Accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies

Accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies: taking multiple perspectives seriously

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to synthesize work in the emerging field of how accounting and accountability can be reoriented to better promote pluralistic democracy which recognizes and addresses differentials in power, beliefs and desires of constituencies. An agenda for future research and engagement is outlined, drawing on this and insights from other papers in this special issue o...

Norms and accountability in multi-agent societies

It is argued that norms are best understood as classes of constraints on practical reasoning, which an agent may consult either to select appropriate goals or commitments according to the circumstances, or to construct a discursive justification for a course of action after the event. We also discuss the question of how norm-conformance can be enforced in an open agent society, arguing that som...

Accounting for Accountability

Accounting for Accountability

Accounting , Accountability , Closeness and Transparency

[The] understanding which is relevant to the sciences of man is something more than this implicit grasp on things. It is related rather to the kind of understanding we invoke in personal relations when we say, for instance: ‘I find him hard to understand’; or at last I understand her’. To switch for a minute to another language, it is the kind of understanding one invokes in French when one say...