Being inspired by actor-network theory and the anthropology
of science and technology (Callon, 1998a) I draw on
a detailed and longitudinal case study. The origin of the
fieldwork dates back to 1996 when I was as an associate
professor in accounting at Copenhagen Business School invited
together with an academic colleague to teach officers
at the Royal Danish Defence College in accounting. After
some time, I realized that the Office had launched a number
of audit reports on the DDF’s accounting systems. As
a teacher, I was asked to provide case examples related to
DDF activities, but there were no such cases in Denmark.
However, I had been given some performance audit reports
on the DDF, which I used for teaching purposes from 1997
to 1999. As a result, I became interested in the Office’s critique
of the DDF and its accounting systems. They criticised
the DDF for being unable to provide cost calculations without
using ‘arbitrary’ cost allocations (Rigsrevisionen, 1996).
Cost allocations are by nature arbitrary and the critique
stimulated my interest in ‘‘what is going on here”. In
November 1997, an officer closely related to the proposal
to initiate a performance-accountability project gave a
speech at the Defence College. From this speech it appeared
that some DDF officers believed it would be feasible to develop
a comprehensive cost allocation system without
arbitrary cost allocations. The speech caused a heated debate
among the officers. In this way, I was present in ‘real
time’ before, during and after it was decided by the Parliament
to start the performance-accountability project. Having
established many relationships with the officers
through my 4 years of teaching at the Defence College, I
was able to follow many of the discussions including the
debate in the newspapers within the DDF. Over the years,
I have also collected many articles from DDF’s own workplace
letters and periodicals to illuminate attempts to explain
to the employees the rationale of the project.