The Challenges Facing Accounting in the Future
What do our everyday purchases—whether online or at a store—have in common with the revenue or profits of our local bakery, those of Aventis or Google, or the budgets of France and China?
Philippe Chapellier, University of Montpellier; Agnès Mazars-Chapelon, University of Montpellier; Claire Gillet-Monjarret, University of Montpellier; Emmanuelle Nègre, University of Toulouse 1 Capitole; Gérald Naro, University of Montpellier and Yves Dupuy, University of Montpellier
This contribution is based on research 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 (associate professor at the University of Montpellier), Agnès Mazars-Chapelon (associate professor with HDR status at the University of Montpellier), Gérald Naro (Professor of Management Sciences at the University of Montpellier), and Emmanuelle Nègre (Associate Professor at the Toulouse School of Management), as part of the writing of the book “Accounting and Society: Between Representation and the Construction of the World,” published by EMS.
This book received the 2019 FNEGE Award for Best Management Book in the category of collective research works, in partnership with The Conversation France.
What do our everyday purchases—whether online or at a store—have in common with the revenue or profits of our local baker, those of Aventis or Google, or the budgets of France and China? Nothing, one might be tempted to say at first glance. Yet all these categories share a fundamental identity: that of corresponding to a numerical and monetary representation—that is, something “that can be counted”—according to, at least on the surface, a single, coherent numerical language.
In this regard, the few examples mentioned earlier highlight just how pervasive this accounting language has become in our economic, social, and even societal lives: prices, costs, budget constraints, and economic interpretations of performance—of all kinds of performance—are thus constantly invoked and publicized to explain or justify the world as it is. Yet, it would take a clever person indeed to clearly define—except perhaps from a strictly technical standpoint—what a price or a cost is, let alone a profit, a budget, or an environmental “impact.” The scope of this strange paradox—which consists in implicitly treating complex and elusive categories as matters of common sense, or even self-evident truths—forms the anchor point of this book.
Essential standards
The fact is that, first of all, accounting is very often understood and accepted as a fully standardized, comprehensive, and reliable technique for representing the real world and its institutional and organizational components. It claims to represent, for example, the total assets held by a given company at a given moment. But we must still agree on the spatial and temporal scope and the components of these assets, as well as on the possibility of producing a numerical representation comparable to that of the assets of other companies, institutions, etc. To this end, conventions and standards must necessarily be adopted.
Consequently, representing reality in accounting terms necessarily involves simplifying it and thus prioritizing certain aspects over others. In this sense, “traditional” accounting tends to emphasize financial aspects at the expense of societal ones, and the interests of companies or investors at the expense of those of society. A typical illustration of this trend can be found in the use, by internet giants, of accounting maneuvers aimed at shifting their profits by creating a formal disconnect between where business is conducted and where reported profits are located.
No neutral role
This very timely example suggests that, while accounting’s primary purpose is to represent the world, it in turn profoundly influences it. The representations it provides constantly shape the behavior of its direct and indirect users. It is, of course, on the basis of accounting management tools that managers make and justify their decisions. In this way, they determine how their organizations operate and, beyond that, a wide variety of institutions and communities.
In this sense, accounting by no means plays the passive or neutral role to which some would like to confine it. On the contrary, it stands as a principle of action—after all, aren’t assets created to be put to use?—and it goes even further to contribute to the shaping of the world. A key challenge, then, is to collectively lay the foundations for the accounting of tomorrow. Such accounting would aim to free itself from its current dead ends and gray areas. Beyond purely monetary and financial figures, it would, in a sense, make visible essential categories that are still largely invisible, such as the commons, the environment, the human, and the social…
Philippe Chapellier, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier; Agnès Mazars-Chapelon, Professor Management Sciences, University of Montpellier; Claire Gillet-Monjarret, Associate Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier; Emmanuelle Nègre, Associate Professor of Management Sciences, Toulouse School of Management Research, University of Toulouse 1 Capitole; Gérald Naro, Full Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier and Yves Dupuy, Professor Emeritus of Management, University of Montpellier
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