Accounting OrganirationsandSociefy, Vol. 10, NO. 3, pp. 353-357, 1985. 0361-3682185 13.00 + .

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Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press Ltd.

TWO TRIBUTES TO DAVID ROSENBERG

In December 1984, David Rosenberg, a contributor to this journal, died unexpectedly and quite pre-
maturely at the age of 40. Two former colleagues and friends present their personal tributes.

David Rosenberg

A PERSONAL TRIBUTE FROM CYRIL TOMIUNS

In December 1984, as I finished the painful task
of writing to a number of people in the U.K. and
U.S.A. to tell them that David Rosenberg had died
prematurely, it occurred to me that amongst
those to whom I had written were several lead-
ing professors of accounting in the U.K. and yet
it had seemed most appropriate to inform them
immediately about the death of a sociologist
who knew little of the technology of accounting,
who would have found it difficult to interpret a
balance sheet and of whom these professors had
probably not even heard only a few years previ-
ously. There seemed to be something incongru-
ous about this situation, but it was an indication
of David’s academic ability and rapidly growing
influence that it seemed necessary to inform
these accounting professors.
From my first meeting with David his gradual
growth of interest in financial control processes
represented something of a paradox. David had
applied for a post as research officer to join Ian
Colville and myself on an SSRC sponsored pro-
ject to study financial control processes in local
government. A Marxist sociologist with experi-
ence of field-work in East Africa may not have
seemed an obvious person for such a project and
yet how appropriate that decision turned out to
be. As I got to know David, it was clear that he
was the most widely read person I am ever likely
to know and that, despite our personal contrasts
in dress, politics, general range of interests and
family background (as a further paradox David’s
family class background was several notches
above my own) there was potential in collabora-
tion.
From the initial planning, the central idea of

353
354 CYRIL TOMKINS and AARON WILDAVSKY
the SSRC sponsored project was to bring
together persons from different disciplines to
look at the question of financial control in local
authorities and particularly in relation to social
services and a police force. The eventual team of
three consisted of an accountant (myself), David
(a sociologist) and Ian Colville (an organisation
theorist). The early problems in trying to create
this three-way marriage have been described
earlier in this journal. It suEices to say now that
the project changed all of us. First, it was clear
from the outset that no-one person could be
totally “in charge” of a project deliberately
designed to enable mutual service from col-
laborators from different disciplines, although
nominally I was responsible to the SSRC. I
needed to tap the knowledge and guidance that
David and Ian had to offer as much as the reverse
- that was the essence of the initiative. We
acted as “equals” in the research development
despite differences in formal rank. We all under-
took field-work for the project although we did
this mostly for separate parts of the project. This
was partly due to institutional requests, but in
the sense that little of the field-work was joint,
the marriage was incomplete. The jointness
came from the frequent discussions of progress.
Also it became clear that, while I had been aware
when setting up the project of the value that
insights from sociology and organisation theory
might bring to the project, my knowledge in this
area was of limited depth and had to be
expanded considerably although it could not
match the specialisms of my colleagues. David
also changed. What appeared to be an initial con-
ventional Marxist stance towards understanding
events became modified by a greater awareness
of the importance of interactionism in under-
standing resource allocation and control within
and between organisations and the centrality of
money negotiations in understanding many
facets of behaviour. He also impressed upon
both Ian and myself the necessity to understand
such interactions within an historical and macro
context.
Once David had become familiar with the
human and general nature of organisational pro-
cesses involved in financial control, he took it
upon himself not only to satisfy the needs of the
project, but to look further afield to impress
upon accountants, sociologists and organisation
theorists the need to recognise that no sub-set of
researchers working within their own world-
view had the right to claim a complete under-
standing of financial control issues within
organisational or social life. He became almost
evangelic over this issue and had begun the pro-
cess of bringing together people from different
disciplines to discuss these issues. Shortly before
he died David wrote:
The relationship between theory and method is normally
problematic but in the case of these essays it is particu-
larly true because there were two macro contrasting
perspectives. On the one hand the “urban managerialist”
perspective on local government practices stresses that
resources may be controlled by importrant groups of
“gatekeepers” or urban managers who “mediate” bet-
ween Whitehall, national and local politicians and the
economy. The question this literature poses basically
resolve around issues of power and decision-making and
the issue of professional or bureaucratic ideologies. On
the other hand the structuralist literature has argued that
organizational explanations, where the research focus is
on behaviour and ideology of organizational actors, is
mistaken. The structurahst literature implies that studies
of so-caged urban managers and their decisions are
studies of lower order phenomena of minor signiftcance
because their decisions are overdetermined either by the
totality of corporatist institutions or by the primacy of
the accumulative process, tbe management of collective
consumption and the reproduction of Iabour. There is a
tension therefore between the two perspectives.
David’s work (much of which is yet to be pub-
lished) moves beyond this dichotomous state
and attempts to describe how the latter view still
leaves room for an organisational focus and
interpretive sociology relating to tinancial con-
trol issues. His objective was to weave together
these contrasting perspectives. In his own words
his task was to:
Understand and explain somethingofwhat Lukes (1977)
has called “the dialectic of power and structure”.
Such an objective was ambitious, but at least he
was able to feel that he was gaining some recog-
nition for his efforts. Just before he died a well
respected reviewer’ stated that one of David’s
 TWO TRIBUTES TO DAVID ROSENBERG
papers on budgeting was “an intellectual tour de
force” and one of the best things he had read on
the subject. Even the most able rarely get such
reviews.
David also helped to bring into accounting a
research methodology that was new in 1978. It
was one in which qualitative field-work was
required, rather than positivistic tests, and
where data, however messy, took primacy over
method. David’s honesty to this cause led him to
pursue this theme rigorously right through into
his writing which sometimes seemed tortuous,
lengthy and occasionally vague in implication.
This has led some to be frustrated by his papers.
Indeed, even after we became quite close
friends, tense moments arose when I wished to
impose what I thought to be more clarity and
structure on to his prose. His stance in such situ-
ations was firm and he would vigorously urge,
“Neatness has its own logic whereby a finished
product denies its origins and history”.
In one sense this was unfortunate for he would
have perhaps have succeeded in convincing
more accountants of his cause ifhe had been pre-
pared to modify the style of his field-work
reports. Even the above-mentioned reviewer
requested clarification to enable those with less
ability than David to appreciate the insights
David had to offer. But David had little tolerance
with those who wished to have everything
simplistically summarised or who were not pre-
pared to wrestle with the complexity of life he
was able to portray. It was clear that this style
was quite deliberate on David’s part. A semi-
autobiographical note2 found after his death is a
model of clarity and directness and so his more
complex papers do not indicate an inability to
structure and summarise but rather David’s view
that it was inappropriate if his portrayal of events
and situations was not to be destroyed.
It is not appropriate to try to review all David’s
papers here. Indeed the majority of his work has
not yet been published,3 but readers’ appetites
’ It is known that the reviewer was one of two people and both are very well-regarded academics.
’ “Power, reciprocity and research practices: a semi-autobiographical appendix and note”.
‘Andrew Coulson of INLOGOV, David’s friend and colleague, is collecting together David’s work with a view to publication.
355
can be whetted by a statement that the work pro-
vides considerable insights into the roles of key
officers and politicians in local government in
the processes of resource allocation and uses
this context to illustrate David’s theoretical view-
points on relationships between concepts
such as politics, power, trust and rational
analysis. It could only be accomplished by some-
one as widely read and trained as David. It is
clear that David’s death was both a personal and
professional tragedy. After a number of years of
personal development, he suddenly seemed to
have found, quite recently, the area which he felt
destined to make his own and which, in my view,
he would have dominated. Further development
of his work would have integrated the perspec-
tives of disciplines that hardly communicate
with each other.
Finally, it may also serve us well to ponder
how our U.K. academic system, with its growing
tendency to formal accountabilities and conven-
tional disciplinary boundaries, makes it difIicult
to find a place for someone like David. Since
leaving the SSRC project, David seemed to be
seen by the many disciplines to which he applied
for a job as “not one of them.” Such stress no
doubt added to his physical situation. We are all
part of the academic system and hence sustain
and are partly responsible for it. Shouldn’t it have
a place for exceptional people like David? One
wonders whether David’s fate in this regard
might have been different had he lived to see all
the work he had produced to date published. I
still have the feeling that “the system” would not
have yielded easily. As our mutual colleague, Ian
Colville, has said - David knew thoroughly the
works of Gothnan, but could never think of fash-
ioning his personal presentation. One admired
David for it; it shone through in his personal and
intellectual honesty, but it had a terrible per-
sonal cost. We can now only wonder what might
have been, but his forthcoming work indicates
that we could have had great expectations.
356 CYRIL TOMKINS and AARON WILDAVSKY
A PERSONAL TRIBUTE FROM AARON WILDAVSKY
David Rosenberg forcibly called himself to my
attention: At a conference in Sweden, he took
vigorous exception to the lecture I gave. This
did not prevent him at subsequent meetings
from plying me with readings (a) opposed to and
(b) supportive of my position. From remote
places there came even more obscure books that
turned out to be important. Where will I find his
like again, this in-house critic who looked out for
me (and for others whom he adopted) better
than I could for myself?
It has been a long time since I allowed other
people to choose my enemies for me. This
attitude turned out to be especially fortuitous in
regard to David Rosenberg, who had developed
getting off on the wrong foot into a high art.
Nowadays, when “the character” is universally
beloved (a lack of discrimination masquerading
as broadmindedness), it takes a David to slay the
Goliath of false tolerance. “Characters” are
people who, understranding the mores, choose
to disgregard a single, hopefully unessential one.
Not our David. Nothing retail about him. He vio-
lated social norms, like he’ bought his books,
wholesale. It was not that he didn’t care, only
that he didn’t know how many or how often or
how much he discomforted people on whose
good opinion he depended.
Among the most delicate subjects I discussed
with David, aside from how I should reorganize
my life, was why he had difficulty obtaining a
permanent position in academia. I mean, why
don’t these earth people like us Androjens? The
answer was at once self-evident and discomfort-
ing. For every possible rationale - he was too
odd, too radical, too truthful, too noisy, too
open, too insistent - David had rehearsed, as
well as any philosopher, his exceptions. The
only person he had not got was someone who fit
not one but all these categories.
No sense speaking Eskimo to the Hottentots. I
told David that, despite all, his work would even-
tually, within three years, five at the outside, lead
to recognition in the form of a Position. Even
now, I am confident that as his work gets pub-
lished its drawing power will grow.
Among the minor fascinations of this man
unlike others was the devotion of his scholarly
life to a seemingly staid and rule-bound group -
local budget officials. The contrast could hardly
be greater. And that, surely, was the point. Evi-
dently lacking socialization into the ways of this
world, David set out to discover the customs of
the earthlings. Through a detailed reconstruc-
tion of their roles -who expected what of them
and how these conventional types responded -
David hoped to understand how the social world
works. His gift was the outerside of his misadven-
tures, for David was so distant from the conven-
tions that he had to treat his treasury men as if
they were strangers from another civilization.
His ability, similar in some ways to Jane Austen,
to recreate before our eyes a whole moral uni-
verse.
It was too good to be true. David’s analytic
power rested on the understanding, so hard
won, that as man was a social creature, social life
was both indispensible and unsatisfactory. Even
those most determined’to obey its rules could
not succeed in doing so without grave damage to
themselves and to others.
“System blame”, unless one means all possible
modes of organizing social life, was not David’s
thing; he felt too acutely the pain of the particip-
ants to do that. But he was able, as those who
read his forthcoming papers can attest, to ascer-
tain the hidden ambiquities beneath the sup-
posedly solid surface.
Disqualified from acting like others - do
what I do, not what I say - David Rosenberg
over-identified with the norms of scholarship.
Constant criticism (never mind when or of
whom) clarifies. So he did. Scholarship ought to
be a cooperative enterprise. And he did cooper-
ate, not always waiting to discover whether
others wanted to be cooperated with. Abandon
views when refuted. Quick to discard what new
evidence showed to be faulty, David wondered
- often out loud -why others present did not.
The principle was widely approved but its
instant application was deemed unfortunate.
The air of discomfort David carried, clinging to
 TWO TRIBUTES TO DAVID ROSENBERG 357

him like a well-worn slipper, was due, I believe,
to his insistence on raising questions of theory
and practice most of us would rather forget.
The unsocialized also need friends. David did
have his way, though not one likely to produce
results very often. He attacked on scholarly
grounds, I suspect, in order to apologize in per-
sonal terms. This may not be everyone’s road to
instant intimacy but, for want of more soothing
ways, as I can testify, it occasionally worked for
David.
One day, I imagined, as his talent over-
whelmed all obstacles, his defects retrospec-
tively rationalized into virtues, at a distance, a
safe distance, David would have had his Position.
Others would tell him what he was by reading
his title. Why, to add to his endless promotion of
the young and, as yet, undiscovered and under-
appreciated scholars, he might even have had a
bit of patronage to distribute. What, then, would
have become of our David in power? Alas, alas, I
shall never be able to enjoy this perpetual out-
sider inside the inner sanctum. The world has a
way of getting even but only, I think, with people
who know what that means. And my friend
David would never get even because that would
mean he no longer cared about scholarship.
Acceptance meant a great deal to him (as it must
to those who do without for so long) but, in the
end, he could never be like us if only because he
cared more about our profession than we do.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lukes, S., Power and Structure, in Essays in Social Theory (Macmillan, 1977).