ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces four dominant generic philosophical traditions that have played a prominent role in both accounting and philosophical research. It uses these traditions to examine key social and environmental dilemmas that confront accounting systems in the context of the communities to whom they report. The first tradition encompasses procedural approaches to ethics such as modern liberalism and utilitarianism. The second tradition informs critical approaches to accounting that challenge the prevailing capitalist social system and its propensity to generate social inequalities and environmental problems. The third tradition encompasses a number of more recent 'subversive' approaches including both postmodern and post-structural perspectives, amongst others. The final tradition is concerned with those interpretivist approaches that are used to examine the assumptions that influence institutions such as accounting, business and governance. Jurgen Habermas's ethical and procedural model – the Ideal Speech Community (ISC) – can be used to determine the rightness of the various actions that citizens make.
