Prof. Dr. Lukas Löhlein

Overview

Lukas Löhlein is Professor of Management Accounting and Control. His research focuses on understanding the evolving role of accounting and control systems in contemporary organizations and society. He serves on the editorial board of the European Accounting Review and reviews for leading journals including Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, and The Accounting Review.

Research Interests

• Management Control and Digitalization

  Lukas Löhlein investigates how digital technologies and AI are anything but neutral. They introduce new forms of accountability and control, restructure visibility, and shape organizational dynamics. At the same time, he examines how these systems generate digital promises that sustain imaginaries of progress and rationality, while often obscuring underlying uncertainties and tensions.
   

• Everyday Practices of Control

  Drawing on interpretive and critical perspectives, he studies the affective dimensions of control. His work in this area explores how control systems operate beyond formal representations, through visuals, everyday objects such as lists, or embodied practices, shaping how control is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in everyday organizational life.
   

• Accounting for Society

  Lukas Löhlein also examines the broader societal implications of accounting and control practices beyond the corporation, including in non-profits and civil society networks. His research explores how accounting participates in the quantification, classification, and ordering of life, shaping how responsibilities are distributed, values are formalized, and collective priorities are enacted. Through this lens, numbers and processes of quantification are understood not as merely technical practices, but as powerful social forces with far-reaching effects on how we govern, relate, and ultimately, care.

Academic Positions

Activities and Functions