Workers that matter and work that counts organizing and accounting for value(s)

Special Issues are spaces of political action with the potential to activate new beginnings. As a group of academics, daily confronted with the lives of individuals who struggle for recognition across the societies in which we live, we came together with the intention of posing both timeless and timely questions to our communities: questions about how the value of work is defined, who is counted, and what kinds of work and workers are allowed to matter. In doing so, we proposed that the matter of work transcends disciplinary boundaries and embarked on the endeavor of building bridges across fields namely accounting, management, and organization studies. The contributions that constitute this Special Issue reveal the uniqueness of each life experience and expose the role of organizations and accounting in making some lives (un)livable. Their richness lies in their capacity to confront us with our own desires and fears, our longing for care, support, and communication. Collectively, they show us how, in interrogating the “matter” of work, we can also question who we are as human beings and how we live together, imagining otherwise.