Accounting as a Political Object

Edouard Jourdain (1, 2)

1 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales
2 UCO - Université Catholique de l'Ouest

Accounting is part of a cosmology, even an anthropology, which goes beyond the simple input / output operation. This is why its object is in the deepest sense a political term: accounting reports on and informs the relations that a society creates. The true working heart of a company and of the State, it constitutes however a kind of a black box the design of which would be reserved for certain specialists claiming to be of a scientific neutrality that conceals very political choices. From a normative point of view, accounting standardization is an instrument of corporate or state governance insofar as it accounts for what is valued: as such, it reflects what matters in a society, in the strictly economic sense but also more generally in the social and political sense. As far as the company is concerned, we can conceive of it as an entity both owned by the people who work there while holding a mandate of the company as a whole as long as its activity fits into the horizon it sets out. In this sense, it aims to maintain the capital (human, natural and financial) that constitutes it and to meet social needs. As for the State, re-envisioned from the perspective of the common, it becomes the object of institutions thoroughly invested by citizen control at all levels, from a perspective of complete federalism in which political and economic needs are coordinated under the principle of subsidiarity.

Mots clés: Accounting; Commons; Sustainability; Democracy; Politics; Capital

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Edouard Jourdain. Accounting as a Political Object. Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability. Rethinking Finance in the Face of New Challenges, 15, pp.131 - 141, 2021, ⟨10.1108/s2043-905920210000015023⟩. ⟨hal-04567342⟩