Årets pris delas mellan Charlotta Bay och David von Laskowski – från Uppsala universitet respektive Handelshögskolan i Stockholm. Charlottas avhandling behandlar hur ekonomisk information presenteras i människors vardag. Davids studie synar ett riskkaptialbolags ansträngningar att förädla ett uppköpt företag. 

 

Charlotta Bay

Charlotta Bay,
Uppsala universitet

 

Avhandling: Making Accounting Matter: A Study of the Constitutive Practices of Accounting Framers

Juryns motivering:

”Charlotta Bay har i sin avhandling på ett originellt sätt öppnat upp ett angeläget ämne. Hennes studie visar hur inramning har använts för att sätta in redovisningsinformation i sammanhang där den kan få stor betydelse för människors vardag.

Studien visar hur redovisningsrapporter har använts av olika aktörer för att få genomslag i människors tänkande om sin egen finansiella situation. Avhandlingen  är ett välskrivet arbete av internationell klass.

En väl underbyggd teoretisk plattform ger stadga åt slutsatserna. Hennes sätt att angripa den tilltagande finansialiseringen av människors vardag kan inspirera många forskare att gå vidare i dessa kritiska fotspår.”

Sammanfattning:

The idea of accounting as a constitutive means, making people think and act in particular ways, is well established in the social strand of accounting literature. In professional organisations, for example, accounting is claimed to be critical to processes of turning people into rational and responsible economic actors. However, this thesis refocuses the empirical attention away from the organisation and into the private sphere of people’s everyday financial lives. As this is a field partly inhabited by people who for various reasons are believed to have difficulty in making sense of financial accounts, a dilemma arises regarding how to influence people’s way of managing their own finances by means of accounting information. How this dilemma is assumed to be resolved in order to make accounting matter is the query of this thesis.

Through a study of four cases, the thesis investigates the practices of public authorities, a television makeover show, and a pension insurance company – here referred to as accounting framers – whose task it is to construct accounting in such a way so as to make it come across as important, relevant and useful to various groups of the general public. By examining how people’s accounting interpretations are elaborated in order to make them responsive to financial accounts, the thesis contributes to problematising the constitutive role of accounting and the conditions believed to enable it to turn people into financially responsible actors.

 

David von Laskowski,
Handelshögskolan i Stockholm

 

Avhandling: How Changes in Managers´ Sensemaking Influence a Strategic Change

Juryns motivering:

”David von Laskowskis avhandling tar sig an ett aktuellt och spännande företagsekonomiskt fält som klart och redigt presenteras i arbetets inledning.

Författaren har erhållit en närmast unik access till en empiri som ofta är svårerövrad och lyckas på basis av detta material presentera en grundlig och skarpsinnig studie rörande ett PE-företags ansträngningar att förädla ett uppköpt företag.

Arbetet är ett mycket gott exempel på en kvalitativ studie och de teoretiska texterna är också av högsta klass. Analysens klarhet, stringens och kreativitet medför att slutsatserna blir starka och trovärdiga – bidraget till vetandet på det aktuella fältet blir därför högst betydande.”

Sammanfattning:

The study builds on the belief that change has become a normal state of affairs in business life, and that one highly contemporary actor – the private equity firm – has evolved to become specialized in change through repetitively changing its portfolio firms in its quest to generate value. The quest of reshaping a portfolio firm in order to optimize its strategic position, profitability, and financial structure in order to generate value has consequently been this study’s starting point.

This dissertation presents how sensemaking, which is about the interplay of action and interpretation, changes over time and how it affects the strategic change of a portfolio firm. By studying and directly observing the communication and interaction between the portfolio firms’s CEO, board, and management team in real-time during a prolonged period when change occurs at a revolutionary pace, this dissertation seeks to examine the development and influence of this sensemaking.

The study demonstrates how certain traits of private equity firms influence the timeline, risk profile, and governance of strategic change, how the presence of an idiosyncratic language influences the strategic change by transcending one mindset into a diametrically opposed ditto, and how the materialization of a mental iron cage affects the boundaries of the potential changes as well as adaptations and worldviews.

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