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Accounting as a human practice: The appeal of other voices
Accounting OrgantzationsandSociety,Vol. 18,No.2/3,pp. 105-106,1993. Printed in Great Britain
ACCOUNTING
AS A H U M A N
PRACTICE: THE VOICES
0361-3682/93 $6.00+.00 © 1993 PergamonPress Ltd
APPEAL OF
OTHER
C. EDWARD ARRINGTON
Louisiana State University and JERE 1Z FRANCIS
University o f lowa
The papers gathered here were all originally contributions to a conference entitled "Accounting as a Human Practice: The Appeal of Other Voices", held at the University of Iowa in September 1989. The rubric "Human Practice" was intended to affirm a view that the value and the rationality of accounting research are to be found in the consequences that accounting has for those subjected to it. The phrase "The Appeal of Other Voices" was a way of signalling a desire to open up the terrain of accounting debate yet further. In particular, there was a c o n c e r n to bring into the accounting literature intellectual debates from the humanities that so far are underrepresented in the accounting literature. Given such aims, it w o u l d be foolish to seek to identify, or to impose a single and consistent thematic on the papers that follow. To do so w o u l d be at odds with the very purpose of the conference. Nonetheless, we may reflect, with our readers, on some of the "suspicions" that the event and the papers have raised in our minds.
Moral suspicions Accounting is saturated with moral implications. As a practice, it influences the quality of life for millions of people in subtle and often
complex ways. Its vocabulary is one of values, of e-valuation, of welfare, of fights, of expectations, of obligations, of equity, of contracts, of punishments and rewards, ofuiility, satisfaction, responsibility and accountability. The moral force o f accounting needs to be questioned in the light of the values that it promotes and the values that it impedes. A renewed interest in values, and in the moral context o f accounting, in no way entails c o m m i t m e n t to a hierarchy o f values, to the belief that there is a parsimonious and simple moral character to accounting. An interest in values on the part o f accounting scholars requires only a problematizing of accounting in light of its multiple effects on the lives of those that it seeks to administer. For accounting n like so many other social sciences announced itself as a sociocratic discipline that claimed scientific knowledge and professional talent to administer human lives in the name of social efficiency and e c o n o m i c progress. These values that gave moral legitimacy to practices like accounting at the fin de siecle seem inadequate to current difficulties of life. But only now, belatedly, are such values coming to the fore and being addressed explicitly as things that may be questioned, analyzed and possibly modified.
105
106
c.E. ARRINGTONand J. IL FRANCIS
The implications for accounting are considerable. We can begin to appreciate h o w accounting and other expert practices, through the values they promote, have acted both to constitute a certain moral terrain, and to exclude from it values at odds with it. Accounting, intimately w e d d e d to e c o n o m i c efficiency and capital growth, is implicated in a range of urgent moral issues that surround us today: an economically ravaged environment, a deskilled labor force, the social dysfunctions of corporate power, the arbitrariness of the market as a distributor of goods and life chances, and growing suspicions about the tenability of the rhetoric of "professionalism" and "public service" that surrounds the accounting profession. Whilst the essays that follow do not adhere to any single value position, they nonetheless share a recognition that the traditional value context of accounting needs to be problematized. Epistemological suspicions
In the early twentieth century, a range of "new" disciplines surfaced in the universities, accounting among them. These disciplines claimed status as social sciences by seeking to adapt the h u m a n i t a s m the study of humankind as such - - to the methods and rationalities that had p r o d u c e d the tremendous successes of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century physical sciences. A positivistic (or physicalist) epistemological matrix emerged for the social sciences: all knowledge - - w h e t h e r of humans or of natural phenomena - - was to be judged against the epistemological standards that had
served the nineteenth-century physical sciences so very well. This positivistic image of the model for the sciences has n o w been substantially undermined, both within and outside accounting. In accounting, the demise of positivistic epistemology has o p e n e d up the discipline to a pluralistic view as to what counts as a legitimate knowledge claim. From this follows that accounting research should not be required to succumb to a normative insistence that knowledge be p r o d u c e d in this way, rather than that. More, rather than fewer, vocabularies, theories and methods are necessary if accounting is to fully address the many dimensions of its practice. There is a need to adapt modes of knowledge production from other disciplines. There is a growing sense that the distinction between "science" and "non-science" lacks point, that it is inhibiting. There is a sense that the attempt to align accounting with the natural sciences, and to distance it from other disciplines such as the humanities, may have been seriously limiting. Rather than an insistence that one meet certain methodological credentials, the view is emerging that a multiplicity of perspectives and voices is more likely to bring about advance than a closing d o w n of legitimate avenues of research. The essays published below demonstrate the fruitfulness of appealing, in differing ways, to "other voices". To this extent, they more than fulfil the aims of the conference. It is for others to build on their achievements in seeking to address "accounting as a human practice".
ACCOUNTING
AS A H U M A N
PRACTICE: THE VOICES
0361-3682/93 $6.00+.00 © 1993 PergamonPress Ltd
APPEAL OF
OTHER
C. EDWARD ARRINGTON
Louisiana State University and JERE 1Z FRANCIS
University o f lowa
The papers gathered here were all originally contributions to a conference entitled "Accounting as a Human Practice: The Appeal of Other Voices", held at the University of Iowa in September 1989. The rubric "Human Practice" was intended to affirm a view that the value and the rationality of accounting research are to be found in the consequences that accounting has for those subjected to it. The phrase "The Appeal of Other Voices" was a way of signalling a desire to open up the terrain of accounting debate yet further. In particular, there was a c o n c e r n to bring into the accounting literature intellectual debates from the humanities that so far are underrepresented in the accounting literature. Given such aims, it w o u l d be foolish to seek to identify, or to impose a single and consistent thematic on the papers that follow. To do so w o u l d be at odds with the very purpose of the conference. Nonetheless, we may reflect, with our readers, on some of the "suspicions" that the event and the papers have raised in our minds.
Moral suspicions Accounting is saturated with moral implications. As a practice, it influences the quality of life for millions of people in subtle and often
complex ways. Its vocabulary is one of values, of e-valuation, of welfare, of fights, of expectations, of obligations, of equity, of contracts, of punishments and rewards, ofuiility, satisfaction, responsibility and accountability. The moral force o f accounting needs to be questioned in the light of the values that it promotes and the values that it impedes. A renewed interest in values, and in the moral context o f accounting, in no way entails c o m m i t m e n t to a hierarchy o f values, to the belief that there is a parsimonious and simple moral character to accounting. An interest in values on the part o f accounting scholars requires only a problematizing of accounting in light of its multiple effects on the lives of those that it seeks to administer. For accounting n like so many other social sciences announced itself as a sociocratic discipline that claimed scientific knowledge and professional talent to administer human lives in the name of social efficiency and e c o n o m i c progress. These values that gave moral legitimacy to practices like accounting at the fin de siecle seem inadequate to current difficulties of life. But only now, belatedly, are such values coming to the fore and being addressed explicitly as things that may be questioned, analyzed and possibly modified.
105
106
c.E. ARRINGTONand J. IL FRANCIS
The implications for accounting are considerable. We can begin to appreciate h o w accounting and other expert practices, through the values they promote, have acted both to constitute a certain moral terrain, and to exclude from it values at odds with it. Accounting, intimately w e d d e d to e c o n o m i c efficiency and capital growth, is implicated in a range of urgent moral issues that surround us today: an economically ravaged environment, a deskilled labor force, the social dysfunctions of corporate power, the arbitrariness of the market as a distributor of goods and life chances, and growing suspicions about the tenability of the rhetoric of "professionalism" and "public service" that surrounds the accounting profession. Whilst the essays that follow do not adhere to any single value position, they nonetheless share a recognition that the traditional value context of accounting needs to be problematized. Epistemological suspicions
In the early twentieth century, a range of "new" disciplines surfaced in the universities, accounting among them. These disciplines claimed status as social sciences by seeking to adapt the h u m a n i t a s m the study of humankind as such - - to the methods and rationalities that had p r o d u c e d the tremendous successes of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century physical sciences. A positivistic (or physicalist) epistemological matrix emerged for the social sciences: all knowledge - - w h e t h e r of humans or of natural phenomena - - was to be judged against the epistemological standards that had
served the nineteenth-century physical sciences so very well. This positivistic image of the model for the sciences has n o w been substantially undermined, both within and outside accounting. In accounting, the demise of positivistic epistemology has o p e n e d up the discipline to a pluralistic view as to what counts as a legitimate knowledge claim. From this follows that accounting research should not be required to succumb to a normative insistence that knowledge be p r o d u c e d in this way, rather than that. More, rather than fewer, vocabularies, theories and methods are necessary if accounting is to fully address the many dimensions of its practice. There is a need to adapt modes of knowledge production from other disciplines. There is a growing sense that the distinction between "science" and "non-science" lacks point, that it is inhibiting. There is a sense that the attempt to align accounting with the natural sciences, and to distance it from other disciplines such as the humanities, may have been seriously limiting. Rather than an insistence that one meet certain methodological credentials, the view is emerging that a multiplicity of perspectives and voices is more likely to bring about advance than a closing d o w n of legitimate avenues of research. The essays published below demonstrate the fruitfulness of appealing, in differing ways, to "other voices". To this extent, they more than fulfil the aims of the conference. It is for others to build on their achievements in seeking to address "accounting as a human practice".