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Sociology

Perspectives on accounting, commonalities & the public sphere

Profile image of Glen LehmanGlen Lehman

2010, Critical Perspectives on Accounting

https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CPA.2010.04.003
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Abstract

This paper examines the role accounting could perform in the public sphere. The public sphere is the arena where different values are examined, explored and determined. Through an examination of critical, liberal and postmodern accounting perspectives the paper explores how information can democratise our civil societies. One-sided positions that assert one tradition in favour of another are examined, with a view to creating an accountability vision that nurtures commonalities. The aim is to contribute to debates between critical, liberal and postmodern positions on the criterion of accountability.

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John Storey

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1987

This paper questions the adequacy of current approaches to accounting research. Following a re-examination of the progress made by the interpretive perspective in correcting for many of the shortcomings in the traditional framework, a catalogue of unresolved problems and silences is constructed. It Is argued that central to this is the persistent fallure adequately to contextualize accounting whilst at the same time treating it as a fully social practice. The second part of the paper is accordingly devoted to the deveopment and illustration of an alternative, fuller, perspective. This, it ls claimed, contains the potential to alIow a deeper understanding of the linkages between routinlzed practices and contlicts and the socio-economic contexts in which they are located.

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  • Sociology

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    What is accounting? The “being” and “be-ings” of the accounting phenomenon and its critical appreciation
    Nihel Chabrak

    Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2019

    PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect a critical perspective drawing from phenomenology, especially informed by a reading of Heidegger, to enhance and extend appreciation of the need to question accounting’s meaning or delineation and how research might be undertaken into the accounting phenomenon and related areas.Design/methodology/approachTo illustrate and clarify argumentation in terms of accounting mobilization and the domain of accounting research, the mainstream and strongly positivistic accounting perspective adopted in the USA is critically assessed. At the same time, the authors elaborate how much of interpretive research (including much of that labeled critical) is also lacking in terms of the perspective articulated here.FindingsThe paper stresses the case for questioning the taken-for-granted and conventional. It promotes reflexivity, cautious pragmatism, attentiveness to the value of the existing, responsibility to difference and otherness and openness to new ...

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