The limits of accountability

Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938

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The limits of accountability Martin Messner Department of Accounting and Management Control, HEC School of Management, 1, Rue de la Libération, F-78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France

a b s t r a c t Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. Specifically, it is often suggested that extant financial and management accounting practices embody a rather restricted form of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities as more than economic subjects. Against this backdrop, this paper raises the question of whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable from an ethical point of view. It does so by inquiring into the limits that the accountable self faces when giving an account. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler, the paper describes the accountable self as an opaque, exposed, and mediated self that is inherently limited in its ability to give an account of itself. Because of these limits, we cannot expect demands for accountability always to be fully met. The paper points to the ethical importance of recognizing this limited nature of accountability and outlines possible ramifications of this fact for practice. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. To say that someone should be accountable for particular events or actions is to hold certain expectations about what this person or organization should be able and obliged to explain, justify and take responsibility for (Cooper & Owen, 2007). While discussions on accountability are often dominated by a concern for shareholders, in other instances, demands for greater public accountability have been framed more widely also to include stakeholders such as employees, customers, or future generations. Furthermore, the demand for greater public accountability often translates into a perceived need for tighter managerial controls within firms. Recent corporate scandals seem to suggest that managers should be subject to heightened managerial accountability vis-à-vis their peers and superiors.

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In this paper, I raise the question of whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable. Despite the widely shared calls for increased public and managerial accountability, I will suggest that demands for accountability may become so great as to be ethically problematic for the person or organization that is expected to give an account. There are, in other words, certain limits to accountability that need to be acknowledged in order to prevent accountability from turning into what Judith Butler calls ‘‘ethical violence” (Butler, 2005). This rather strong and emotive expression refers to a form of accountability that, in the name of ethics, forces the accountable self to account for something which is very difficult or even impossible to justify and which, in this respect, does ‘‘violence” to the accountable self. Putting forward such an argument implies extending and even challenging some of the positions set out in the existing accounting literature. In accounting research, concern for more accountability has been shared by those who have criticized extant financial and management accounting practices for contributing to what they see as a very limited understanding of accountability (e.g. Gray, 2002; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nelson, 1993; Roberts,

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1991, 1996, 2001, 2003; Schweiker, 1993; Shearer, 2002; Young, 2006). A main tenet of this literature is that the conventional language of accounting portrays human beings as purely economic agents who relate to each other through their self-interests alone. As a consequence, accounting promotes a style of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities and our identities as more than just economic subjects. This literature thus echoes concern for the restrictive nature of contemporary management and financial accounting practice and for the partial form of accountability relations that these practices imply. As a remedy, several authors have suggested the introduction of more encompassing forms of accountability, as may be achieved through social and environmental reporting practices (e.g. Gray, 2002; Shearer, 2002; Unerman & Bennett, 2004). It has also been proposed that disembodied forms of accounting need to be complemented with a situation-specific sensitivity for the ‘‘particular other” whose interests and values cannot be appropriately accounted for by a system of general rules or principles (e.g. Lehman, 1999; Roberts, 2003; Shearer, 2002). Overall, the main argument has been that accounting ‘‘needs to get beyond the constraints that have been imposed on its language” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 345), if it is to allow individuals and organizations to engage in a less restricted, i.e. more comprehensive, way to account to and for each other. This paper does not deny that, in many situations, it is reasonable to demand more accountability. It does, however, remind us that accountability itself may become a problematic practice, if it does not acknowledge its own inherent limits as an ethical practice. These limits are constituted by the burden that accountability may place on the accountable self who is expected to provide a convincing account even in situations where this is extremely difficult or even impossible. Examples for how these limits to accountability work upon the accountable self may be found in various contexts and they may assume different forms, depending on what it is that constrains the ability to account for oneself. Sometimes, the reasons why somebody has taken a particular course of action are not entirely clear to this person herself, such as when a manager makes a decision in a rather intuitive way. In such a case, accountability is limited by the opaque nature of a person’s experiences and practical engagements. To which extent is it then ethically justified to compel the manager to provide a full account for what she is not fully conscious of? In other cases, people find themselves exposed to situations of accountability that they cannot easily argue away. If someone is subject to a permanent need for justification, then this can turn into a burden that is ethically problematic insofar as the concern for accountability ends up ‘‘colonizing” the conduct of the accountable self. Finally, there are cases in which multiple accountabilities act upon a manager or organization. If different stakeholders raise conflicting demands, then this requires the accountable self to speak in ‘‘several languages at the same time”. While a person’s failure to meet some of the demands may be regarded as unethical, expecting that person to measure up to multiple and conflicting accountabilities is itself ethically questionable.

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In cases like these, the demand for accountability is likely to be experienced as something problematic. This problematic nature also becomes evident in Sinclair’s (1995) illuminating investigation into public sector managers’ experiences of accountability. Sinclair shows that the managers’ narratives on accountability feature two types of discourses, which she calls ‘‘structural” and ‘‘personal”. While she speaks of ‘‘accountability” in both cases, the ‘‘personal” notion of accountability actually seems to point to the limits of accountability insofar as it reflects the experience of the difficulties in measuring up to one’s accountability: ‘‘Accountability in the structural discourse is spoken of as the technical property of a role or contract, structure or system. Territories are clear and demarcated, accountabilities uncontested [. . .]. In contrast, the personal discourse is confidential and anecdotal. In this discourse, accountability is ambiguous, with the potential to be something that is feared or uplifting [. . .]. The personal discourse functions to admit the risks and failures, exposure and invasiveness with which accountability is experienced” (Sinclair, 1995, p. 224). While Sinclair provides interesting empirical material on the experience of accountability, she does not really theorize the reasons and consequences of this problematic experience. Why are demands for accountability at times perceived as invasive and ambiguous? And what does this imply with respect to the ethical value of accountability? In this paper, I set out to provide an answer to these questions. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler (2001, 2004, 2005), I argue that the accountable self is vulnerable to accountability insofar as it is an opaque self that cannot account for everything it has lived through; an exposed self that experiences accountability as an intrusion into its own practice; and a mediated self whose accounts have to rely on a medium that is not of its own making. The vulnerability of the accountable self implies that there are limits to accountability as an ethical practice – in the sense that too much accountability can become an ethically problematic burden for the accountable self. My analysis resonates to a large extent with Roberts’ (2009) recent inquiry into the ‘‘limits of transparency”. Roberts also refers to Butler’s work, which he mobilizes to critically reflect upon the adequacy of transparency as a form of accountability. He calls for an ‘‘intelligent” form of accountability that does not exclusively rely on the power to make things transparent, but acknowledges the ‘‘impossibility of this ideal of a self that is fully transparent to itself and others” (p. 2). The main difference between the present paper and Roberts’ (2009) work lies in its scope. Whereas Roberts puts forward managerial and ethical concerns over too much transparency, I inquire more broadly into the problematic nature of too much accountability. I suggest that while the practice of giving and demanding accounts contributes significantly to our selfunderstanding as morally responsible subjects (Schweiker, 1993), there is a need to be aware of the limits of accountability when compelling others to give justification for their behavior.

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The ideas put forward in this paper imply a new perspective on accountability and, as such, are directly relevant to our understanding of the ethical dimension of financial and management accounting practices. These practices are a major means through which public and managerial accountability is achieved in contemporary organizations, and if one argues that accountability has its ethical limits, then it follows that financial and management accounting practices equally need to be reflected upon in this respect. This paper’s argument unfolds in the following way. The following section describes how accountability, accounting and ethics are fundamentally related to each other. The subsequent section provides an overview of the critical literature on accountability, as outlined above, and explains the main thrust of arguments put forward in this literature. The blind spot identified in this literature underpins the main section of the paper, in which I theoretically elaborate the idea of the limited nature of accountability and describe the accountable self as an opaque, exposed and mediated self. In each case, examples are provided to illustrate the arguments. The final section discusses how these ideas may be used to inform practice in a way that acknowledges both the need for accountability and its inherent limitations.

2. Accounting, accountability and ethics The notion of accountability is regularly drawn upon in the accounting literature. While there are various discipline-specific uses of this notion (Sinclair, 1995, p. 221), the generic sociological meaning of accountability seems to provide a common ground for most of them. Sociologically speaking, accountability denotes the exchange of reasons for conduct. To give an account means to provide reasons for one’s behavior, to explain and justify what one did or did not do. Such accounts are provided in order to render behavior intelligible and to ‘‘prevent conflicts from arising by verbally bridging the gap between action and expectation” (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p. 46). Social communities feature norms which define who is expected to account for what, to whom and in which manner. The sum of these implicit or explicit expectations regarding the provision of accounts is usually referred to as ‘‘accountability” (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Accountability is a morally significant practice, since to demand an account from someone is to ask this person to enact discursively the responsibility for her behavior. This generic meaning of accountability underlies the use of the notion in both the financial and management accounting literature. In the former, the focus is on accounts that are disclosed to external shareholders and the public. This can take various forms, such as profit and loss statements, earnings announcements, or press statements by the CEO. Instead of financial accountability, it is probably more appropriate to talk about ‘‘public accountability” (Sinclair, 1995), since the important characteristic of these accounts is not their financial nature but the fact that their addressees are located outside the organization. In management accounting, in contrast, the exchange of

accounts takes place within the organization or between the organization and some of its contractual stakeholders (e.g. customers, suppliers), often by means of reporting and control routines in which costs, profits, returns or other management-related information are communicated (see Ahrens, 1996; Roberts & Scapens, 1985). This is the domain of ‘‘managerial accountability” (Sinclair, 1995). In both cases, the focus may be more on the content of accountability or on the social practice of giving and demanding accounts.1 Considering both the content and the practice of accountability seems important when it comes to understanding the ethical dimension of accountability. This is because ethical questions may not only emerge with respect to the ‘‘what” of accountability, but also with regards to the ‘‘how”. The ethics of accountability is not only about the types of demands that the accountable self is subject to; it is also about the way in which, and the extent to which, such demands are raised. An ethical question can emerge from the relationship between an actor and someone else, and in its most basic form, it takes the form of: ‘‘How should I act in this particular situation I am situated in?” (see Francis, 1990). Who is directly affected by what I do, here and now? And who is indirectly concerned, somewhere else and/or at some other time? In other words, the ethical question relates to the triangular relationship between oneself, particular others (those who are present), and generalized others (those who are absent). Like Adorno (2001), one may say that the fundamental problem of ethics is ‘‘the problem of how the general interest and the particular interests relate to each other in the course of human interaction” (pp. 18– 19). Ethical questions, in this sense, are closely related to socio-political ones (see Parker, 2003). The latter are about the way in which social relationships should be organized more generally. Ethical questions mirror this general concern, but do so in the context of a particular situation in which one finds oneself in interaction with ‘‘concrete others”. This implies that, whereas ethics is also about sociopolitical questions, the same is not true the other way round.2 Ethical issues may get lost if one abstracts from the concrete implication of individual persons or collective actors. It is important to note that the distinction between ethical and socio-political questions does not mean that the former only apply to individuals, while the latter concern organizations (or societies). I agree with those who have argued that organizations can be considered moral agents and as such can be confronted with ethical questions.3 In this respect, the discussion of the ethics of accountability presented below is relevant to both individual and collective actors. Ultimately, however, I maintain that ‘‘responsibility 1 Similar to the way in which, for example, strategy may be looked at from a perspective of content or of practice (see Chua, 2007). 2 The close connection between ethics and socio-political concerns becomes clear in Section 5, in which I discuss how one may react to the ethical challenges inherent in accountability. 3 There has been considerable debate on this issue, with some authors arguing that organizations can and should be considered moral agents, whereas others have denied this (see, e.g. Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006; Donaldson, 1982; Soares, 2003).

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must be assumed by the individuals within the corporation in order for it to mean anything and for change to take place if it is necessary” (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006, p. 238).

3. Critical perspectives on accountability 3.1. Socio-political and ethical perspectives Several authors of accounting literature have considered accountability from what could be called a ‘‘critical” perspective, highlighting the perceived socio-political and/or ethical problems that particular forms of accountability may bring about. Two broad research streams may be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the literature on social and environmental accounting that emerged in the 1960s in line with increased concern for the social and ecological impacts of the capitalist economic system. Three main themes have shaped the development of this literature (Gray, 2002): the exploration and interpretation of new, more widespread forms of accounting, such as social disclosures or environmental impact reports; the examination of particular innovations and experiments in social and environmental accounting; and the practical engagement with organizations to encourage the creation of new accountings. The perspective on accountability taken in this literature largely reflects the socio-political view outlined above. Accountability has primarily been discussed in the context of broader socio-political concern rather than as an ethical practice. In line with this paper’s interest in ethical questions, I therefore do not discuss the literature on social and environmental accounting in greater detail here, except for one contribution to this literature that has been heavily informed by ethical arguments (Shearer, 2002) and, as such, has established a link to the second stream of research. This second stream has emerged from a primarily sociological concern for the nature of accounting practice, of which Roberts and Scapens’ (1985) work was one of the first systematic expressions. Their main interest was in ‘‘the intended and actual impact that the use of accounting information has in shaping and maintaining particular patterns of accountability within organisations” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 448). More specifically, they argued that accounting systems enable or even foster ‘‘more distanced forms of accountability” and a style of management that rests upon control at a distance (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 451). As face-to-face contact becomes less important, the possibility of negotiating the meaning of accounts also withers. Since the image of organizations produced by contemporary accounting practice can only be a ‘‘partial, selective and potentially distorted reflection of the flow of events and practices that constitute organisational life” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 454), there is a risk that this one-dimensional information comes to be taken for the only relevant reality, while the ‘‘underlying physical processes and social relationships are seen merely as a means for realising” them (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 452). In subsequent writings, other authors have elaborated on, and in some respects challenged, the critical perspec-

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tive inherent in this early work (e.g. Boland & Schultze, 1996; Laughlin, 1996; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nelson, 1993; Roberts, 1991, 2003; Shearer, 2002). Where they concur is in their criticism of what they see as the restrictive nature of extant accounting practice: the ‘‘privileging of numbers and quantification” and its domination ‘‘by the economic and in particular by the categories of neoclassical economics” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 342). Hence, arguments for how to make accounting better measure up to our mutual responsibilities have focused either on the content of accounts or on the procedure by which accounts are produced. 3.2. Broadening the content of accounts As to the content of accounts, there is, today, a rich literature on social and environmental accounting that has suggested that external accounting should be extended to cover more than just the economic output of the organization (see Gray, 2002). Such a suggestion has also been put forward by Shearer (2002) whose approach is of particular interest for the purpose of this paper, as it is one of the few contributions to the social accounting literature that is explicitly rooted in ethics. Shearer (2002) draws upon the work of Schweiker (1993) and the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in order to argue that accounting should move from an ‘‘accounting for-the-self” to an ‘‘accounting for-theother”. She adopts Levinas’ (1998) claim that our relationship to others, and thus our moral obligation to others, comes before any ontological sense of having a distinct identity as an autonomous self. Put another way, ethics must always precede ontology, if we are to take seriously the fact that we are always already exposed to others and their demands before we can actively manage this relationship on the basis of our own interests and demands. As a consequence, any conception of accountability needs to acknowledge this priority of the other, because the ‘‘motive for being accountable is never simple, unadorned self-interest. It entails a constitutive relation to others beyond simple contractual relations” (Schweiker, 1993, p. 245). To be accountable means to be accountable to someone else, and to reduce the notion of accountability to the justification of one’s own actions for one’s own sake is to misconstrue accountability. But according to Shearer, this is precisely what is happening today: ‘‘The constitutive impact of economic theory is thus to construct identity such that it is obligated to no one other than itself [. . .]. It is so because economic theory constructs subjectivity and intersubjectivity such that the moral obligation to others always already reduces to the obligation to oneself” (Shearer, 2002, p. 558). Thus, Shearer (2002) claims that economic discourse is an inadequate basis for an ethics of accounting since, broadly speaking, it portrays individuals as guided purely by their self-interests and as being unaccountable to a more comprehensive (social) good. Moreover, the discursive description of accounting is constitutive of accounting practice, as individuals come to internalize the model of

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economic man and regard themselves and their relationships to others in the restrictive terms of this model alone: ‘‘The problem is that the more the rationale of economics pervades our sense of ourselves as human subjects, the more we begin to see ourselves, and our rights and obligations in relation to others, in economic terms. This in turn leads to a lack of demand for accountability, except where one’s rights to ownership and free exchange are at stake, and it serves to ensure that where accountability is sought, the economics of selfinterested trade will be sufficient to its discharge” (Shearer, 2002, p. 565). Shearer’s call for broader accountability rests on the idea that accountability should start with the other rather than with the self. The ultimate aim of accountability is to measure up to the demands of the other, and this ethical requirement should guide the reconstruction of formal systems of accounting. Here, Shearer points to various forms of social, environmental and emancipatory accounting as suggested in the literature. She concedes ‘‘there clearly is no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled response to the other that forms the genuine relation to the other”, such that formal accounting systems will never reach the ideal of an ethics of the other. ‘‘Yet accountants can help to make our economic institutions more responsive to the other, by seeking an accountability that formally recognizes the obligation to the other – even if it does not and cannot reflect the originary relationship from which this obligation derives” (Shearer, 2002, p. 570). It is worthwhile to compare Shearer’s perspective with the arguments put forward by Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001, 2003) and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). While these scholars largely agree with Shearer’s critique of accounting, they are skeptical of the idea of establishing broader standards or principles for accounting, which might comprise, for example, social and environmental reporting duties. What they suggest is not so much a specific content of accounts, but rather a different procedure of how accounts should be produced and exchanged. 3.3. Enriching the procedure of accounting Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001, 2003) has followed up on his earlier work with Scapens (Roberts & Scapens, 1985) by exploring in greater depth two ideal-types of accountability, which he names hierarchical and socializing forms of accountability. He argues that conventional accounting practice produces a sense of the self that is detrimental to our moral attitude towards each other. He associates accounting with a hierarchical form of accountability, in which individuals take it for granted that their value and worth depends upon their position within the organizational hierarchy and upon the fulfillment of imposed targets. In striving for acceptance and recognition, individuals are drawn ‘‘further and further into conformity with the standards of utility upon which ‘success’ depends” (Roberts, 1991, p. 360). Internalizing these standards, the individual comes to see herself as solitary and singular, being dependent in her self-esteem on impersonal principles and rules.

‘‘These standards are ‘taken over’ and become the lens through which we judge ourselves, and compare ourselves with others” (Roberts, 1991, p. 362). Hierarchical forms of accountability have an individualizing character, since they promote a sense of the self that is preoccupied with achieving certain norms and standards and, at the same time, induce the self to relate to others through the lens of these categories alone. The concepts provided by accounting – costs, profits, returns, etc. – become the focal point for individual efforts and for structuring relationships with others. They become the reality on the basis of which communication and organizational life is built. Drawing upon Habermas’ (1987) distinction between instrumental and communicative action, Roberts contrasts the individualizing form of accountability with the more socializing forms that cultivate dialogue and openness instead of calculation and instrumental reason. A socializing relation to others is characterized by a quest for mutual understanding which goes beyond the giving and demanding of accounts through formal categories, as provided by accounting. Roberts argues that such socializing talk will be possible in the relative absence of asymmetries of power and in the context of face-to-face contact between the persons involved. In these circumstances, people can relate to each other informally, openly and without the need to rush to a specific result. Socializing forms of accountability thus foster a recognition of the self and of others that is free from distortion by any imposed formal definitions of the situation. By using Habermas’ distinction between communicative and instrumental action, Roberts clearly emphasizes the procedural dimension of accountability instead of arguing for a specific content of accounts. This emphasis on procedure corresponds to skepticism regarding any efforts to enforce accountability through ethical codes or social and environmental reports. According to Roberts, such forms of stakeholder dialogue are often established in such a way that they simply mirror established systems of financial accountability (Roberts, 2003, p. 256). In other words, they simply reflect the narcissistic concerns of the corporation to appear responsible. For what seems to be a concern for-the-other is really just a concern ‘‘for how the other sees the corporation” (Roberts, 2003). ‘‘What the creation of codes and associated reports achieves, or attempts to achieve, is the repair of the corporate ‘imago’. From this perspective the embrace of ethics can be taken as an expression of corporate egoism: a demand to be seen to be not only powerful but also good” (Roberts, 2003). Moreover, Roberts calls into question extant practices of social and environmental reporting because they trump concerns for local moral sensibility due to the incentive ‘‘to conform with distant interests, even if these now claim to be ethical interests” (Roberts, 2003, p. 259). These distant interests are, in turn, already prefabricated and accommodated to the available technologies of calculation and measurement: ‘‘The problem with ethical disciplinary mechanisms – for a new ‘triple bottom line’ accountability – is that

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we will only ever discover here what we think to look for, and even then we will only be able to ‘see’ with such technologies in the way of seeing that they make possible. So only what is amenable to quantification can be seen; I have to identify and then count and measure what can only ever be proxies for what I am looking for” (Roberts, 2003, p. 261). As an alternative approach to achieving corporate social responsibility, Roberts points to the importance of the personal encounter with the other, with the face and voice of ‘‘those most vulnerable to the effects of corporate conduct” (Roberts, 2003, p. 263). Only on the basis of close proximity may the relationship to others be enacted in a responsible way. McKernan and MacLullich (2004) have taken a similar approach and have stressed the procedural aspect of accountability by arguing that the moral claims of accounting must be grounded mainly in communicative reason. Like Roberts, they assume a rather critical position with regard to ready-made solutions of ethical codes or social and environmental reporting: ‘‘By articulating the nature of our obligation to the other, that demand is domesticated and rendered in our terms. In the case of social accounting this rendering of the other into sameness occurs even before any demand is heard. Such new accountings will capture only what they look for and, in general, what they can quantify” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, pp. 343–344). Where they depart from Roberts’ view is with respect to the possibilities and limits of communicative reason as envisaged by Habermas. Although McKernan and MacLullich acknowledge the emancipatory potential of a rational discourse, they also point to the limitations of discourse ethics as a basis for recovering the moral dimension of accounting. They diagnose a rational bias in Habermas’ conception of communicative reason and criticize the absence of any reference to the role that affection, emotion, and situated judgment (should) play in social life. McKernan and MacLullich (2004) suggest enriching the language of accounting with ‘‘the creative potential of poetry and emotion” (p. 345), and add that ‘‘[w]e must even allow the excessive language of love to be introduced into accounts and into the narrative constitution of corporate agents” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004). What this can mean in practice remains somewhat unclear, however. These scholars seem to be arguing that people and corporations should have more discretion and freedom in the way they narrativize themselves, but the elaboration of this proposition also remains rather vague: ‘‘Firms must be given a degree of freedom to define their own identities and consequently their responsibilities. They must be allowed to be co-authors of themselves, in complex temporal relations with others. Only in the nexus of creative language and action can corporate entities come to write the histories within which they feature both as agent and sufferer, subject and object, and through which they may ultimately emerge as responsible agents” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 344).

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Despite important differences in their arguments, as discussed below, there is a basic similarity between the perspectives adopted by Shearer (2002), Roberts (1991, 2003), and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). All three approaches seem to be motivated by the idea that the most responsible way to account for each other, and thus the ethically best form of accountability, would be one in which there were no constraints in accounting for each other’s demands. Each scholar argues that accounting needs to be freed from the constraints that have been imposed on its language, and each mobilizes the figure of ‘‘the other” and its demands for accountability in order to support this argument. In the case of Shearer (2002), the obligation to the other translates into a call for ‘‘an enhanced social reporting for employee groups, customers, suppliers, and other parties” (Shearer, 2002, p. 568). Roberts (1991, 2003) and McKernan and MacLullich (2004) go even further by suggesting that alternative forms of accounting, such as social and environmental reportings, are themselves insufficient and problematic insofar as they are distant and standardized forms of accountability that cannot really capture the demands of those addressed. This latter point, I believe, illustrates some of the difficulties that overemphasis on the demands of ‘‘the other” ultimately entails. While Shearer (2002) starts out from an idealistic philosophical position that champions the figure of ‘‘the other”, she actually concludes her paper by taking a rather pragmatic perspective – calling for an increased use and importance of social and environmental reporting that would provide more than just economic accountability. In contrast to what Roberts and McKernan and MacLullich suggest, I would argue that this pragmatic shift should not be seen as a weakness but rather as a strength in her approach. Why? First, it seems to me that the idea of accounting having to fulfill the ‘‘absolute obligation to the other” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 356) must necessarily remain idealistic. How could such an idea, for example, be enacted in the context of widely dispersed stakeholders (‘‘others”)? Can one reasonably expect organizations to talk and listen to all the others out there? Shearer’s call for more social and environmental reporting is certainly more realistic in this respect and, thus, more explicit in terms of the practical consequences that follow from her theoretical analysis. Second, problematizing a pragmatic form of accounting as being ‘‘an expression of corporate egoism” (Roberts, 2003, p. 256) or as an unjustifiable reduction ‘‘of the other into sameness” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 344) seems to me questionable. Standardization and quantification are not intrinsically problematic in ethical terms; rather, they are necessary forms of complexity reduction without which little could be achieved in practice. They may become problematic, but likewise, they can be very effective forms of accounting for different interests. Similarly, there is no essential relationship between social and environmental forms of accounting, on the one hand, and corporations’ impression management, on the other hand: it may be the case that some corporations just act out of egoism when voluntarily extending their reporting duties; but to turn this into a general critique of such forms of accounting

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seems unjustified. Finally, and most importantly for this paper, the focus on the demands of the ‘‘other” ultimately suggests that the ethical dimension of accountability is regarded in one direction alone, namely with respect to the person or group to be accounted to. The ethical significance of demanding an account is thereby ignored, although the ‘‘demand side” is as constitutive of the performance involved in accountability as the ‘‘supply side”. Can we safely assume that all kinds of demands for accountability are ethically justified? Or do we need to allow for the possibility that some demands may put too much burden on the one expected to give an account? By proposing to free accountability from its constraints, the above scholars have not considered whether there are any limits to accountability that may be necessary because they have ethical value for the subject that is accountable. Shearer’s pragmatic approach is, in this respect, the most advanced one, because it explicitly takes into account the need for a practical solution that can be implemented in practice. What I think should be added to this is the ethical dimension of such a realistic solution. Demanding something that is unrealistic is also ethically problematic. It is for this reason that I now take a closer look at the limits of accountability.

and speak the truth, since ‘‘the ‘mineness’ of a life is not necessarily its story form” (Butler, 2005, p. 52). As a consequence, if moral judgments rely on how well we can render our behavior intelligible through language, then a failure in our ability to account for ourselves may not only be due to a lack of responsibility; it may equally stem from our incomplete understanding of ourselves for which we are not necessarily responsible. Moreover, the ‘‘success” of a narrative is not simply a matter of an individual’s ability to know oneself. Rather, a narrative has to be addressed to someone who has to acknowledge it, and it needs to follow some rules that make it understandable as a narrative. Besides the narrative capacity of the narrator, there are thus two further factors that influence the giving of an account:

4. The limits of accountability

The existence of an addressee and of some social norms regulating recognition implies that the act of recognition is equally an act of transformation for the self. ‘‘One is compelled and comported outside oneself” (Butler, 2005, p. 28) and cannot but build upon the structure of the address and the norms mediating this address in order to make oneself comprehensible and recognizable. It is this need to go beyond oneself in accounting for oneself that Schweiker (1993) refers to when talking about the ‘‘doubleness in identity” (p. 240). In his reflection on the moral significance of accounting, Schweiker argues that, in the act of giving an account, we experience a movement away from ourselves that, somewhat paradoxically, simultaneously brings us closer to ourselves. When we account for our actions and beliefs, we take the position of a third person and, in so doing, enact a distance between ourselves as ‘accountants’ and ourselves as the object of our accounts. Therefore, in the moment of accounting for ourselves, we may experience a gap between who we are and what we do, and the discursive portrayal thereof – a gap that may evoke feelings of otherness, such as manifested in estrangement, pride or shame. This gap not only derives from the fact that we talk about ourselves, but also from the social conditions which structure such talk: the norms to which we subscribe, and the exposure to some other person whom we are to address. If both the presence of an addressee and the existence of social norms mediating this address impact the act of giving an account, the question needs to be raised of whether the person accounting for him or herself can be expected to do so in an ‘autonomous’ way. To what extent is the account that one gives one’s own account, and to what extent does it rely on the role of the addressee and on the social norms mediating the scene of address? Again, as in the case of a limited understanding of oneself, these

4.1. Narrative capacity and its constraints My elaboration on the limits of accountability builds upon the work of Judith Butler, which so far has not influenced critical accounting research to the same extent as the writings of other philosophers (see Roberts, 2009). In one of her recent books, however, which is dedicated to the practice of giving an account, Butler (2005) herself draws upon ‘‘various philosophers and critical theorists” (p. 21), some of which, such as Levinas or Foucault, have featured quite prominently in the accounting literature.4 Although Butler does not claim to synthesize the ideas of the scholars she draws upon, she maintains that ‘‘each theory suggests something of ethical importance that follows from the limits that condition any effort one might make to give an account of oneself” (Butler, 2005). Butler acknowledges that the practice of giving an account is a major means of enacting one’s responsibility (see Schweiker, 1993). An account is a type of narrative and, as such, it ‘‘depends upon the ability to relay a set of sequential events with plausible transitions” and ‘‘draws upon narrative voice and authority, being directed toward an audience with the aim of persuasion” (Butler, 2005, p. 12). Therefore, ‘‘narrative capacity constitutes a precondition for giving an account” (Butler, 2005). Can we expect, however, that one’s conduct can always be fairly represented and justified in narrative form? Here, Butler takes a skeptical position by arguing that ‘‘there is a limit to what the ‘I’ can actually recount” (2005, p. 66). In other words, we cannot reasonably expect that we can always know

4

The book is an extension of an earlier published paper (Butler, 2001).

‘‘An account of oneself is always given to another, whether conjured or existing, and this other establishes the scene of address as a more primary ethical relation than a reflexive effort to give an account of oneself. Moreover, the very terms by which we give an account, by which we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves and to others, are not of our making. They are social in character, and they establish social norms, a domain of unfreedom and substitutability within which our ‘singular’ stories are told” (Butler, 2005, p. 21).

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conditions seem to point to several limits to accountability that result from the very nature of the act of giving an account. If there are indeed such limits, then it seems that accountability cannot easily be regarded as the ultimate expression of responsibility. Although Butler does not explicitly say so, I think that three different limits to accountability that feature in her text can be identified. These are located (1) in one’s own opacity to oneself, (2) in the inevitable exposure to an addressee, and (3) in the modes of rationality mediating the address. 4.2. Opaque selves The first constraint upon every account of oneself is grounded in those areas of the self and its conduct that remain foreign to the self. This foreignness marks a limit to every effort to know oneself and therefore restricts one’s ability to tell a full story of oneself. Butler (2005, p. 20) speaks of an ‘‘opacity” that lies at the heart of every individual and that escapes knowledge and narration. It is part of ourselves, of our experience and our behavior, but we cannot fully account for it, because it is at the same time not part of ourselves. Therefore, I cannot explain everything I have done, and I cannot tell a coherent story of who I am and what I have experienced because my experience and conduct have not been motivated exclusively by my conscious efforts and deliberations and because the minutiae and complexity of what happens will often exceed my recognition and memory. Butler resorts to psychoanalysis and, more specifically, to the difficult task within transference of bringing to the fore the unconscious. While one may argue that ‘‘the normative goal of psychoanalysis is to permit the client to tell a single and coherent story about herself that will satisfy the wish to know herself” (Butler, 2005, p. 51), Butler is critical of such a view. She maintains that the unconscious cannot be narrated and turned into conscious knowledge. The idea that the unconscious can be transformed into reflective articulation is ‘‘an impossible ideal, and one that undercuts one of the most important tenets of psychoanalysis” (Butler, 2005, p. 58). Therefore, fully articulate expression of one’s experiences cannot be the ultimate goal of psychoanalytic work, and the analyst must find other ways to help the client master the unconscious than by narrative reconstruction. This is not to say that narratives do not play an important role in making sense of one’s life, but to warn against the idea of some ‘‘hypermastery” of oneself through narration (Butler, 2005, p. 52). ‘‘In any event, it does not follow that, if a life needs some narrative structure, then all of life must be rendered in narrative form” (Butler, 2005). Contemporary social theory offers a related but somewhat different way of framing this issue. Here, opacity about one’s actions emerges in the form of ‘‘tacit knowledge” (Polanyi, 1983) or ‘‘practical consciousness” (Giddens, 1984), i.e. a component of agency that cannot really be expressed discursively and therefore exceeds the domain of discursive rationalization or accountability. As Wittgenstein (1975, §217) puts it, there is a limit to justifying a given practice, such that at one point, one will be inclined to say: ‘‘This is just how I act”. Going even further,

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phenomenologists and actor-network theorists have suggested that what actors do can only partly be explained by recourse to their intentions or will (Latour, 2005; Rachel, 1994). To a considerable degree, action is motivated by something that is external to the individual actor. As Latour (2005, p. 50) says, ‘‘the most powerful insight of social sciences is that other agencies over which we have no control make us do things”. In other words, my own initiative ‘‘is in a certain way not my initiative” (Waldenfels, 1995, p. 121), and this foreignness at the heart of agency raises doubts about the demand to account for one’s conduct as if this conduct were solely the product of one’s own making.5 Yet, the active component of agency, in the form of a decision or a judgment, is likewise subject to limits of rationalization that challenge the possibilities of accountability. A decision or judgment, Derrida (1992, 2007) argues, always happens when calculative logic comes to its end. A decision is decisive insofar as it cannot be derived from any knowledge. It may be based on knowledge (and often should), but at one point, there will be the need to go beyond this knowledge and to take the risk of making a decision. A decision is like a leap into the dark in this respect. It must ‘‘go through the ordeal of the undecidable”, for otherwise ‘‘it would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process” (Derrida, 1992, p. 24). Whether an action is grounded in tacit knowledge, in an incalculable decision, or in intuition and impulse,6 the consequences for accountability are similar. These forms of opacity introduce a limit to what can be accounted for by means of rational argumentation. If there is a gap between ‘‘life” and the account of this life, the practice of accounting for one’s life cannot measure up to what is accounted for. This, in turn, means that if one extends the sphere of accountability beyond such limits, this will result in an ‘‘ethical burden” for the subject, insofar as the latter will

5 Of course, we must not confuse sensitivity towards this opacity with the much stronger claim that nobody can be held accountable for what he or she does. We are confronted here with the difficult but important distinction between ‘causes’ and ‘conditions’ of action. In a very careful reflection on the public debate in the US after 9/11, Butler (2004) points out that we must try to understand the conditions for terrorism without simply justifying terrorist acts through these conditions. The insight that people act under the influence of conditions does not free them from their individual responsibilities; but inquiring into the conditions remains the only way to influence individual behavior in a non-violent way. 6 See Adorno (2001, p. 7) for the example of moral impulses. A moral impulse, Adorno says, ‘‘introduces something alien into moral philosophy, something that does not quite fit” when measured against the ideal of argumentative reasoning (Adorno, 2001, p. 8). These limits of theory are the limits to justification of one’s actions and decisions by means of rational argumentation. Interestingly, the problem of theorizing is also reflected in the social accounting literature. As Gray (2002) has pointed out, there is a relative absence of papers that report on practical engagements in the field and that offer theoretical underpinnings for particular types of accountings. One explanation that Gray offers is the difficulty of finding a substantial justification for new forms of accounting which are often deemed important simply on the basis of a conviction or moral impulse. ‘‘How might one write up such things? How can one provide some justification for ad hoc, pragmatic and, at times, entirely intuitive choices?” (Gray, 2002, p. 702.)

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be obliged to account for something that is difficult or impossible to rationalize. To be sure, there are procedures in organizations through which decisions or judgments are linked to calculative practices and thereby become more amenable to accountability. Burchell, Clubb, Hopwood, Hughes, and Nahapiet (1980, p. 15) refer to this as the ‘‘extension of computational practice into the realms of the judgemental domain”: ‘‘To a large extent, computational practices have been developed which can complement, if not replace, the exercise of human judgement. Accounting has been implicated in the design and implementation of many of these changes in management practice. The increasing formalization of investment appraisals and planning processes has increased the sphere and extent of financial calculation. On occasions the financial risks and uncertainties which were important foci for managerial judgement are now being quantified, with the decisions taking more of a computational form” (Burchell et al., 1980, pp. 15–16). But even the most ‘‘truthful” NPV analysis does not free a manager from the responsibility to make a decision, since ‘‘[t]he burden of decision making always exceeds in complexity whatever guidelines we develop” (Schweiker, 1993, p. 249). Granted, such analysis can help a manager defend her choices when being questioned, and having estimated costs and benefits is certainly better in such a case than not having them. But do we not also assume that ‘‘exceptional managers” or ‘‘leaders” should not blindly rely on such forms of calculation? To critically reflect upon them and be prepared to question their validity? Or even to act contrary to what the calculations say? In an interesting paper on the ethics of entrepreneurship, Brenkert (2009) observes that entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurial managers) are supposed to be ‘‘rule breakers” that act contrary to conventional wisdom. At the same time, he observes, they are often blamed for (moral) misconduct if things go wrong. Brenkert suggests that since rule breaking is a constitutive element of entrepreneurship, there must be some ‘‘moral leeway” when judging the behavior of entrepreneurs. He gives the example of a manager not having her superior’s permission to continue working on a particular project, but nevertheless does so, because she ‘‘thinks that the project has great value and that her supervisor simply does not see its potential” (p. 7). In such a case, moral forgiveness may be warranted, given that there is an expectation that the manager behaves in an ‘‘entrepreneurial” manner. Brenkert concludes that ‘‘one of the features of entrepreneurs that enables them to become successful is their commitment to and enthusiasm for their projects. This colors their judgments with strongly positive, and often times exaggerated, representations of their businesses and projects. Such representations frequently play an important role in their persuasion of others to go along. Far from any attempt to arrive at an objective, rational account of their project, they are committed to and enthusiasti-

cally biased on behalf of their projects. In fact, these projects may only succeed due to such commitment” (p. 11). ‘‘Commitment” and ‘‘enthusiasm” are things that are difficult to rationalize and thus cannot easily inform an account that one has to give. At the same time, they seem accepted or even demanded, even more so in a competitive context in which ‘‘abnormal” or ‘‘excess” returns have become the norm. Are not such excess returns only achievable if one goes beyond the conventional mechanisms of calculating and protecting against uncertainty? If one ‘‘first breaks all the rules”, as Buckingham and Coffman (1999) suggest in their bestselling book? In this respect, it is noteworthy that there are differences in how opacity is taken into consideration in practice. Requirements as to how to account for one’s action tend to differ according to whether the outcome of the action is positive or negative. Managers of successful organizations, for example, are often held in high esteem, even if they cannot really account in detail for the actions they took in order to steer their organizations along the road to success. Quite regularly, notions such as ‘intuition’ or ‘feeling’ are used to make sense of what the manager herself cannot sufficiently explain. In contrast, there is usually less understanding of such opacity in cases of failure. When things go wrong, somebody tends to be made accountable and reference to one’s feelings or intentions usually does not help justify the negative outcome.7 There are other contexts in which opacity arguably plays a less dramatic but still relevant role. AndersonGough, Grey, and Robson (2001) describe the socialization of junior auditors in audit firms and, more specifically, the way in which the auditors learn to become concerned about using their time productively. Audit firms use time sheets to record how employees spend their working hours. The scholars explain that trainees and managers in their case companies had to ‘‘account for every six minutes of the day” and would spend some time each morning filling in the minutes recorded for the previous day (p. 113). Not surprisingly, trainees often had problems accounting for their time in such a detailed way. Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) quote one junior auditor as saying: ‘‘I usually do it every morning. I write my diary, what I’ve done, it’s just automatic now, some days it just doesn’t add up. I know I’ve been in from 8 o’clock until

7 This observation seems to be supported by findings from experimental and archival studies in decision-making and accounting, respectively. In an experimental setting, Tan and Lipe (1997), for example, find that experienced subjects do not pay attention to controllability of outcomes in the case of a positive outcome, while they do so in the case of a negative outcome. In other words, when the outcome is positive, whether the outcome was controllable is not viewed as important; in contrast, when the outcome is negative, appropriate justification becomes crucial. Bettman and Weitz (1983), in their analysis of Letters to Shareholders, point in a similar direction when they find that causes for unfavorable company performance are likely to be explained in more depth than causes for favorable performance. Here, shareholder demands for justification of negative performance are anticipated by the management.

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6 o’clock and I haven’t even got seven and a half hours to charge and I don’t know where it’s gone” (p. 113). If time ‘‘doesn’t add up” and one doesn’t ‘‘know where it’s gone”, then there is a problem of accountability. Granted, this is perhaps an extreme example in the sense of a very detailed demand for accountability, and it is a case where ‘‘making up” the records is probably, to some extent, tolerated. However, extreme cases often serve well to convey an idea that can be of broader relevance (see Flyvbjerg, 2001). The salient point here is that detailed demands for accountability, which ignore the opaque nature of the self, may easily induce ‘‘creative” forms of accounting. They confront the subject with a dilemma: either to suffer criticism for not meeting the demand for accountability or to make up a story to provide an acceptable account.8 The way in which companies such as GE excelled in the past at managing their earnings (see Macintosh, 2002, p. 71) is an example of the second option: trying to appear consistent and in full control of one’s business, even if this actually means being very creative. From there, it is only a small step to more manipulative, or even fraudulent, acts (see Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2008). This is not to say that such acts are always and necessarily linked to an overbearing demand for accountability – in many cases they are motivated simply by greed or other unethical attitudes. Nonetheless, it remains important to acknowledge that obliging someone to provide a consistent and convincing account may be unhelpful when seeking to induce more responsible behavior. 4.3. Exposed selves Opacity is grounded in what remains ‘‘foreign” to the self and, as such, limits the ability of the self to provide a full account of its being in the world. Another type of foreignness explains why the accountable self should also be regarded as an exposed self. This kind of foreignness originates in the part that the addressee plays in the accountability relationship. It has often been pointed out that, in narrating my story to someone else, I not only communicate information to this person, but the narration also has a constitutive quality for me since it serves to construct an intelligible identity as an accountable person (Hines, 1988; Schweiker, 1993). As Butler puts it: ‘‘I do not merely communicate something about my past, though that is doubtless part of what I do. I also enact the self I am trying to describe; the narrative ‘I’ is reconstituted at every moment it is invoked in the narrative itself. That invocation is, paradoxically, a performative and non-narrative act, even as it functions as the fulcrum for narrative itself. I am, in other words, doing something with that ‘I’ – elaborating and positioning it in relation to a real or imagined audience – which is something other than telling a story about it, even though ‘telling’ remains part of what I do” (Butler, 2005, p. 66).

8 A third option is to negotiate away the demand. I discuss this further in a later section.

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The act of accounting for oneself thereby co-constitutes the self, rather than merely communicating information about the self. Such identity shaping begins from the moment a demand for accountability is formulated, a demand to which the accountable self is expected to answer. As an accountable self, I always find myself already in a situation in which a demand has been formulated. And once I start to give an account, I have accepted the situation I am in as a legitimate one and cannot reasonably question it as I go on. I cannot claim to account and at the same time argue that there is no need to account. Once I account, I have entered the logic of accountability, implicitly agreeing that there is a legitimate need to give an account. My narrative performance builds upon an exposure to somebody else and I cannot account for this exposure within my narration. My narration ‘‘is an action in the direction of an other, as well as an action that requires an other, in which an other is presupposed. The other is thus within the action of my telling; it is not simply a question of imparting information to an other who is over there, beyond me, waiting to know. On the contrary, the telling performs an action that presupposes an Other, posits and elaborates the other, is given to the other, or by virtue of the other, prior to the giving of any information” (Butler, 2005, pp. 81–82). Of course, I can interrupt my narration and try to negotiate the terms that define my duties to account. But I cannot go back behind my original exposure to the situation. Even if I deny giving any account, my exposure to the addressee means that my denial to give an account may be interpreted as an account. In other words, I cannot not account, once I am exposed to a situation in which somebody demands that I account. The situation confronts me with a demand ‘‘to which I cannot but respond”. For even ‘‘[n]ot to respond is to respond” (Waldenfels, 1995, p. 121). In fact, this is precisely what Levinas has in mind when arguing that ‘‘even if I deny my primordial responsibility to the other by affirming my own freedom as primary, I can never escape the fact that the Other has demanded a response from me before I affirm my freedom not to respond to this demand” (1986, p. 27; quoted in Shearer, 2002, p. 560). Like Butler, both Shearer (2002) and Roberts (2003) build upon Levinas’ notion of a ‘‘passivity before passivity” which reflects the unintentional exposure of the self to others. However, they draw a somewhat different conclusion than what seems to be implied in Butler’s arguments. Shearer and Roberts focus on the idea that the primary exposure to the other requires us to account to this person, instead of accounting simply for ourselves. Accordingly, our responsibility for-the-other goes beyond our contractual obligations, which are based upon our self-interest. While Shearer (2002, p. 570) admits that ‘‘there clearly is no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled response to the other that forms the genuine ethical relation to the other”, she still maintains that we can at least try to improve our formal systems of accountability to better measure up to our mutual responsibility.

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Butler (2005) is in line with Shearer and Roberts when she argues, ‘‘responsibility is not a matter of cultivating a will, but of making use of an unwilled susceptibility as a resource for becoming responsive to the Other” (p. 91). However, she also argues that since the self is exposed to the other, one cannot expect the self to account fully for this exposure. While the self is responsible because of the exposure, it cannot really account for this exposure. In a sense, the responsibility that the self has to assume when being confronted with the other is a ‘burden’ that the self cannot negotiate away. If the self decides to account properly to the other, we therefore need to have in mind that it was in some respect forced to do so. For illustration, consider a meeting in which a manager is supposed to comment on her performance. She is subject to a situation in which she cannot ‘not’ give an account. Even if she refuses to comment on her performance, she would quite probably be judged on the basis of this (non-)account. In this sense, not accounting for something is also a form of accounting. As the manager is part of a group to which she is expected to account, she cannot easily separate herself from this group. If she tries to do so (e.g. by refusing to account), this behavior will be judged from the situation of the meeting in which she is taking part and cannot ‘escape’. In France, the suicide in 2003 of Bernard Loiseau, a famous restaurant chef, led to a public debate about the value of restaurant criticism. Loiseau committed suicide shortly after his restaurant had been downgraded in the latest GaultMillau guide, and there were several voices in the public debate that claimed that the two events were directly linked. The famous French chef Paul Bocuse even openly attacked employees at GaultMillau and accused them of being partly responsible for the death of his colleague. Although the debate soon died down, several restaurant chefs later declared publicly that they were no longer willing to endure the pressure of being evaluated by the gourmet guides. They announced that they were going to return their ‘stars’ or ‘toques’ to those who had awarded them. What is interesting, however, is that one cannot simply return these awards and choose not to be evaluated. In fact, the reaction of the Guide Michelin to one such declaration is quite telling: ‘‘The stars are meant to inform the readers of the guide and can only belong to the guide that presents them. Restaurateurs just cannot return them like a gift”.9 Restaurateurs are, in other words, exposed to this type of evaluation without being able to opt in or opt out. They become accountable without necessarily being conscious of this accountability, since they are subject to a form of judgment that is automatic and compulsory, quite similar to the law. To be sure, they are still able to account for themselves, by justifying their particular style of cooking and arguing as to why they think they have been inappropriately evaluated in the guide, for instance. The very fact of being judged in the first place, however, is something that they cannot undo with their account. They are always already within a cycle of accountability that is imposed on them by others such that any account they may give will

9 Quoted in Senderens Renounces Michelin Laurels (http://www.gayot.com/restaurants/features/alainsenderens.html).

come ‘later’ with respect to this a priori visibility.10 In this sense, the exposure to a demand for accountability can be seen as a limitation to account-ability. It shapes the way in which the response to the demand is perceived, very much like the question dictating whether the answer is appropriate or not. But if the response is judged in light of the question, then it is no longer an account on its own; it is a reaction which is motivated, and shaped in terms of its perception, by something other than itself. One may contend, of course, that this is simply due to accountability being a social phenomenon, rather than an individual one, and that this is necessarily so, because otherwise, the concept of accountability would loose its substance (see Schweiker, 1993). This is certainly true. But what I seek to emphasize here is that demands for accountability can shape (the perception of) practice simply by virtue of being issued as demands. This is because demands precede the account to be given and, as such, are constitutive of the social situation even before any answer is provided. A person may, of course, simply ignore all demands for accountability – but this will hardly shed a favorable light on that person. One may negotiate away such demands or attempt to answer them truthfully – but the more one is exposed to such demands, the more one’s life and conduct become preoccupied with somehow dealing with them. As Roberts (1991) and Shearer (2002) have rightly noted, accountability shapes identity. The way in which a demand for accountability is framed impacts the individual’s self-understanding as an accountable subject. Whereas Shearer focuses on bringing to light the particular characteristics, and problematic consequences, of the economic discourse of accountability, my intention here is to broaden the argument to demands for accountability in general. If a particular type of discourse assumes a dominant position in the sense that it determines what kind of accountability is available and/or acceptable, then this discourse has power effects. But power operates not only through the relative dominance of a particular type of discourse. It is also a function of the absolute extent to which

10 In this context, it is worth mentioning again Judith Butler’s reflections upon the situation in the US after 9/11. Butler (2004) refers to the ‘‘state of alarm” that was repeatedly proclaimed by the US government after 9/11 and points to the abstract nature of these warnings which did not specify any concrete danger but rather demanded people to exhibit increased ‘‘vigilance”. ‘‘This objectless panic translates too quickly into suspicion of all dark-skinned peoples, especially those who are Arab, or appear to look so [. . .]. Although ‘deeming’ someone dangerous is considered a state prerogative in these discussions, it is also a potential license for prejudicial perception and a virtual mandate to heighten racialized ways of looking and judging in the name of national security [. . .]. What kind of public culture is being created when a certain ‘indefinite containment’ takes place outside the prison walls, on the subway, in the airports, on the street, in the workplace? A falafel restaurant run by Lebanese Christians that does not exhibit the American flag becomes immediately suspect, as if the failure to fly the flag in the months following September 11, 2001 were a sign of sympathy with al-Qaeda, a deduction that has no justification, but which nevertheless ruled public culture – and business interests – at that time” (Butler, 2004, p. 76-7). In other words, people are exposed to an accountability that they cannot negotiate away. They become suspect without doing anything, and even if they did account for themselves in an appropriate way, their accounts would appear incomplete: they cannot undo the general skepticism to which they have already been exposed.

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demands for accountability shape practice, i.e. the extent to which a practice is problematized in discourse and to which this problematization feeds back into practice. Here, the question is not so much what particular type of discourse an individual is subject to (although this always remains important); rather, it is the absolute amount of accountability, i.e. the extent to which demands for accountability pervade practice, which is of concern.11 While not explicitly framed in terms of an ‘‘exposure” to accountability, evidence provided in existing accounting research shows how demands for accountability can become so dominant as to ‘‘invade” organizational practice and individuals’ understanding of this practice. Hopwood (1972), in his seminal study on budgeting, examines the effects of different management styles on job-related tension. He finds that a budget-constrained management style is more likely to bring about job-related tension, anxiety and manipulative behavior than a profit-conscious or non-accounting management style. While one may be inclined to interpret this as stemming from certain intrinsic qualities of budgets as systems of accountability, it seems more appropriate to link it to the ways in which budgets tend to be enacted in accountability relationships (see also Ahrens, 1996, p. 154). Indeed, Hopwood concludes that ‘‘the Budget Constrained style is one in which the evaluation of performance is of primary importance, influencing all aspects of the supervisor’s and the cost center head’s behavior. Evaluation is not viewed as an ongoing part of the managerial process, interrelated with other important aspects of the job, and just one aspect of the process of influence. Rather, it is seen as a distinct and dominant activity, and the primary source of influence and control, overshadowing other vital elements of the process” (p. 175). In other words, concern for accountability (evaluation) may become so dominant that concern for the underlying practice is moved to the back burner. Clearly, the degree of such exposure to accountability is linked to the timehorizon: if budgets are enacted in a short-term manner, they create an almost permanent need to justify one’s actions. In a management style oriented towards the longer-term, such a continuous demand for accountability is less pressing. However, the degree of exposure is not only a function of time, but also of space. The more areas of one’s life or conduct are subject to accountability, the more pervasive the preoccupation with accountability becomes. This is closely linked to the existence of opacity, as discussed above, but it addresses a somewhat different

11 I use the notion of ‘‘problematization‘‘ here in the sense that Foucault gives it in his genealogical analyses. Foucault looks at how, historically, various types of practices and discourses (in the form of moral norms, scientific knowledge, political analysis etc.) problematized such phenomena as madness and illness, crime and delinquency, or sexuality. He is thus critical of particular types of discourses and, consequently, their relative dominance at a given point in time, as well as of the increasing amount of problematization in modern society more generally, which he aptly summarized with the notion of a ‘‘will to knowledge” (Foucault, 1998; see also Deacon, 2000). In practice, these two power effects will often go hand in hand and may thus be hard to distinguish. For a similar understanding of problematization, see Miller and Rose (1990).

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dimension. For the opaque self, the burden is one of accounting for something that is difficult to explain or justify. For the exposed self, it is the relative space that concern for accountability occupies that constitutes a burden. Insofar as the auditors described by AndersonGough et al. (2001) are forced to account for parts of their working day that remain opaque to them, they bear the burden of the opaque self. In contrast, in their roles as exposed selves, they internalize the demand for accountability in such a way that it comes to shape their practice. As Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) explain, the ‘‘trainees acquired the practice of looking for tasks which are ‘chargeable’” (p. 113) and, at any point in time, would try to ‘‘appear busy” doing something. They were, in other words, constantly concerned with justifying that they were doing something ‘‘valuable”. Note that this exposure to accountability, and the corresponding burden for the individual auditor, does not primarily depend on what ‘‘doing something valuable” means in a concrete sense, or how it is measured. It is certainly true that being forced to account in a particular way creates an additional burden, and I return to this point below when discussing the burden of the mediated self. Here, however, the focus is on the absolute amount of demands and the extent to which these demands pervade practice. Whether the formulation of these demands relies on accounting concepts, bureaucratic rules, moral standards, or other types of arguments, is another issue. The way in which organizational space is rendered knowable and governable (see Miller & O’Leary, 1987), and thus made subject to accountability, is nicely illustrated in Vaivio’s (2006) case study of meetings at ABB Industry/Finland. Vaivio shows how dissatisfaction with meetings leads to a transformation of these meetings, from ‘‘un-systematized, spontaneous and even messy” spaces into spaces of accountability (p. 736). The message behind this has broader relevance: ‘‘No longer can we presume that actors within fluid spaces remain at a short but safe, ‘arm’s length’ distance from the aspirations that seek to make them susceptible to formal monitoring, comparison and evaluation. And no longer can we take for granted that such knowledge is not being produced that pinpoints inefficiency or substandard performance within fluid space” (p. 737). It is through such rationalization of hitherto ‘‘unrationalised local domains” (p. 756) or ‘‘almost private spaces of organizational action” (p. 735) that the self becomes an exposed self – exposed to visibility, ‘‘official recognition and mapping” (p. 737). To be sure, such initiatives to increase accountability are not necessarily perceived as a burden. Indeed, in the case reported by Vaivio (2006), demands for more accountability were voiced unanimously and were democratically decided upon. In cases where more accountability is welcomed, it seems difficult to maintain the argument that exposure to accountability actually poses an ethical burden. However, one should bear in mind that there is a fine line between the ‘‘free decision” to create new accountabilities for oneself, on the one hand, and the way in which programmatic ideals suggest such accountabilities as

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desirable and thereby render their realization more ‘‘probable”. Foucault’s point about subjectivation being more powerful if people subject themselves to a regime of truth, rather than being forced to do so, is worth keeping in mind here. Also, there is a difference between the decision to increase accountability at one point, and the subsequent power effects of its ongoing realization. Once a ‘‘sophisticated” system is in place, it may be hard to see through it. Or, it may be hard to change it, even if change were then desired. Accountability is often realized through accounting technologies, but other technologies can bring about similar effects of exposure to demands of accountability. Orlikowski (2007) offers a good example of this when discussing the introduction of BlackBerry mobile communication devices in a private equity firm. Orlikowski shows how the particular functionalities of the BlackBerry handsets significantly changed the norms of communication in the organization, ‘‘altering expectations of availability and accountability, redefining the boundaries of the workday, and extending and intensifying interactions” (Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1444). Organizational actors experienced ‘‘a strong obligation to check incoming messages” (p. 1442) and would take a rather critical stance to this form of accountability, as some of their remarks exemplify: ‘‘Once the audience that you interface with all the time knows that you’re a [BlackBerry] junkie – they honestly do this – if I don’t respond to an email in an hour people start to wonder ‘What’s wrong with Gary?’ I mean it’s that bad” (p. 1442). ‘‘You’re sort of constantly tied. (. . .) Yeah, it’s that sort of addictive” (p. 1443). ‘‘That’s the worry part of it, that once you’ve created an expectation that you’re always reachable, do you therefore then always have to be reachable?” (p. 1444). If ‘‘individual desires to disconnect” from social pressures enter into conflict with the collective demands for continuous accountability (Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1444), then an ethical dilemma emerges. To what extent should demands for accountability be accepted and to what extent should the individual’s privacy and ‘‘freedom not to answer” be protected? The examples in this section suggest that when reflecting upon the ethics of accountability, one should not only focus on the responsibility inherent in accounting for-the-other (Shearer, 2002), although this focus remains important. It seems that there is also a responsibility to be assumed by the one who is to be accounted to, a responsibility that pertains to the ‘‘burden” we place on someone when subjecting her to a situation of accountability. 4.4. Mediated selves Finally, the accountable self is limited in its accountability, in so far as the scene of the address is mediated by a set of norms that are not of the self’s own making. As has been noted in symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934) or social constructivism (Berger & Luckman, 1967), the identity as

a self emerges out of the relationship between the individual and various significant others. The self only becomes a self by taking over the perspective of others and subjecting oneself to social categories or roles that are provided to it externally. Similarly, Butler (2005, p. 115) speaks of an ‘‘ec-static movement, one that moves me outside of myself into a sphere in which I am dispossessed of myself and constituted as a subject at the same time”. She thereby refers to the work of Foucault and to his main idea that ‘‘a subject can recognize itself, and others, only within a specific regime of truth” (Butler, 2005, p. 116). Although quite heterogeneous throughout its different stages, Foucault’s works have clearly been shaped by the relationship between the subject and certain modes of rationality. His overall objective ‘‘has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (Foucault, 1982, p. 208). What Foucault most strikingly exposed in his writings is the contingency of these regimes of truth. Discourses and practices assume a central role in society as they enable individuals to regard themselves, and be regarded, as subjects; but at the same time, they also exclude certain possibilities for subject formation. This is why Foucault keeps his distance from a ‘‘self-satisfied form of constructivism” (Butler, 2005, p. 121) that settles for simply stating that everything could be otherwise: ‘‘He is making clear that we are not simply the effects of discourses, but that any discourse, any regime of intelligibility, constitutes us at a cost. Our capacity to reflect upon ourselves, to tell the truth about ourselves, is correspondingly limited by what the discourse, the regime, cannot allow into speakability” (Butler, 2005). The ‘‘forms of rationality by which we make ourselves intelligible, by which we know ourselves and offer ourselves to others, are established historically, and at a price” (Butler, 2005). The price to pay is the unconditional acceptance of the modes of rationality that are offered to us. These modes have to be accepted if someone wants to become a rational and accountable member of society, a subject ‘that counts’ (see Rancière, 1998). ‘‘Insofar as we do tell the truth, we conform to a criterion of truth, and we accept that criterion as binding upon us. To accept that criterion as binding is to assume as primary or unquestionable the form of rationality within which one lives. So telling the truth about oneself comes at a price, and the price of that telling is the suspension of a critical relation to the truth regime in which one lives” (Butler, 2005, pp. 121–122). When a discourse defines ‘‘what can be said and what cannot” (Foucault, 1981), then those who are subject to this discourse are subject to power effects. Having to account in a particular way in order to be considered a legitimate member of a community means that other ways of justifying one’s behavior are marginalized. This is what Roberts and Shearer criticize in their analyses of financial and management accounting practices. Both point to the contingency of the prevailing rules of accounting and argue that the accountable self, who is subject to these rules of accountability, adopts and internalizes the prescribed

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mode of rationality, such that economic calculation and the pursuit of self-interest become the dominating forces in one’s relationship to others. For Shearer (2002), this poses mainly a problem for those who demand different types of accounts and for whom forms other than economic accountability are relevant. In addition, Roberts refers to the ethical burden that the accountable self has to bear when it is forced to account in a particular way and when other forms of justification are not legitimate. The solution suggested by both scholars is to extend the possibilities of accountability towards a practice of accounting that knows multiple accountabilities. But what does a multiplicity of accountability imply for the subject who is made accountable? Does it release the accountable self from the ethical burden that the dominance of a particular regime of truth would impose? I suppose that this depends on how multiplicity is put into practice. If multiplicity means that the accountable self has several alternatives of how to give an account, then the act of accountability will clearly be less ethically demanding than in the case of there being only one available regime of truth. If, however, multiplicity translates into multiple demands for accountability – legitimate demands to which the accountable self is expected to conform – then the ethical burden will actually be greater than if accounts have to be provided in one form and to one audience alone. This is because the accountable self will have to deal with possible conflicts between various demands and, in a sense, will have to speak ‘‘several languages at the same time”. The difference between these two conceptions of multiplicity can be illustrated with the example of stockholders’ demands, on the one hand, and social and environmental concerns, on the other hand. If a company could justify a particular course of action on the basis of either its accountability to stockholders or its accountability for social and environmental sustainability, then it would face less pressure than if its accounts only had to conform, say, to the economic regime of truth. Such a case would, however, require that the company be able to survive and find a sustainable identity within either of the regimes of truth. It would need to have the possibility to compromise one of the demands for accountability actively without suffering in terms of its long-term viability as an organization. But stockholders are hardly indifferent to a company’s actions and are unlikely to approve actions that are justified only on the basis of social and environmental concerns. This is why subjecting companies to additional accountabilities places a burden on them that is difficult to bear insofar as compromising their primary accountability relationship would imply considerable costs and risks for the company. Demanding an extension of accountability is not without problems, because it means that the accountable self would have to challenge or criticize a regime of truth on which its identity and viability is built. In broader terms, critique is a risky practice insofar as it puts the critical subject in an ontologically insecure position the moment this subject distances itself from the accepted regime of truth (Butler, 2002; Foucault, 1997b). Evidence for conflicts between different forms of accountability can also be found in the accounting litera-

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ture. Cäker (2007) provides an interesting example of conflicting accountabilities within a business unit of a Swedish manufacturing organization. The business unit acts as a supplier for advanced technology to both external customers (‘‘new customers”) and to an internal customer within the same division (the ‘‘old customer”), which was previously part of the same business unit. The managers of the supplier business unit have a hierarchical accountability for financial results. But in addition to this, Cäker (2007) observes that they also have a strong ‘‘lateral” accountability relationship to the old customer. The latter would often demand ‘‘special treatment”, such as preferential delivery times or product specifications. And managers of the supplier business unit would often feel the need to meet these demands, not least because of the historical bonds between the two units. ‘‘When the one who asks is an old colleague or someone that the operator meets in the common lunchroom almost every day, it is considered hard to say no” (Cäker, 2007, p. 156). As Cäker argues, conflicts arise because the lateral accountability relationship is not integrated in the formal accounting system, which reflects hierarchical accountability for financial results. He therefore makes an interesting distinction between accounting for the customer and accounting to the customer. ‘‘To account for customer-related aspects can be done both to managers and to customers, and through hierarchical/formal channels and through informal channels, that is, lateral accountability. To account for the customer does not necessarily have anything to do with to account to the customer” (Cäker, 2007, p. 149). In other words, it makes a difference whether the needs of the customer are recognized as part of one’s hierarchical (financial) accountability relationship within the company or whether they are recognized as ends in themselves, for which one is accountable to the customer, above and beyond one’s internal accountability for the customer. Cäker’s (2007) point is to argue that such a conflict of accountabilities is dysfunctional from a managerialist perspective and should be resolved through appropriate systems of accountability (see also Lillis, 2002). Such reconciliation is possible in many cases, but it may prove more challenging or even impossible in others. If different accountabilities refer to conflicting ends, managers are faced with the question of how to prioritize these ends. This is not always without its problems, as can be seen, for example, in the field of educational institutions that are increasingly subject to market notions of accountability. As Ezzamel, Robson, Stapleton, and McLean (2007) show in their study of British schools, traditional forms of ‘‘folk accountability” (which are defined around professional norms) can enter into conflict with new forms of accountability that are championed as part of neo-liberal reforms in the public sector. In their examination of school employees’ discourses on accountability, the scholars observe considerable ‘‘tensions between new forms of regulatory financial accountability, imposed in the name of greater efficiency and effectiveness, and folk accountability” (p. 168). The way in which these tensions are dealt with appears to be left to the staff responsible for bearing the burden of carrying out these trade-offs.

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One may, of course, contend that it is the very substance of management to deal with such trade-offs, to find a balance among different objectives, and ultimately to make difficult decisions (which go beyond simple ‘‘calculations”, as explained above). Although this is certainly true, my point here is to argue that this challenge can easily turn into a burden if different regimes of truth turn out to be difficult or impossible to reconcile while, at the same time, such reconciliation is expected by relevant stakeholders. In such a case, one must raise the question as to whether expecting organizations and managers to meet different demands for accountability is, after all, a fair and realistic demand. Johansen (2008) offers a good example of how employees can suffer from being expected to ‘‘self-manage” the various problems and tensions that they face in their everyday work. In his case study of a Danish Savings Bank, Johansen describes the bank’s initiative of ‘‘self-management” which is supposed to increase ‘‘leadership” and ‘‘entrepreneurial behavior” among employees. The company defines self-management in the following terms: ‘‘Self-management is about each employee being able to manage themselves within the boundaries of his/ her field of responsibility. This means that the employee can make decisions at any time without asking for permission” (p. 551). Yet, what looks like an increase in employees’ discretion turns out to be, at the same time, an additional burden. Self-management, Johansen (2008, p. 558) observes, is ‘‘simultaneously more rewarding and more demanding” (Knights & McCabe, 2003, p. 1614) because it makes the employee feel responsible for autonomously managing all tensions and dilemmas that arise within her field of work. Rather than asking for help or alleviation, employees assume full responsibility for dealing with difficult situations and blame themselves when they do not succeed. From the perspective of ‘‘the others” (in Johansen’s case, upper management), self-management seems like an attractive idea, since it assigns responsibility for dealing with tensions to employees (or managers). To be sure, managers at higher levels of the corporate hierarchy can be expected to deal with such challenges more ably than lower-level managers or employees (Simons, 2005). But even for senior managers, conflicting regimes of truth may be difficult to manage, especially if they are linked to legitimate accountabilities. If conflicting demands for accountability are raised vis-à-vis an organization or its managers, asking managers to ‘‘self-manage” these demands may be an attractive solution for politics or society at large, but less so for the managers in question. Indeed, it seems that discourses on business ethics or stakeholder accountability are often rather silent on what exactly businesses or managers are supposed to do in case of a conflict among different objectives. There seems to be an expectation that businesses should be managed ‘‘responsibly” – paying attention to the interests not only of capital providers, but also of other stakeholders. But how this is actually achieved is hardly ever specified. In a sense, this can relate to the critique of stakeholder theory as formulated from a managerialist perspective.

Jensen (2001), for example, criticizes stakeholder approaches for failing to specify how different objectives should be traded off: ‘‘[S]takeholder theory should not be viewed as a legitimate contender to value maximization because it fails to provide a complete specification of the corporate purpose or objective function. To put the matter more concretely, whereas value maximization provides corporate managers with a single objective, stakeholder theory directs corporate managers to serve ‘‘many masters.” And, to paraphrase the old adage, when there are many masters, all end up being shortchanged. Without the clarity of mission provided by a single-valued objective function, companies embracing stakeholder theory will experience managerial confusion, conflict, inefficiency, and perhaps even competitive failure” (Jensen, 2001, p. 9). Caution is required when evaluating such statements from an ethical perspective. On the one hand, it should be rather obvious that completely releasing managers from the task of making responsible decisions cannot be a responsible solution in itself. Eliminating any need to reflect upon trade-offs and various stakeholders would turn management into a purely ‘‘calculative practice” and would suggest that there is no need to reflect critically upon a predefined objective such as value maximization.12 On the other hand, Jensen’s (2001) point can, to some extent, also be defended from an ethical perspective. Not specifying at all how different objectives and stakeholders’ demands should be balanced is likely to put too much responsibility into the hands of the manager – responsibility that becomes an ethical burden. If society at large does not know the extent to which shareholders’ goals should be traded off against social and environmental commitments, why should we expect individual managers to do so? Since the accountable self is mediated by a set of norms, the possibilities of accountability are limited by what these norms allow into speakability. Criticizing these norms may be possible – but to put this burden entirely on the individual organization or manager is to ignore the need for a more comprehensive socio-political reflection upon conflicts of accountability.

5. Rethinking the possibilities of accountability 5.1. Synthesis In the above discussion, I have argued that the accountable self is subject to three main limitations that imply that any account must remain imperfect in terms of its ability to ‘ground’ the responsibility of the person. There is, first, one’s opacity to oneself, which implies that the accountable self cannot fully recall the situations in which she has been involved and she cannot fully justify her decisions and judgments, which go beyond the realm of the calculable. Extending accountability into what

12

See my elaboration in Section 5.3.

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remains opaque can thus result in an ethical burden for the subject insofar as she is obliged to account for something that is difficult or impossible to rationalize. Second, the accountable self is exposed to an addressee to whom an account is provided. Here, the limit to one’s authorship of an account arises from the exposure to a demand that is, in a sense, always already there before an answer is provided. Extending accountability can therefore result in an ethical burden for the subject if the demands become invasive, if they colonize the underlying practice, such that a constant concern with accountability ultimately dominates the concern with the underlying practice. Third, the accountable self is mediated by a set of social norms that structure the scene of the address. The subject becomes an accountable subject only when submitting to a regime of truth that cannot be questioned if one wants to give an account. Extending accountability into different regimes of truth can result in an ethical burden for the subject if several of these accountabilities have to be met at the same time, without knowing how they should be balanced or traded off. An ethics that acknowledges these limits to accountability should not embrace the ideal of an all-encompassing accountability. For such an ideal can easily demand too much of the individual who is expected to provide an account. Given that the accountable self cannot be made entirely accountable, an ‘‘imperfect” accountability may, from an ethical perspective, actually be preferable to a ‘‘perfect” one. As Butler (2005, p. 42) puts it, ‘‘any effort ‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to approach being true”. What this means is that one must continue to demand and give accounts, but at the same time be willing to accept that the accountable self may give an answer that does not fully satisfy: ‘‘By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the question remain open, even enduring, we let the other live, since life might be understood as precisely that which exceeds any account we may try to give of it. If letting the other live is part of any ethical definition of recognition, then this version of recognition will be based less on knowledge than on an apprehension of epistemic limits” (Butler, 2005, p. 42). This perspective on accountability acknowledges the important arguments offered in the extant literature, such as those put forward by Shearer (2002) and Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001, 2003). To explore new and more comprehensive possibilities for accountability, as suggested by these authors, is a pivotal task for critical accounting research. This involves identifying stakeholders whose interests are not given sufficient attention in the existing systems of accountability. It also involves identifying barriers to accountability that prevent a transparent and open dialogue from taking place. However, it seems equally important to recognize that human subjects are limited in their capacity to give a comprehensive and satisfactory account and that acknowledging these limits should be part of an ethics of accountability. In this respect, the perspective offered in this paper goes beyond the existing literature by moving away from the latter’s one-sided focus on the giv-

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ing of accounts and by also drawing attention to the ethical dimension of demanding an account. Accepting the idea that there are limits to accountability raises two important questions. First, how can one identify these limits in practice? In other words, when does a demand for accountability become too burdensome for the accountable self and when is it still acceptable? Second, if one agrees that there are limits to accountability, does this not imply that one must compromise some of the demands for accountability? And would this not be ethically problematic with respect to those who regard themselves as legitimate stakeholders with a right to obtain an account? Let me address these questions in turn.

5.2. A limit attitude To speak of limits is to suggest that such limits are real in the sense that they can be identified. But how can one decide whether a demand for accountability becomes too great to be ethically warranted vis-à-vis the accountable self? What signals that an ethical limit has been reached when a particular demand for accountability is being raised? To start with, an ethical ‘‘limit” should not be viewed in the same way as a spatial or temporal limit. It is not fixed in the sense of being located at exact coordinates and it does not emerge as a single point in time or space. Rather, it presents itself as a continuum, an extended space within which a tension or dilemma can be experienced. In a sense, it is less a limit than a ‘‘liminal space” (see Czarniawska & Mazza, 2003), i.e. an area in which things appear problematic, ambiguous, and laden with tensions. Accordingly, one cannot identify a limit, but can only experience being within a liminal space, in which the definition of what is right or wrong has become problematic. Experiencing this liminality is, as a consequence, not so much a question of knowledge or evidence, but rather more one of sensitivity. Individuals may be more or less sensitized to recognizing ethical tensions and to acknowledging that things do not always run smoothly. To be sure, some knowledge is necessary for such sensitivity to emerge in the first place. I must be aware of different demands for accountability, of the interests of particular groups of stakeholders, and of the rights and duties of the parties involved, if I am experiencing any difficulties with accountability. But this knowledge in itself does not suffice to ground my experience of the limits of accountability. I must at the same time be willing to have this knowledge challenged by an impulse that emerges in the situation of giving or demanding an account. I must be sensitive to the possibility that things are not as clear as I thought they were when I initially raised my demand for accountability or when I was about to meet such a demand. When Butler (2005, p. 42) states that ‘‘any effort ‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to approach being true”, she is alluding to this sensitivity. To see an account fail, to recognize its imperfection and to interpret this imperfection as an indicator of some deeper and more

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complex ‘‘truth” is to be sensitive for the ethical limits of accountability.13 Such a ‘‘limit attitude” (Healy, 2001) is, in itself, a form of responsibility. It is tied to an experience of the problematic nature of accountability. The examples of opacity, exposure and mediation provided earlier were designed to illustrate the singular character of such an experience. What the testimonies provided by Anderson-Gough et al. (2001), Hopwood (1972), Cäker (2007), Johansen (2008), and Orlikowski (2007) share is that they take an emic perspective (Pike, 1967) on accountability, theorizing on accountability on the basis of organizational actors’ experiences with the giving and demanding of accounts. One can look out for opacity, exposure and mediation in general; but the extent to which a demand for accountability is problematic cannot be determined theoretically or a priori. The responsibility to be sensitive to these limits is something that escapes theoretical determination (see Derrida, 1995, p. 26). Whereas we can argue that responsibility with respect to the limits of accountability is necessary, we cannot specify in advance what this responsibility entails and what form it takes. For what appears problematic, disturbing, or ambiguous in the particular situation at hand can only be grasped in that very situation. At the same time, however, this very private, almost secret form of responsibility (Derrida, 1995) is not entirely foreign to generalization. There is something to be learned from the individual experience of the limits of accountability and it is part of one’s responsibility to allow such a learning process to take place. This is why Butler contends that ‘‘ethical deliberation is bound up with the operation of critique” (2005, p. 8). She emphasizes that a disturbing experience with a regime of truth in a given situation allows us to ‘‘raise the question whether a good life can be conducted within a bad one, and whether we might, in recrafting ourselves with and for another, participate in the remaking of social conditions” (Butler, 2005, pp. 134– 135). Thus, for example, when we experience a conflict between different demands for accountability, one step is to find a ‘‘local” solution to this problem, i.e. to acknowledge the different demands, to deal with them responsibly, and ultimately to make a decision in which some of the demands are given more importance than others. Another step, however, is to recognize that such a conflict may reappear in other, similar situations and that a responsible reaction to the particular situation also involves a broader reflection upon the different demands of accountability per se. Likewise, when there is a gap between the expectations for accountability, on the one hand, and what is offered in terms of providing accounts, on the other hand, a responsible solution includes more than just a reflection upon the possibilities and limits of accountability in the particular case. Individual experiences and ‘‘anecdotal evidence” should also contribute to a wider discussion of the validity of the demands in question. This latter point brings me to the question of how to deal with a situation in which the demands for account13 Adorno (2001, p. 169) also makes a case for such a limit attitude by suggesting that ethical convictions need to be problematized. ‘‘[T]rue injustice is always to be found at the precise point where you put yourself in the right and other people in the wrong”.

ability obviously do not match the willingness or ability of the accountable self to meet these demands – a situation that may be described as an ‘‘ethical gap”. 5.3. The ethical gap The idea that there are limits to accountability suggests that escaping or resisting accountability is not necessarily an unethical act. It may be an understandable reaction to a situation in which demands for accountability have become an ethical burden for the accountable self. One may even argue that resistance to accountability is, to some extent, a normal feature of everyday organizational life. Indeed, from time to time, discussions or debates have to be avoided and critical questions have to be ignored in order to move forward and to ‘‘get things done”. Of course, often not everyone will share the same perspective in such a situation, which ultimately raises the question of the relative importance of different demands and positions. Although avoiding accountability may not be unethical from the perspective of the accountable self, it can still be unsatisfactory for those who expect to obtain an explanation. In such a case, an ‘‘ethical gap” emerges and the question of how such a gap can or should be dealt with must be addressed. Different solutions seem possible in this respect. One solution to the problem of conflicting accountabilities is to define accountability in a narrow way. Ultimately, this means reducing accountability to the demands of one group of stakeholders alone. Such an approach to accountability is visible in accounting standards, which define the users of financial reports and, by that, the addressees of accountability. As Young (2006) has shown in great detail, since the 1960s, standard setters in the U.S. have stressed the significance of ‘‘the user” and his decision making needs for the design and interpretation of accounting standards. Until then, accounting had been seen as a practice in its own sake, with no clearly defined target group. The irony of the new, user-centered approach, however, was that ‘‘little was known about the very users towards which standard-setting efforts were now to be directed” (Young, 2006, p. 589). In an effort to learn more about actual user needs, standard setters realized that there are different types of users with potentially conflicting interests. These conflicting demands would obviously make the standardsetting process a much more challenging task. But: ‘‘Rather than attempting to reconcile these possibly conflicting differences, each report chose a similar strategy – to stress the presumed similarities of readers of financial statements while suppressing their possible differences (. . .). In effacing the differences between these possible readers, the standard-setting process was distanced from the unruly and conflicting readers of financial statements and became focused upon users who were like investors and creditors and would thereby require similar information” (Young, 2006, p. 590). This approach to dealing with possibly conflicting accountabilities has basically remained the same until today, as can be seen from the recent exposure draft of the

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joint improved conceptual framework of the IASB and FASB. In a section entitled ‘‘Primary user group”, the draft reads: ‘‘Both the FASB’s and the IASB’s existing frameworks identify a particular group of primary users. Information that satisfies the needs of that particular group of users is likely to meet most of the needs of other users” (IASCF, 2008, chaps. 1 and 2, p. 27). There is much to discuss about the pros and cons of explicitly considering other users and their needs in accounting standards, and it certainly goes beyond the scope of this paper to make a balanced evaluation of this issue. But what seems clear is that merging different users into one seemingly homogeneous category is a way of arguing away different types of accountability. It is not that such demands are considered illegitimate or less important – rather, they are not even recognized as distinct demands in the first place (see Rancière, 1998). In such a case, an ‘‘ethical gap” does not emerge and so there is seemingly nothing to be concerned about here. In line with the approach taken by accounting standard setters is the argumentation of advocates of shareholder value-based management, who also argue for an unambiguous definition of managerial accountability. In this case, the existence of potentially conflicting accountabilities is often openly acknowledged and then used as an argument in favor of a one-dimensional definition of accountability. The earlier quoted text of Jensen (2001) is typical of such a position. As seen above, Jensen (2001) criticizes stakeholder approaches to management for not providing a single objective to be maximized, thereby failing to provide clarity for management. While I have stressed above that such a position may be defended in view of the burden on the ‘‘mediated self” to trade off different accountabilities, such an interpretation must be supplemented by a more critical reading: the argumentation of Jensen (2001) and other advocates of this perspective ultimately does not engage with the problem of conflicting accountabilities, because such conflicts are argued away by the claim that rational management is only possible if one goal is singled out for maximization. For the individual manager, this is clearly good news, as it relieves her from the responsibility of trading off different objectives and stakeholder interests. However, with respect to a broader socio-political context, this position leads to a collective neglect of conflicts of accountability that actually exist. Instead of reflecting upon different possible purposes of a business, and the corresponding accountabilities (see, for example, Handy, 2002), the ‘‘maximization argument” settles for a normative model of how businesses should be managed. Yet, what other possibilities are available that would enable the ‘‘ethical gap” to be dealt with in such a way that neither the interests of the accountable self are compromised nor those of some of its stakeholders simply ignored? How can responsible behavior be enabled without subjecting the accountable self to a demand for accountability that would be too difficult to meet in practice? One possibility of dealing with conflicting accountabilities that differs from simply negotiating away the interests of some stakeholders is to attempt to align these interests

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in the first place. In such a case, conflicts of accountability could be reduced and, as a consequence, the accountable self would be somewhat released from the burden of trading off different interests. The question of auditor independence is a case in point. The spectacular cases of accounting fraud that we have recently witnessed have increased awareness of the close commercial ties between auditing firms and their clients (e.g. Frankel, Johnson, & Nelson, 2002; Myers, Myers, & Omer, 2003). The underlying problem is one of conflicts of interest, as audit firms have economic incentives that may entice them to avoid negative audit opinions. Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, and Bazerman (2006) speak accordingly of a ‘‘moral seduction” of auditors and point to the need for finding institutional solutions through which such conflicts would be reduced: ‘‘[E]ven when institutional arrangements create conflicts of interest, we too often seek a corrupt person to punish, rather than examine the flaws in the system or fight against those who lobby to keep the broken system in place” (Moore et al., 2006, p. 19). Examining the ‘‘flaws in the system” means looking for ways to reduce conflicts of interest. Reducing such conflicts of interest is to reduce conflicting accountabilities. And this, in turn, would make it easier for the auditors to make the ‘‘right decisions” when carrying out their work. What is true for the case of conflicts in auditing is, in a similar way, true for the relationship between corporations’ striving for financial success, on the one hand, and their social and environmental initiatives, on the other hand. Often, these goals will conflict and saying that, in the end, the invisible hand of the market will enable sustainable solutions to survive seems rather optimistic. In most cases, there is a considerable first mover disadvantage when it comes to the adoption of social or environmental policies that go beyond current industry standards. This is why resolving such conflicts of interest should be considered a political task. It will be easier for firms to act responsibly if such behavior does not conflict head-on with their economic interests. A second way in which the problem of the ethical gap can be approached relates to the distinction between the accountable self and the addressees or stakeholders. As Mulgan (2000, p. 555) explains, accountability denotes an ‘‘exchange, in that one side, that calling for the account, seeks answers and rectification while the other side, that being held accountable, responds and accepts sanctions”. The need for accountability arises when there is a division of labor whereby the actions and decisions of one group of people affect those of others. The division of labor and the resulting accountability relationships are, of course, the building blocks of modern organizations and societies, and there is little to suggest that any alternatives would be more beneficial. In some cases, however, these accountability relationships may be enacted in such a way that they cause a heavy burden for the accountable self and, ultimately, perhaps also a high cost for the organization. As Johansen (2008) has shown, the burden of having to decide for oneself can be heavy, and sharing this burden may well be in the interests of both the accountable self and relevant stakeholders. In such situations, one alternative to

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accountability would be to involve the addressees of an account in the process of decision making from the outset, such that they do not have to rely on ex post accounts of why certain courses of action where taken and others not. Direct participation in decision making can reduce the need for accountability, since the various actors are already heard as important decisions are being made. For the case of accountability within organizations, Simons (2005) suggests that, if responsibility for decision making is shared among several people, not only is this likely to increase the information content of the decision made, but it also strengthens the commitment of each person to the decided course of action. Shared responsibilities may, however, be difficult to implement if the culture of the organization is one of individual accountability and blame: ‘‘Some managers take pride in their ability to inject fear of the consequences of poor performance. Such a shootthe-messenger environment makes it dangerous for individuals to stick their necks out to become associated with any activities outside their span of control and accountability (. . .). If senior executives are constantly criticizing each other or creating a culture of ridicule and blame, employees in these units are unlikely to take seriously any responsibility to step outside their units to help others” (Simons, 2005, p. 184). Although Simons’ perspective is managerial in nature and does not explore the ethical dimension of shared responsibilities, his critical stance towards an individualistic culture resonates with Butler’s (2005) ethical concerns about accountability. ‘‘Condemnation, denunciation, and excoriation work as quick ways to posit an ontological difference between judge and judged, even to purge oneself of another” (Butler, 2005, p. 46). In other words, making people accountable may easily turn into a blame game that can effectively impede us from assuming our collective responsibility for problems that affect us all. I would say that this holds not only for organizations internally, as Simons argues, but also for issues that transcend organizational borders. The existing literature has pointed to the importance of stakeholder dialogue in order to enact a broader accountability relationship (e.g. Unerman & Bennett, 2004). In light of the limits of accountability as developed in this paper, one should add that such dialogue ideally does not turn into a one-way street, where the full burden of making trade-offs between different interests eventually rests on the focal organization. Rather, the potential of dialogue is to include others in the decision making process and to share the responsibility for outcomes. Of course, matters are more complex in such a case than in the intra-organizational setting, not only in terms of the definition of ‘‘relevant stakeholders”, but also with respect to the degree to which it is feasible and desirable to include these stakeholders in decision making. It goes without saying that not each and every decision can or should be made on such a basis. However, in extraordinary circumstances, where stakes are particularly high, an inclusion of stakeholders may well be the best way forward. To some extent, this was the case in the financial crisis in late 2008 when governments not only shared responsibility for collective action across states, but also took an active stance towards

firms’ decisions, such as in the case of the merger between the British banks Lloyds and HBOS, in which both the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority were heavily involved. Although the two paths outlined above, i.e. the reduction of conflicts of interest and the sharing of responsibility, will reduce the ‘‘ethical gap”, they cannot eliminate it. There will always be cases in which interests collide and in which the accountable self will be faced with a tough decision for which it will eventually be made accountable. Ultimately, the existence of such situations is the very condition of responsibility: it is only when we recognize that nothing is totally right or totally wrong, neither entirely justified nor unjustified, that we feel the need to act responsibly, to do the right thing even if we know that there is no one right thing to do. The question of responsibility arises at the precise moment that knowledge or mastery comes to an end (Derrida, 1995, p. 6). ‘‘[T]he responsibility of what remains to be decided (in actuality) cannot consist in following, applying, or carrying out a norm or rule. Wherever I have at my disposal a determinable rule, I know what must be done, and as soon as such knowledge dictates the law, action follows knowledge as a calculable consequence: one knows what path to take, one no longer hesitates. The decision then no longer decides anything but is made in advance and is thus in advance annulled. It is simply deployed, without delay, presently, with the automatism attributed to machines. There is no longer any place for justice or responsibility (whether juridical, political, or ethical)” (Derrida, 2005, pp. 84–85). Of course, this does not imply that less knowledge makes people more responsible, but it does mean that recognition of the limits to one’s knowledge may do so. When we do not attempt to master a situation completely, we may be more willing to see contradictions, dilemmas and conflicts that call for deliberation and dialogue. A third path to dealing with the ethical gap is therefore to foster sensitivity to conflicts and ambiguities and one way to do this is to acknowledge that there are things that may not be easily manageable. This, however, is easier said than done. At least, it seems to be somewhat at odds with the common understanding of management and with the way in which future managers are taught in business schools. Despite research that suggests otherwise, management education tends to champion modernist ideas of control and masculine ideas of mastery (Czarniawska, 2003). Managers are, after all, expected to ‘‘manage” (a synonym for ‘‘master”) rather than to acknowledge the limits of their managerial capabilities. Bringing more responsibility into management, it seems to me, is thus also about de-limiting management, about accepting the limits of what can be managed, and about recognizing that there are things that exceed calculation, knowledge, and mastery.

6. Conclusion I have argued in this paper that a consideration of the limits of accountability is crucial if we want to understand

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the full ethical dimension of the practice of exchanging accounts. Rather than taking the empirical route, I have chosen to go for a theoretical inquiry into the limits of accountability. Such an approach is necessarily formulated in rather abstract terms and in a language that allows it to be related to philosophical concepts that I consider critical to build upon. And yet, as I have tried to show with examples borrowed from the accounting literature, such an approach is not foreign to empirical experience. Findings from the existing literature can be positioned so as to illuminate the practical meaning of the theoretical concepts developed in the paper. As outlined in the previous section, there are practical implications that may be drawn from my analysis. These are motivated by the theoretical discussion of the limits of accountability and the ‘‘ethical gap” that these limits create. Of course, they do not follow deductively from this analysis. After all, this is part of the message of my analysis: that a practical decision cannot fully be deduced from any knowledge or theoretical analysis. It must remain a question of judgment and responsibility. My intention in this paper has been to highlight the problematic dimension of accountability; certainly not in the sense that accountability is bad, but – borrowing from Foucault (1997a, p. 256) – that it is dangerous. And if it is dangerous, ‘‘then we always have something to do” (p. 256). Acknowledgements I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as Thomas Ahrens, Albrecht Becker, David Bevan, Hans Englund, Jonas Gerdin, Anthony Hopwood, Silvia Jordan, Cédric Lesage, Bernadette Loacker, Nicolas Mangin and Jeffrey Unerman for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. Matthew Langsley provided help with the language. They are, of course, not accountable for the contents of the paper. References Adorno, T. W. (2001). Problems of moral philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ahrens, T. (1996). Styles of accountability. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 21(2–3), 139–173. Anderson-Gough, F., Grey, C., & Robson, K. (2001). Tests of time: Organizational time-reckoning and the making of accountants in two multi-national accounting firms. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26, 99–122. Berger, P., & Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Norwell: Anchor Press. Bettman, J., & Weitz, B. (1983). Attributions in the board room: Causal reasoning in corporate annual reports. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 165–183. Boland, R. J., & Schultze, U. (1996). Narrating accountability: Cognition and the production of the accountable self. In R. Munro & J. Mouritsen (Eds.), Accountability. Power, ethos and the technologies of managing (pp. 62–81). London: Thomson Business Press. Brenkert, G. G. (2009). Innovation, rule breaking and the ethics of entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, doi:10.1016/ j.jbusvent.2008.04.004. Buchholz, R. A., & Rosenthal, S. B. (2006). Integrating ethics all the way through: The issue of moral agency reconsidered. Journal of Business Ethics, 66, 233–239. Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (1999). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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