ABSTRACT
How can we better align accounting and emancipation today? To help contribute further insights so as to inform reflection upon this question, we here focus upon an accounting phenomenon of relatively recent times. Building upon existing contributions in the literature and reflecting on-going work, we seek, through a set of brief analyses, to gain some further critical appreciation of a ‘social accounting’ phenomenon that has manifested over the last 40 years. These last 40 years have witnessed something of a take off, followed by a subsequently interesting trajectory, in the idea and practice of a social accounting (Gray 1999). This social accounting has been characterised as challenging conventional accounting, involving a fusion of concerns about accounting’s content, form and social role. And, on the face of it, it has been constituted in efforts to go beyond a narrow instrumentalism towards an appreciation, informed by critical reflection, of ‘what really matters’ to people, including in the governance of social organisations. What can we learn from this social accounting phenomenon? The question is a rhetorical one. How can one respond to the challenge to learn everything that there is to learn? The challenge is a substantive one. The social accounting phenomenon refers to a vast set of episodes and developments that have manifested throughout the world. Furthermore, we must consider what attempting a substantive critical theoretical appreciation – informed by various theoretical advances, including postmodern insights – involves. On the one hand, it properly involves explorations of these episodes and developments that delve into the specificities, complexities and ambiguities of the various social accounting manifestations in relation to the wider context of which they are part. On the other, if one is to avoid the sort of myopia that can problematically manifest in focusing upon the particular and the specific, it involves recognising key structural forces and seeking to develop a substantive critical thematisation that is also contextually informed. No wonder relatively little has been done by way of responding to the challenge referred to. In respect of this area, a limited number of social analyses and overviews of accounting in action have at least touched upon some aspects of episodes involving
social accounting. For instance, Burchell et al. (1985) is an especially notable contribution (see also Hopwood et al. 1994, Robson 1994), and Gray et al. (1995a, 1996) and Gray and Bebbington (2001) summarise a wealth of insight. Yet clearly this is only scratching the surface in relation to what can potentially be done. And in this regard the existing studies acknowledge the difficulties of constructing the dimensions of a substantive critical appreciation (see Gray 1999: 15). Thus, we can only make a very partial contribution here towards filling the gap. In spite of the partial character of prior studies, we can build upon previous appreciations in the literature – re-interpreting and extending them – to a much greater extent than in the empirical analyses of our earlier chapters. Yet we must eschew, in the context of the limited available space, the elaboration of something akin to the recent history of social accounting in critical theoretical terms. Nevertheless, our concern here is in some ways to extend critical appreciation of a number of key episodes and developments from the late 1960s onwards involving the mobilisation of social accounting. Our selection of episodes and developments for analysis and re-appraisal, from the vast and rich tapestry that has manifested, has been informed by existing literature on social accounting. The selection has been made with a view to offering some key insights and stimulating further research and engagement towards the realisation of social accounting’s emancipatory potential.
