Public value and the planet: accounting in ecological reconstitution
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 29 December 2020
Issue publication date: 10 September 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores the role of accounting in ecological reconstitution and draws attention to the public value as a topic of strategic interest for developing it.
Design/methodology/approach
The process of ecological reconstitution described by Latour in the “Politics of Nature” is traced towards a distinct set of accounting practices. These accounting practices, designated here as full-tax accounting, offer indications of the changing shape and role of accounting in ecological renewal.
Findings
Full-tax accounting extends the planetary public towards the inclusion of nonhuman planetarians. It establishes matters of care in multimodal accounts and haunts constitutional processes with the spectre of exclusion. Starting with full-tax accounting, public-value accountants emerge as curators of matters of care.
Research limitations/implications
The association of accounting in ecological reconstitution with matters of care highlights the mediating and immersive effects of accounting practice, inviting accounting scholars to explore these effects more systematically.
Practical implications
Accountants need to reconsider their stewardship role in relation to the fundamental uncertainties implied in planetary public-value accounting, support the process of ecological reconstitution by associating themselves with matters of care and develop ethics of exclusion.
Social implications
Broad alliances among planetary accountants are needed to extend the terms of ecological reconstitution, to gain and preserve attunement to matters of care and defend these attunements, in the atmospheric politics of ecological renewal, against regressive tendencies.
Originality/value
In problematising public value, the paper draws attention to a convergence of interests among scholars in accounting, public sector research and the environmental humanities. It presents a case for planetary accounting in ecological reconstitution that calls for participation from across disciplines, professions, arts and environmental activism.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The paper has benefitted greatly from ongoing discussions of socio-ecological accounting in a group of scholars brought together by Jan Bebbington on a regular basis since 2019. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 30th International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research in St Andrews in 2018, the Wards Seminar at the University of Glasgow, the Alternative Accounts Europe conference at the University of Leicester School of Business and the Joint Research Seminar in Interdisciplinary Accounting of Tampere University and the Turku School of Economics. The author is particularly grateful to Kari Lukka who acted as a discussant at the seminar in Tampere in early 2020 and the two anonymous reviewers of this journal.
Citation
Vollmer, H. (2021), "Public value and the planet: accounting in ecological reconstitution", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 34 No. 7, pp. 1527-1554. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-11-2019-4283
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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