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The paper sets out to identify the key role that Jan‐Erik Grojer's work on human resource costing and accounting played in linking initial developments in accounting for people with the more recent advances associated with the emergence of the intellectual capital concept.

The paper is in the form of an essay that briefly considers the history of approaches to the challenge of accounting for people.

The recent developments associated with intellectual capital highlight the importance and value of adopting a rather wider conception of accounting for people.

The paper provides a provocative introduction to the topic of accounting for people and as such may be of value to both newcomers to the field and those who are simply intrigued by the idea itself.

The paper celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Flamholtz’s seminal paper on the Human Resource Accounting approach to taking people into account, providing a critical review of its progress since that time and offering some thoughts on how the project might now be beneficially shaped.

The paper provides an authoritative review of the progress of the accounting for people project to date.

The continuing exploration of how it might be possible to take people into account is identified to be entering a new and exciting phase.

The authors readily acknowledge that what the paper provides is an account of the evolution of the accounting for people field, which they argue is currently extending into a new and important phase relating to employee health and wellbeing.

The paper’s principal contribution lies in bringing together three authors who have made significant contributions to the topic of accounting for people over the past 50 years.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the disempowering and/or empowering role of accounting in the context of Indigenous Australians.

A total of 31 interviewees participated in this study, which included 18 self-identified Indigenous Australians and 13 non-Indigenous Australians. A qualitative research methodology, and in particular an oral history method, was chosen because of its ability to support a deeper and richer form of inquiry. Bourdieu’s concepts provide the framework for mobilizing and analyzing the findings of this study.

The damaging role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples has largely stemmed from non-Indigenous peoples providing accounting services for Indigenous peoples. The evidence and analysis provided by this study postulates a constructive way forward of accounting’s role in contributing to the empowerment of Indigenous Australians.

Limitations include being a non-Indigenous researcher conducting research in an Indigenous context, which may have prevented some interviewees from feeling comfortable to openly share their experiences and insights.

As this study’s findings have supported the theory that accounting skills can be used in an empowering way when used “by” Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Australians should be actively supported by the accounting bodies to gain the qualifications needed for membership of the accounting profession.

This study contributes to the expanding accounting literature that locates the role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples by proposing accounting as a tool of empowerment.

This paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal national accounting system using the United Nations Systems of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework as a basis.

Adopting a critical dialogic approach and responding to the calls for critical accountants to engage with stakeholders, the authors worked with two Indigenous groups of Australia to develop a system of accounts that incorporates their cultural connections to “Country”. The two groups were clans from the Mungguy Country in the Kakadu region of Northern Territory and the Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation of Northern Queensland. Conducting two-day workshops on separate occasions with both groups, the authors attempted to meld the Indigenous worldviews with the worldviews embodied within national accounting systems and the UN-SEEA framework.

The models developed highlight significant differences between the ontological foundations of Indigenous and Western-worldviews and the authors reflect on the tensions created between these competing worldviews. The authors also offer pragmatic solutions that could be implemented by the Indigenous Traditional Owners and the government in terms of developing such an accounting system that incorporates connections to Country.

The paper contributes to providing a contemporary case study of engagement with Indigenous peoples in the co-development of a system of accounting for and by Indigenous peoples; it also contributes to the ongoing debate on bridging the divide between critique and praxis; and finally, the paper delves into an area that is largely unexplored within accounting research which is national accounting.

This study explores accounting practice in an Indigenous organization. This organization is embedded within a rural Aboriginal community in the country currently known as Australia. In doing so, this study illustrates the intertwining of accounting practice, practitioners, organizations and social/cultural context, while recognizing that the cultural embeddedness of accounting is not uniform.

Empirical materials were collected as part of a qualitative field study with an Indigenous organization. Specific methods include interviews, informal conversations, documentary reviews and participant observations. These materials were analysed through a Bourdieusian perspective.

By working with Indigenous Peoples on the ground, rather than relying on secondary materials, this study highlights how the values of a community challenge and reorient accounting practice towards community aspirations. This study illustrates how fields beyond the organization influence accounting practice, including in budgeting and assurance.

Exploring Indigenous practices of accounting maintains Indigenous agency and opens up space for alternative understandings and practices of accounting. By illustrating how a community can influence the accounting practice of an organization, this study has implications for wider understandings of the cultural embeddedness of mainstream accounting and possible alternatives.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of approaches to measuring and reporting on intangibles since the mid‐1990s, and to identify intellectual capital self‐accounts as a possible means of continuing this process in a beneficial way.

Principally a literature review, the paper provides the opportunity to extend earlier, initial thoughts on the promise of intellectual capital self‐accounts.

Given the importance of primary intellectual capital (“people”) in the creation of intangibles (secondary intellectual capital), the paper draws attention to the limited role hitherto ascribed to people in reporting on intangibles in particular.

The value of the paper lies principally in the identification of possible content for self‐accounts in the context of brands and health and wellbeing as important intangibles.

This study offers a Bourdieu-oriented analysis of the tax compliance practice for indigenous entrepreneurs in New Zealand. It examines the intersection of accounting and tax for Māori entrepreneurs and their relational interactions with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD)/state/Crown and accountants by considering the contextual factors of history, culture and society of Māori.

Qualitative research was adopted using face-to-face in-depth interviews with 34 participants and reviewing government documents. The authors analyse the tax compliance practice by drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus to conceptualise the tax field as a site of struggle for power and control by the IRD, accountants and indigenous entrepreneurs.

This study demonstrates how the tax field is structured as a game between tax reporting, taxpaying and monitoring functions. The position within the field is determined by the actor's access to the relevant capitals and habitus. It identifies how accounting, given its centrality to tax compliance, facilitates the power relations between the IRD, accountants and Māori entrepreneurs. The Eurocentric accounting-based tax reporting and the contextual factors illuminate how indigenous entrepreneurs are being dominated in the tax field. They experienced cultural dissonance with conflicting responsibilities when traversing the collectivistic indigenous and tax fields. Their collectivism involves sharing resources as they cherish whanaungatanga (relationship, kinship) and manaakitanga (kindness, generosity), which are at odds and are not valued in the tax field.

It is an empirical illustration of the connection between accounting, tax and power for indigenous taxpayers and their relationship with the IRD/Crown and accountants. It has practical implications for developing and enhancing tax compliance in jurisdictions with indigenous taxpayers. Such an understanding is helpful for policymakers, government, business agencies and the accounting professions when assisting, empowering and educating indigenous groups regarding tax compliance.

This paper responds to the call for accounting research with modern-day indigenous peoples rather than historical ones. The paper fills a gap in the accounting and tax literature by examining the tax compliance practice of indigenous small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs using Bourdieu's framework. It identifies how the role of accounting creates, maintains and reinforces power structures in the tax field. Tax/accounting reporting based on Eurocentric rules disempowers and alienates indigenous entrepreneurs. They misrecognise their actions in reproducing the existing power structures in the tax field due to deeply held historical and cultural factors about the fear of the Crown/state and their practice of rangitaratanga (esteeming authorities).

The purpose of this study is to augment an understanding of the importance and relevance of a proposed new definition of accounting to reset, inform and develop accounting education, professional practice and research, from tomorrow, for the purpose of shaping a better world. In the process of setting an agenda, we outline, discuss, and analyse the eight articles which follow depicting complementary and insightful scenarios during COVID-19.

This study applies an original informing framework for discussion and analysis purposes, described as Framework of the Multidimensional Nature of Accounting. The proposed, multidimensional definition is “Accounting is a technical, social and moral practice concerned with the sustainable utilisation of resources and proper accountability to stakeholders to enable the flourishing of organisations, people and nature” (Carnegie et al., 2021a, p. 69, 2021b).

Accounting is conceived, understood and examined in the research portrayed as a combined technical, social and moral practice concerned with shaping a better world to enable the flourishing of organisations, people and nature. To the contrary, accounting is not recognised as a mere neutral, benign, technical practice.

While this paper examines the other articles, there is no substitute for carefully reading, and reflecting on, all the articles published. Importantly, each contribution provides unique and comprehensive insights on accounting during the initial global pandemic period.

Accounting is studied in different organisational and social contexts against the backdrop of a global pandemic, among other “wicked problems” worldwide.

This paper hypothesizes that a system of accounting underpinned by attributions of harm has the capacity, more than conventional accounting, to elicit empathic concern among managers, by becoming the mediating link between organisational responsibility and concern for the “other”.

The literature-inspired reflections presented in this paper stem from the theoretical perspective of care-ethics supported by the notions of empathy and proximity to highlight how the propensity to empathise is mediated by attributions of harm and responsibility.

The proposed “new” accounting, coined “connected accounting” is proposed because of its potential to make visible the neglected and marginalised segments of society that presently lie hidden in conventional accounting. Accounting for the effects of organisational practice on people and society is expected to strengthen the care-ethic relationship between key actors – managers, accountants and stakeholders.

The paper is limited by the assumptions that underpin the conceptualised notion of “Connected Accounting”.

This essay introduces to the accounting ethics literature the role of emotion and empathic care in accounting, including sociological aspects of accounting reflecting the ongoing quest for understanding the processes and consequences of accounting as a social practice.

This paper explores the historical roots of environmental accountability in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria by focusing on the campaigns for social and environmental justice by writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and the indigenous Ogoni people.

The methods consist of an analysis of books, diaries, letters and poems written by Ken Saro-Wiwa as well as books, reports and audio recordings of panel discussions which capture the Ogoni struggle, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s activism and its impacts. The authors’ approach to the data is sensitised by Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct as it enables the authors to better grasp the creative agency of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni as they struggle and campaign for political autonomy, environmental justice and accountability.

The authors’ findings illustrate how Ken Saro-Wiwa’s books, letters, poems, diaries and articles provide early accounts of environmental injustices and the absence of accountability in the Niger Delta. They highlight how Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni movement deploy counter-conduct to subvert existing power and accountability structures through innovative strategies, effective mobilisation and communication at local and international levels. The authors’ findings also highlight how these have led to specific forms of accountability for human rights and the environment at local and global levels. They also show how Saro-Wiwa’s activism and the Ogoni struggle have inspired a new generation of environmental activists and new ways of demanding accountability.

This paper presents, for the first time, an account of the historical roots of environmental accountability practices from an African and developing country context. Its focus on the historical roots of environmental accountability is also unique as it expands the view beyond the origins of environmental accounting to look more broadly at the origins of environmental accountability practices.