The roles of Accounting in Society

12.11.2020 | Blog

The roles of Accounting in Society are revisited in a new paper. Identifying the many and diverse roles of accounting in society is an ongoing challenge for researchers and requires constant revisiting. At what points has accountancy and the social been entwined in historical research? How can reflection of these intersections benefit the pursuit of contemporary research agendas?

Motivation for the research is based on the fact that historical studies often tend to presume, rather than analyse, the relationships between accounting and the social. The paper was inspired by, and builds on, the work of key contributors

Whilst such classic papers have laid some groundwork, it has often been a daunting task for researchers to establish an agenda that intertwines accounting and the social. In his paper is revisiting this complex interface and attempts to encourage renewed explorations.

The paper starts by exploring previous attempts to develop a robust research agenda which unlocks the socio-political nature of accounting. It also considers ways in which the ‘troublesome’ social is understood in other disciplines and the issues this poses for accounting researchers.