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The purpose of this paper is to investigate accounting as first visible-sign statement form, and also as the first writing, and analyse its systematic differences, syntactic and semantic, from subsequent speech-following (glottographic) writing forms. The authors consider how accounting as non-glottographic (and so “unspeakable”) writing form renders “glottography” a “subsystem of writing” (Hyman, 2006), while initiating a mode of veridiction which always and only names and counts, silently and synoptically. The authors also consider the translation of this statement form into the graphs, charts, equations, etc., which are central to the making of modern scientific truth claims, and to remaking the boundaries of “languaging” and translatability.

As a historical–theoretical study, this draws on work reconceptualising writing vs speech (e.g. Harris, 1986; 2000), the statement vs the word (e.g. Foucault, 1972/2002) and the parameters of translation (e.g. Littau, 2016) to re-think the conceptual significance of accounting as constitutive of our “literate modes” of thinking, acting and “languaging in general”.

Specific reflections are offered on how the accounting statement, as mathematically regularised naming of what “ought” to be counted, is then evaluated against what is counted, thus generating a first discourse of the norm and a first accounting-based apparatus for governing the state. The authors analyse how the non-glottographic statement is constructed and read not as linear flow of signs but as simulacrum; and on how the accounting statement poses both the practical issue of how to translate non-linear flow statements, and the conceptual problem of how to think this statement form’s general translatability, given its irreducibility to the linear narrative statement form.

The paper pioneers in approaching accounting as statement form in a way that analyses the differences that flow from its non-glottographic status.

This paper brings insights from accounting scholarship to the measurement and reporting challenges of metagovernance approaches to sustainable development. Where scholarship on metagovernance—the combination of market, hierarchical and network governance—proposes deductive approaches to such challenges, we contend that a historically informed “abductive” approach offers valuable insight into the realpolitik of intergovernmental frameworks.

The paper adopts a Foucauldian “archaeological–genealogical” method to investigate the inclusion of climate change as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). It analyses more than 100 documents and texts, tracking the statement forms that crystallise prevailing truth claims across the development of climate and SDG metagovernance.

We show how the truth claims now enshrined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change constrained the conceptualisation and operationalisation of SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The paper thereby reframes recent measurement and reporting challenges as outcomes of conceptual conflicts between the technicist emphasis of divisions within the United Nations and the truth claims enshrined in intergovernmental agreements.

This paper demonstrates how an archaeological–genealogical approach may start to address the measurement and reporting challenges facing climate and SDG metagovernance. It also highlights that the two degrees target on climate change has a manifest variability of interpretation and shows how this characteristic has become pivotal to operationalising climate metagovernance in a manner that respects the sovereignty of developing nations.

This paper extends the nature and relevance of exploring the historical roots of social and environmental accounting by investigating an account that recorded and made visible pollution in 17th century London. John Evelyn's Fumifugium (1661) is characterised as an external social account that bears resemblance to contemporary external accounting particularly given its problematising intentionality.

An interpretive content analysis of the text draws out the themes and features of social accounting. Emancipatory accounting theory is the theoretical lens through which Evelyn's social account is interpreted, applying a microhistory research approach. We interpret Fumifugium as a social account with reference to the context of the reporting accountant.

In this early example of a stakeholder “giving an account” rather than an “account rendered” by an entity, Evelyn problematises industrial pollution and its impacts with the stated intention of changing industrial practices. We find that Fumifugium was used in challenging, resisting and seeking to solve an environmental problem by highlighting the adverse consequences to those in power and rendering new solutions thinkable.

This is the first research paper to extend investigations of the historical roots of social and environmental accounting into the 17th century. It also extends research investigating alternative forms of account by focusing on a report produced by an interested party and includes a novel use of the emancipatory accounting theoretical lens to investigate this historic report. Fumifugium challenged the lack of accountability of businesses in ways similar to present-day campaigns to address the overwhelming challenge of climate change.

This paper highlights one of the limitations of the continuous improvement (CI) philosophy and contends that CI cannot go on forever. It further suggests that in order to further improve organizations need to increase the system boundary, and proposes ways of doing so.

In order to highlight the limits of CI this paper describes a case study. Using a literature review, it further proposes nine ways of increasing system boundary.

The first finding is that CI is not limitless and there is a logical point where CI cannot be economically justified. At that point, the possibility of increasing the system boundary is required. This paper proposes nine possible ways of expanding this boundary.

The paper presents ways of bringing about radical improvements by increasing the system scope. These ways can be explored by practitioners to bring about major improvements, once incremental improvements have been exhausted.

This paper presents ways for companies to explore radical improvement possibilities, once the incremental improvements have reached a level where they can no longer be financially justified.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and critique the growing literature on record‐keeping practices in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt with a particular focus on processes of ancient accountability, and provide a research agenda for future work.

Analyzes the contributions of accounting historians in this area as well as the research conducted by Assyriologists and Egyptologists. Our analysis emphasizes the embeddeness of ancient processes of accounting and accountability in their wider contexts.

A framework is proposed comprising levels and spheres of accountability. The levels of accountability consist of: hierarchical; horizontal; and self, all entailing both accounting and non‐accounting elements. Furthermore, accountability is analyzed at three spheres: the individual‐state, the state‐individual, and the individual‐individual.

Further research in this area might examine issues such as the temporal dimension of accountability and whether more precise time measures than those reported in the extant literature were enforced in ancient economies; how the ancients dealt with differences between actual and expected measures; examination on the extent to which accountability exerted an impact on, and the role of accounting in, ordering the lives of individuals and communities; and examination of the trajectories of accounting and accountability across different historical episodes.

The paper discusses the notion of information with regard to its carriers, representatives (or structural carriers) and carried-related processes of transmission, accumulation and processing through the developmental periods of the inorganic and organic world. In the first period, information is contained in a representation of the outcome of physical, chemical and other processes in the physical, chemical and other structures of the non-living world and refers to environmental information. In the second period, information begins to be used to create the physical and chemical structures of the living world and is contained in instructions of the genetic code. In the third period, with the evolution of cognitive systems and intelligence of living beings, in addition to those listed, information is finally being used to build its own structures, which in this paper are called knowledge structures.

In addition to the usual scientific methods in conceptual papers of this type (analysis, synthesis, etc.), the methodology of the paper also relies on the method of analogy, which was used to detect the carriers and representatives of information in the processes of transmission, accumulation and processing of information and the method of classification in order to propose a new taxonomy related to the concept of information.

The paper shows that information carriers and information representatives appear in each of the three mentioned processes - transmission, accumulation and processing of information - and that they need to be distinguished from the information itself. This insight opened a new perspective in observing this concept and led to the proposal of a new taxonomy related to the concept of information in a given context, eliminating seemingly incommensurable approaches to its study in different scientific fields.

The conducted synthesis results in information being recognized as a transmittable/transmissible documentation of reality inseparable from its carrier and its representative.

This paper explores the links between economic and social structures and ethical norms for economic life. As such, the essay is a contribution to the more general philosophical discussions on the relation between fact and value in the social sciences. I begin with a brief discussion of ethics which highlights the social character of ethical “value” and draws upon the work of the Canadian philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, to introduce a novel way of understanding social structures. The analyses show how economic structures can be understood as cooperative meaning schemes, how such schemes are embedded within a wider ecology of social meaning schemes, and how the dynimic relations among such schemes reveal ethical goals and make ethical demands upon participants who depend upon them for their living. I illustrate these linkages in a discussion of three examples drawn from economic life: a consumer purchase transaction, an ancient trade scheme drawn from the work of Karl Polanyi, and a rather novel approach to economic development proposed by Jane Jacobs.

The paper presents an English translation of the short story The Stub‐book by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, one of the great literary figures of ninteenth century Spain. The paper also offers some introduction and explanation to this delightful story, which ultimately deals not merely with accounting but even one of its modern off‐springs, “forensic accounting”. It closes with some notes about de Alarcón.

Much has been written lately concerning the failure of several major corporations to report their financial statuses accurately. Enron, Global Crossing, IBM and others have failed to provide accurate information to their investors and to provide full disclosure of liabilities that would impact the valuation. While there has been significant discussion about the roles of both internal and external auditing in these cases of financial misrepresentation, little has been said about the role of the corporate communication professional. Does an ethical standard exist for the corporate communicator in the preparation of financial reporting documents and speeches? Has any study been undertaken to evaluate ethics in such a situation? What is being taught and what literature is available relating to ethics and the corporate communication professional? These are some of the questions I seek to answer in this paper. The basis of my paper is a literature search seeking information on what has been written, what studies have been done or how ethics is being taught in our colleges and universities to the corporate communication major.

A consideration of the history of management auditing suggests that the evolution of non‐financial audit and the rise of the internal auditor can be traced back to audit's earliest origins and that modern financial audit is a special case of more general auditing. Professional audit came about partly through legislation and partly to serve the interests of companies. In the USA, as a narrower purpose of audit took hold, companies and government responded by the development of an internal audit function to fill the gap.