Dr Daniela Pianezza, University of Verona, Italy

"Accounting for the dead other" 
Wednesday, 21 January 2026. 12:00-13:30 

Room 253, The Wolfson Medical School building

Abstract

The paper explores how those who organize and manage cemeteries enact accountability for the dead, addressing the following research questions: How do those who organize and manage cemeterial services experience accountability to and for the dead? How does this accountability inform their accounting practices? Drawing on Derrida’s work, we show how accountability in organizations – which are centered around death whilst being continually ‘confronted’ with life – is infused with ethical, political, and economic issues. We further examine how these organizations navigate an aporetic tension between recognizing perpetual memory and ensuring economic sustainability. This involves respecting cultural diversity whilst transcending it through the rational management of space, and involves handling a material entity (i.e. the corpse) that ostensibly ‘does not matter’ – lacking symbolic significance – but yet is steeped in religious and political meaning. Finally, our analysis reveals how the tensions within accountability materialize through cemeterial accounting practices such as tariffs and registers, which shape and are shaped by the contours of ‘grievability’-that is, what makes a life worthy of mourning.

Bio

Daniela Pianezzi is Associate Professor in Organization Studies at the University of Verona, Italy. She is also visiting scholar at the University of Essex (UK), the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa and at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale of Naples (Italy). Her works have been published in various international journals, including Work, Employment and Society, Journal of Business Ethics, and Human Relations. She is Associate Editor of puntOorg International Journal, a member of the editorial committee for the Journal ‘Organization’ and the ‘Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies’ (JAEE), co-funder of the research centre RE-WOrk: Researching for REmaking Work and Organizing, and member of the Research Centre on the Politics and Theories of Sexuality - POLITESSE. Her research investigates the norms and values that organize our lives.

For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 20 November 2025

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