ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the various ways in which the author has sought to explore and understand accounting as an instrument of accountability. As a chronic feature of daily life accountability could be seen as pervasive, as largely taken for granted, but nevertheless as central to social life. Within accounting and finance, agency theory assumptions of the self-interested and opportunistic nature of the individual remain highly influential. Such assumptions are taken to capture an essential aspect of human nature. Accounting homogenises in the way in which the diverse activities of production, sales, marketing, research and development and so on, are thereby re-presented in purely economic terms – as costs, revenue, investment and so on. The changed use of accounting information to create accountability around profit centres within ELB, along with the sense of shared destiny that the project of company survival created, served only to increase the power of the small corporate head office of Conglom.
