public and private sectors in general have all witnessed a radical uptick of new management models, methods and calculative practices (Grossi et al., 2020; Argento et al., 2020; Eyraud, 2022; Parker et al., 2023). The so-called audit culture (Shore and Wright, 2015a) or audit explosion (Power, 2003) has resulted in the use of financial accounting technologies to measure and rank organizations and their employees and thus use quantification and statistics as instruments of governance and power (Shore and Wright, 2015b). More recently, the quality and quality assurance (QA) of operations and services, rankings of service providers and different excellence frameworks in public organizations have received increasing attention. Not least in the form of different accreditation systems (Bell and Taylor, 2005; Alajoutsijärvi et al., 2018; Vega and Cunha, 2023). Along with the rise in auditing and rankings, a vast number of international firms specializing in accountancy and statistical ratings have emerged (Shore and Wright, 2015a). These firms measure the creditworthiness of countries and organizations (ibid.).

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SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

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