The Crises of Representation in Knowledge‐Based Societies: Why is accounting a social service?

Abstract

The basic characteristic of knowledge‐based societies is that society organised according to simulations, codes and models replaces production as society's organising principle. Electronically operated global capitalism is structured with the help of information networks in a timeless space of financial flows. Money has become totally independent of production, escaping into the networks of high‐order electronic interactions. The ideas in this article come on the one hand from the Foucaultian poststructuralist and the Baudrillarian postmodernist perspective, and on the other hand they are based on a crietical accounting that belongs to Anglo‐Saxon critical thinking. In the centre of the analysis lies a provocative thesis that was advanced by N. Macintosh in his book Accounting, Accountants and Accountability (2002), that today's financial markets operate detached from reality in hyperreality, and there does not exist anything stable to support the financial economy in the «order of simulacrum». Consequently, vital accounting information no longer refers to real referents, which means that we live in the world of free floating signs. In «the simulation era of today's world», accounting, just like all other areas of knowledge, is faced with a crisis of representation. By introducing the poststructuralist perspective in the accounting area, critical accounting has opened up a debate on the presentation of accounting data, use of language and control of accounting discourse. Consequently, accountancy may be seen as a fundamentally social service which is especially evident in the situations when the private and public interests are opposed.

Citation

Mraović, B. (2005), "The Crises of Representation in Knowledge‐Based Societies: Why is accounting a social service?", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1/2, pp. 4-15. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045789