Dr Sundström leads the research project "AI in management practice: Synergies and tensions between new tools for analysis and new approaches to control" funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2022-2025). 

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• AI in management control: Emergent forms, practices, and infrastructures

  2024. Andreas Sundström. Critical Perspectives on Accounting

  Article

  This paper discusses the significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Processing (LLP), in the context of management control. The key concern is the epistemological shift from traditional deductive approaches to an inductive approach brought about by AI technologies. The paper elaborates on shifts related to the forms, practices, and infrastructures of management control, discussing new avenues for research in social studies of accounting. The discussion outlines how the integration of AI in accounting not only changes accounting practice but also fuels the relevance of some of the prior insights about social aspects of calculative practices. On a final note, the paper also suggests that, given the speed and scope at which new calculative technology is being introduced in virtually all parts of society, accounting scholars may draw upon prior insights and contribute to wider debates about the social impact of AI in society.

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• The value of research activities“other than” publishing articles: reflections on an experimentalworkshop series

  2024. Yasmine Chahed (et al.). Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

  Article

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• Let the right one in: ‘Accounting proxemics’ in the design of performance indicators

  2023. Andreas Sundström, Bino Catasús. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 96, 102538-102538

  Article

  The study introduces the notion of accounting proxemics to analyse the relationships between accounts, action, and distance. Earlier literature has emphasized that distance is a problem in accounting, relating not least to the issues of representational distance as well as the relationship between distance and control. While earlier research has convincingly shown that accounting and distance are interlinked, the ways in which various concerns with distance are addressed in practice have received less attention. In response, this paper develops the notion of accounting proxemics to analytically approach questions about how various concerns with distance are addressed in practice.

  Empirically, the paper recounts a narrative of how a board approached distance as a concern in its work with the design, communication, and consumption of accounts. The paper finds that the board mobilized accounting to process three concerns with distance: the long-distance, immediacy, and constitutive problems. The paper details the ways in which the board continuously ‘made up’ multiple users to simulate the ways in which the accounts may invoke possible problems of the long-distance, immediacy, or constitutive aspects of accounting representation. In effect, the design of reports is influenced by how ‘the other reader’ is imagined. This imagined ‘other’ reader is a central character who is invited into the discussion of how to achieve a comfortable distance, i.e., a distance that offers the possibility of (in)action.

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• Intresserande samverkan

  2017. Andreas Sundström, Niklas Wällstedt.

  Report

  Denna rapport har som mål att studera hur Trafikverket praktiserar strategi tillsammans med andra intressenter och aktörer. Rapporten utgör delprojekt 3 i ett större treårigt projekt som genomförts inom Akademin för ekonomistyrning i staten (AES) vid Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Projektet har finansierats av Trafikverket, inom ramen för FoI-portfölj nummer sex, Trafikverket – en modern myndighet. Tidigare delrapporter inom projektet har visat att det internt i organisationen finns flera bilder av hur strategin ska omsättas i praktiken, samt diskuterat vad som är viktigt i detta arbete. Då en stor del av Trafikverkets uppdrag genomförs av externa parter ingår det också i forskningsprojektet att studera vad som händer med Trafikverkets strategiska arbete i externa relationer. När flera organisationers strategier möts, påverkar och påverkas av varandra väcks frågor om hur strategier samverkar och hur sådan strategisk samverkan fungerar i praktiken. Målet med denna rapport är därför att utveckla kunskap om strategisk verksamhetsstyrning genom att koppla samman frågor om strategi med frågor om samverkan. Detta uppnås genom att studera hur samverkan fungerar i praktiken. Som grund för rapporten har tre olika exempel på praktiker studerats där Trafikverket möter andra aktörer i planering och genomförande av Trafikverkets arbete.

  För att utveckla förståelsen av samverkan antar studien ett samverkansperspektiv: studien tar utgångspunkt i praktiken, snarare än i de samverkande aktörerna. Till skillnad från tidigare samverkansstudiers fokus på enskilda organisationers nytta av att samverka, innebär detta samverkansperspektiv fördjupade frågor om hur olika aktörer med olika intressen verkar samman, och hur sådan samverkan fungerar i praktiken. För att kunna diskutera samverkan på ett konstruktivt sätt används tre teoretiska begrepp i rapporten: mångfald, intressering och löften. Med dessa begrepp som utgångspunkt inriktas analysen på att undersöka förutsättningar för samverkan. Utifrån analysen av samverkans förutsättningar presenteras i rapportens avslutande kapitel ett utvecklat förhållningssätt till samverkan: intresserande samverkan. 

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• Representing Performance | Performing Representation

  2015. Andreas Sundström (et al.).

  Thesis (Doc)

  Social studies of accounting have drawn attention to the dubious role of accounting as a representational link between organizational realities and action. Based on five years immersion with performance management and board work in a theatre company, this thesis inquires into the ontological significance of accounting practices. The study takes a praxiographic approach, which emphasizes action and relocates questions of representation towards the practices in which representations are mobilized. The research questions refer specifically to ontological work related to commensurability and distance in accounting practices. Four papers attend to the manners in which the organizational performance of the theatre company is represented in different situations of managing, governing and reporting. The papers demonstrate and analyse different examples of ontological work involved in achieving (or retracting) representational links. In conclusion, the thesis places the organizing of ontological tensions – especially the tension between singular accounting representations and multiple organizational realities – at the core of accounting representation practices. The thesis thus contributes to practical, theoretical and philosophical discussions on the links between accounting practices, accounts and reality. 

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