The accounting challenges of tomorrow

What do we find in common between our everyday purchases, whether online or at a retailer, our baker's sales or profits and those of Aventis or Google, France's budget and China's?

Philippe Chapellier, University of MontpellierAgnès Mazars-Chapelon, University of MontpellierClaire Gillet-Monjarret, University of MontpellierEmmanuelle Nègre, Toulouse 1 Capitole UniversityGérald Naro, University of Montpellier and Yves Dupuy, University of Montpellier

This contribution is based on work coordinated by Philippe Chapellier (Professor of Management Sciences at the University of Montpellier), Yves Dupuy (Professor Emeritus of Management Sciences at the University of Montpellier), Claire Gillet-Monjarret (Senior Lecturer at the University of Montpellier), Agnès Mazars-Chapelon (maître de conférences HDR at the University of Montpellier), Gérald Naro (professeur des universités en sciences de gestion at the University of Montpellier) and Emmanuelle Nègre (maître de conférences at the Toulouse School of Management), for the book "Comptabilités et société: entre représentation et construction du monde", published by EMS.

This book was awarded the 2019 FNEGE Prize for the best management book in the collective research work category, of which The Conversation France is a partner.

What do we find in common between our everyday purchases, whether online or at a retailer, our baker's sales or profits and those of Aventis or Google, France's budget and China's? Nothing, one might be tempted to answer. Yet all these categories share a fundamental identity: that of corresponding to a numerical and monetary representation, i.e., one that can be "counted", according to, at least on the surface, a single, coherent numerical language.

In this respect, the few examples mentioned above underline the extent to which the accounting language in question has become part and parcel of our daily economic, social and even societal life: prices, costs, budgetary constraints, economic interpretations of performance - of all performance - are constantly being used and publicized to explain or justify the world as it is. Yet it's hard to say clearly, except perhaps from a strictly technical point of view, what a price or a cost is, let alone a benefit, a budget or an environmental "impact". The scope of this strange paradox, which consists in implicitly considering complex and elusive categories as common sense, or even self-evident, is the focus of this book.

Indispensable standards

First of all, accounting is still very often understood and accepted as a perfectly standardized, complete and reliable technique for representing the real world and its institutional and organizational components. It claims to represent, for example, all the assets held by a given company at a given time. But it is still necessary to agree on the spatio-temporal contours and components of this wealth, and on the possibility of producing a quantified image comparable to that of the wealth of other companies, institutions, etc. To this end, conventions and standards must necessarily be adopted.

Consequently, representing reality in accounting terms inevitably means simplifying it, and thus favoring certain aspects over others. In this sense, "traditional" accounting tends to favor financial aspects over social ones, and the interests of companies or investors over those of society as a whole. A typical illustration of this tendency can be found in the use by Internet giants of accounting tricks designed to relocate their profits by creating a formal disconnect between the location of activity and the location of declared profits.

No neutral role

This highly topical example suggests that, while the primary purpose of accounting is to represent the world, it also has a profound influence on it. The representations it delivers constantly condition the behavior of its direct and indirect users. It is indeed on the basis of accounting management tools that managers make and justify their decisions. In this way, they determine the way their organizations function, and beyond that, all kinds of institutions and communities.

In this respect, accounting in no way plays the passive or neutral role to which some would like to confine it. On the contrary, it is a principle of action - after all, isn't an asset made for action? -and, beyond that, it contributes to the construction of the world. An essential challenge, then, is to collectively lay the foundations for the accounting of tomorrow. Such accounting is intended to be free of the dead-ends and obscure areas of today. Going beyond purely monetary and financial figures, it would in some way make visible essential categories that are still largely invisible, such as common goods, the environment, the human dimension, the social dimension...

Philippe Chapellier, University Professor of Management Sciences, University of MontpellierAgnès Mazars-Chapelon, Lecturer in Management Sciences, University of MontpellierClaire Gillet-Monjarret, Senior Lecturer in Management Sciences, University of MontpellierEmmanuelle Nègre, Senior Lecturer in Management Sciences, Toulouse School of Management Research, Toulouse 1 Capitole UniversityGérald Naro, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier and Yves Dupuy, Professor Emeritus of Management, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.