Handbook of Accounting in Society (Research Handbooks on Accounting series)

The Handbook of Accounting in Society invites readers to consider the ways in which accounting affects organizations, institutions, communities, professions, and everyday life. Diverse in its reach, this Handbook campaigns for the need to reconsider our understanding of what accounting is and crucially, what it can become. Hendrik Vollmer brings together an array of scholars to discuss how accounting practice is shaping the way we do business and government, the way we negotiate our values and valuations, and how we keep track of ourselves and prepare for the future. Contributors highlight how little of accounting is controlled by the accounting profession and raises key persistent issues in accounting practice that concern the professional practitioner as much as the everyday life accountant: accountability and unaccountability, inequality and social justice, and inclusion and exclusion. This dynamic Handbook argues for the redevelopment of accounting education and illustrates the emancipatory potential of alternative forms of accounting, counter accounting, and accounting activism. Reinvigorating the interdisciplinary approach to accounting and its place in society, this Handbook will be a vital read for scholars, researchers and students specializing in accounting, management, governance and sustainability, business ethics, diversity and inclusion, public administration, organizational behaviour, and organizational culture. It will also be an informative read for accounting professionals, social scientists interested in accounting practice, and political activists engaged in counter accounting. Front Matter Copyright Contents Figures Tables Contributors PART I INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction to Handbook of Accounting in Society: seeing accountants everywhere PART II HISTORY, ACCOUNTING, SOCIETY 2. Accounting in society? Accounting and society 3. Accounting in society: a historical perspective PART III ACCOUNTING AND THE SHAPE OF BUSINESS 4. The temporalities of financialized accounting 5. Accounting for values at risk: risk management and moral imagination PART IV ACCOUNTING FOR GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT 6. Accounting for public value 7. Reflecting on the ‘ethos’ of public sector accounting: from ‘taken-for-granted’ to ‘plural’ values? 8. ‘Management by accounting’: the roles of accounting in agencification 9. Accounting for emergency, emergency for accounting: a bibliometric review PART V ACCOUNTING FOR OUR FUTURE: PENSION, TAXES, WELFARE 10. Preparing the future: the roles of accounting in public and private pensions 11. Us and them: the role of accounting in (re)creating social inequality through encounters with tax and welfare administration 12. The calculation and administration of taxes as an economizing force PART VI ACCOUNTING FOR OURSELVES 13. Foundations for socio-ecological accounting scholarship 14. Accounting for gender equality 15. Accounting vs. economic inequality – two examples of critical accounting praxis PART VII FAITHFUL ACCOUNTANTS AND ACCOUNTINGS 16. Muslim women accountants: the unknown feminists 17. ‘Accountable creatures’: Christianity and accounting PART VIII ACCOUNTING IN EVERYDAY CULTURE 18. Portraying the accountant in popular culture: reflections on The Accountant (2016) movie 19. Accounting perspectives in the digital world: controlling online interaction PART IX ACCOUNTING ACTIVISTS 20. Activism and accounting 21. Demanding accountability through grass roots activism: the case of service charging in English social housing 22. The accountability assembly as a counter-accounting performance 23. Queer accounting voices: accounting academics’ oral stories PART X GLOBALISATION, EMPIRE, AND COMPETING WORLDS 24. Postcolonialism in accounting 25. Racism in the accounting academy – an auto-ethnographic case study of British higher education 26. Grappling with the angst of accounting: a reflection on the potential of an Indigenous accounting approach PART XI ACCOUNTING FOR LIFE AND DEATH 27. Accounting and biopolitics: an Italian perspective 28. Wildlife in human spaces: bringing naturalization and landscape-scale conservation into the sustainable organization 29. Economic rents at the end of life: for-profit eldercare and the myth of corporate accountability 30. Accounting for the good life: accounts that break your heart PART XII CONCLUSION 31. Encountering accounting in society Index