In this study we provide evidence on how accounting disclosures can motivate social movement organizations (SMOs) to create a new source of normativity in an organizational field, to impact upon firms through identity, image and culture. The source of normativity, the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW), was created as a means of accounting for farm animal welfare by food companies. Working at the intersection of theories relating to organizational fields, social movements and organizational identity, we investigate how the SMOs create the conditions for change through their framing of farm animal welfare, collective action and the mobilization of resources. Ideas such as institutional agency and institutional control are introduced to explain the power dynamics that enable change. By interpreting the organizational field as a relational space, identity, self-interest and intermittently-active fields provide further constructs to explain behaviour. Evidence from BBFAW reports and publications demonstrates how the NGOs employed a multi-period strategy to effect change. A longitudinal company case study provides an illustration of the cascade of the movement, demonstrating that there is more than an alignment of accounting disclosures. New business opportunities arise, requiring a realignment of strategy, a redesign of organizational architecture and participation of stakeholders. We illustrate our findings through the creation of a framework which could be employed more widely to study of sources of normativity in a relational field. This paper shows that accounting disclosures have a role to play in creating a new normativity that generates social change.
keywords: رفاه حیوانات | هویت | هنجار | فیلترهای سازمانی و جنبش های اجتماعی | Animal welfare | Identity | Normativity | Organizational fields and social movements

Critical algorithm scholarship has demonstrated the difficulties of attributing accountability for the actions and effects of algorithmic systems. In this commentary, we argue that we cannot stop at denouncing the lack of accountability for algorithms and their effects but must engage the broader systems and distributed agencies that algorithmic systems exist within; including standards, regulations, technologies, and social relations. To this end, we explore accountability in ‘‘the Generated Detective,’’ an algorithmically generated comic. Taking up the mantle of detectives ourselves, we investigate accountability in relation to this piece of experimental fiction. We problematize efforts to effect accountability through transparency by undertaking a simple operation: asking for permission to re-publish a set of the algorithmically selected and modified words and images which make the frames of the comic. Recounting this process, we demonstrate slippage between the ‘‘complication’’ of the algorithm and the obscurity of the legal and institutional structures in which it exists.
Keywords: Algorithms | normativity | accountability | responsibility | mystery | detective