Aos literature positioning
Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. ｜ 覆盖主流期刊的 Claude Code/Codex 期刊技能包，从选题、识别策略到表格规范与审稿回复全流程，助你快速发论文。
npx -y skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aos-literature-positioningAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
Use when situating an Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) manuscript in the literature — entering one of the journal's own long-running conversations, engaging the interdisciplinary sources (organization theory, sociology, psychology) those conversations draw on, and marking precisely what the paper adds. Positions the argument; it does not build the theory itself (aos-theory-development).
SKILL.md
5.3 KB, ~1.0k tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it
Literature Positioning (aos-literature-positioning)
When to trigger
- The front end reviews literatures without joining any specific conversation
- Reviewers could ask "why does this belong in AOS rather than a management or sociology journal?"
- Citations cluster in a sibling journal's canon (JAR/TAR earnings-quality chains, AMJ theory-building chains)
- You cannot name the two or three prior papers your findings push against
Position inside AOS's own 50-year canon
AOS is unusual: half a century of its own archive defines the conversations it cares about, and its editors read submissions against that archive. Locate the specific AOS thread your paper extends:
| Thread (examples from the canon) | You must engage it if your paper is about… |
|---|---|
| Roles of accounting beyond the textbook — Burchell et al. (1980); Hopwood (1983) | any claim that accounting does unexpected work |
| Accounting, power and the calculable person — Miller & O'Leary (1987) | costing, performance measurement, discipline |
| Accountability in everyday organizational life — Roberts & Scapens (1985) | how systems shape conduct and self-accounts |
| Budgets as political instruments — Covaleski & Dirsmith (1986) | budgeting, resource struggles, institutional pressure |
| Numbers as inscriptions and constructed reality — Hines (1988); Robson (1992); Chua (1995) | measurement, representation, expertise |
| Culture change through accounting — Dent (1991) | field studies of transformation |
| Control systems and strategy — Simons (1990) | management control design in use |
| Behavioral/JDM synthesis — Libby, Bloomfield & Nelson (2002) | experimental financial-accounting work |
| Risk and audit society — Power (2009) | risk management, auditability, regulation |
(Full verified references: resources/exemplars/library.md.)
Engage the interdisciplinary sources honestly
AOS conversations run on imported theory. Cite the primary social-science sources your tradition uses (e.g., the sociology behind institutional theory; Foucault for governmentality; Latour for inscriptions; the cognitive/social psychology behind a JDM design) as they are used in accounting — showing you know both the origin and the accounting appropriation. A paper that cites only accounting journals signals thin theorizing; one that cites only sociology signals the wrong venue.
Mark the delta
- Name the two or three nearest prior papers and state, in one sentence each, what they established and what your paper changes.
- Write the delta as a conceptual advance ("shows the mechanism is X, where prior work assumed Y"), never as inventory ("extends the literature on…").
- Anticipate the misclassification risk: say explicitly why the paper is an accounting paper and not general organization theory — the accounting practice must be analytically central, not incidental scenery.
- Disclose and differentiate your own related work in anonymized form ("prior research (Author, 20xx)").
Structure of a positioned front end
- The phenomenon and its stake (one or two paragraphs, concrete).
- The AOS conversation and its current settled view.
- The crack in that view — anomaly, silence, or contradiction.
- Your question, lens, and setting as the way through the crack.
- Preview of the conceptual answer and its consequence for the conversation.
Checklist
- One specific AOS thread identified; its key papers engaged substantively
- Primary interdisciplinary sources cited alongside their accounting uses
- Nearest two or three papers named, with a one-sentence delta against each
- The accounting practice is analytically central in the framing
- Own related work disclosed neutrally, without breaking anonymity
- No citation blocks that a reviewer could delete without loss
Anti-patterns
- Gap-spotting: "little is known about…" with no live disagreement at stake.
- Canon tourism: citing Burchell et al. and Miller & O'Leary ritually while arguing with neither.
- Wrong-canon drift: building the front end on JAR/TAR measurement debates AOS readers do not share.
- Sociology without accounting: the imported theory is centered while the accounting practice is a backdrop.
Output format
【Thread】the AOS conversation entered; key papers ...
【Settled view】what that conversation currently believes ...
【Crack】the anomaly / silence / contradiction ...
【Delta】vs nearest papers 1 / 2 / 3 — one sentence each ...
【Interdisciplinary base】primary sources + their accounting appropriation ...
【Next step】aos-methods