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Veblen's Placebo: Another Historical Perspective On Administrative Evil, Jesse F. Dillard, Linda V. Ruchala

Accounting Historians Journal

Thorstein Veblen was a turn of the 20th century American economist concerned with the implications of financial capitalists directing the means of production. Veblen proposed that the rationality of material science as practiced by the production engineers is fundamentally different from the rationality of market capitalism. If this claim is valid, our previous contentions regarding accounting, as a facilitating technology, for administrative evil warrant reconsideration. Veblen's position provides a historical perspective on one dimension of administrative evil that is generally unquestionably accepted, especially within accounting. That is, technology, such as accounting and the related information systems, is amoral, and it …