aims to 'democratise' accounting by challenging its more traditional business focus and provide alternatives that recognise the needs of various stakeholder communities.Introduction
Mainstream accounting is a narrow discipline – with
strong capitalist underpinnings and a focus on corporations, meeting the
information needs of financial markets and maximising shareholder wealth. Since
the mid-1970s, critical accountants have argued that such a limited focus is
inadequate for a profession that purports to act in the “public interest”,
particularly given the profound economic, social, and environmental impacts of
corporate activity. They observe that even when
corporations (and, indeed, public sector organisations) and accountants report
on such matters, they typically do so using business frameworks and
concepts. Moreover, in keeping with positivist models of knowledge, accountants typically
portray their methods as “politically neutral” further obscuring the value
judgements built into their analytic methods. The need for new approaches is increasingly evident as accounting
has become implicated in politically contentious areas like sustainability,
ethical investment, labour relations and participatory development.
While Social and
Environmental Accounting (SEA) academics have recognised and sought to address
the shortcomings of traditional accounting, initiatives have been disappointing
as issues such as corporate social responsibility are still approached
predominantly through a “business case” lens, focusing on “top-down”
initiatives that produce “win-wins” for business and its stakeholders.
The SEA community along with other critical commentators has become increasingly aware that SEA’s aspirations for more “democratic” and “participatory”
accountings have been under-theorised, and that this has significantly impeded
the development of more inclusive accounting and accountability systems that
can seriously engage with multiple perspectives.
In an effort to address these issues, the Marsden
project argues for the value of pluralism and conflict in a healthy democracy
and outlines a conceptual framework for “dialogic accounting” that takes
ideological conflicts seriously. It draws on agonistic conceptions of
democracy with the aim of better understanding the perspectives of different
stakeholder groups (particularly those whose viewpoints are not
well-represented in traditional accounting) and enabling them to develop
accountings that accord with their own philosophical and political standpoints
(e.g. by articulating demands for disclosures attuned to their decision and
accountability needs). The Marsden research, accordingly, seeks to
develop new theorisations of the role of accountants, stakeholder engagement,
and information systems needed to help SEA academics and others challenge
traditional practices and develop new dialogic forms of accounting. The aim is
not to replace one dominant form of accounting with another, but rather to
foster more multi-dimensional accounting and accountability systems capable of
engaging a variety of perspectives and facilitating wide-ranging discussion and
debate about organisational matters.
Contact details
Professor Judy Brown Judy.Brown@vuw.ac.nz
Professor Jesse Dillard: jdillard@pdx.edu
Professor Trevor Hopper: T.H.Hopper@sussex.ac.uk
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