ABSTRACT
Many might think that the introduction to a collected series of papers ought to reassure the reader, showing how each sheds light on the others and on the overall accumulation of knowledge, thereby guaranteeing the unity and coherence of the various contributions. Here, however. I believe that it would be unrealistic to attempt an introduction along such lines at this stage of conceptual development. Certainly the following papers, with one exception, were brought together for two workshops at a conference organized in late 1976 1 and all of them focus on the same topic - the relationships between the organization and its accounting and information systems. But the criteria employed in selecting the papers deliberately set out to provide a plurality of theoretical and empirical perspectives. So, it is important to point out right from the beginning that this diversity is not being concealed but, on the contrary, openly stated. It represents, in my opinion at least, not a pathological condition of inquiry into accounting and information systems, but quite the reverse. The diversity of conceptual and research strategies reflects scholarship in action. For understanding in any area of human inquiry has to be constructed through a process of debate, be it explicit or otherwise, between different conceptual systems, reasonings and analytical and methodological approaches. At the very least this collection of papers aims to illustrate the potentiality of such a debate for accounting (and information system) thought and practice.
