Judgement devices and the evaluation of singularities: The use of performance ratings and narrative information to guide film viewer choice

摘要

The focus ofthis study is to examine how management accounting information is used in the evaluation ofsingularities.As highlighted byKarpik (2010), singularities represent everyday goods and services that areunique, multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. The paper draws on these underlyingproperties in investigating how they are evaluated. It does so in the realm of popular culture, a spacein whichsingularities are a commonfeature,using the example of aparticular socialphenomenon—thatis,the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Through the conduct of netnographic and interview-based research,the study explores how management accounting tools embedded within IMDb play a role in shapingdiverse social outcomes in relation to popular culture (in this case, the unpredictable and varying filmchoices of individuals). It further explores how these tools also become constitutive of the core functioningof innovative social phenomena such as IMDb, so as to direct and somehow provide a semblance oforder to these social outcomes and the derivation of them. Findings indicate that while the evaluationof singularities such as films are driven by a reliance on quantitative measures, such as the ratings andrankings on IMDb, they also are derived through aligning individual personal interests with that of the‘information provider’, for example the interests and tastes of reviewers on IMDb. In this respect, ourcase shows how the problematic nature of imperfect and conflicting performance information can beeffectively overcome.