You certainly remember it from the times of the Komsomol. When activists gather and some Jinx has to make a self-accusation. Suddenly, someone whom he considered a good colleague a moment ago stands up and hisses venomously: “And I think that a good engineer – can only be a Marxist engineer!”. Imagine that it is the same now – you just have to be an eco-feminist.

Accountant as a heterosexual white male

As at least some of you once confessed – I am an accountant.  Non-practitioner, but still, just like that, out of professional curiosity, with one eye following what in the industry rattles an abacus.  And the one who would associate accounting with the familiar atmosphere of a dusty office, which happily does not reach any news – would be wrong.  Unfortunately, more and more of these appear every year.  Could it occur to you looking at something as painfully boring as a quarterly balance that it is just another product of white, male, Western, Anglo-Saxon and petty-bourgeois domination?  And at the same time evidence of its sinister control over seemingly innocent accounting practice and theory…  Well, I did not know either, but I do now, having made up for the last shortcomings in professional literature and feeling recalled to the ideological division by such industry gurus as prof. Sonja Gallhofer and prof. Jim Haslan. It was just the beginning of the Enlightenment, a path on which even the humanoid perspective is abandoned, let alone the good old ledger.  Because who said that you can’t, that you shouldn’t create financial statements from the perspective of a cat, for example? And with the help of dance and video techniques?

Both the gardener and the undertaker use a spade, but…

Probably every essay on the history of accounting had to contain a reference to Luccia Pacioli’s “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita”.  And the author of every work resembling modern accounting tasks somehow tried to use Milton Friedman’s hackneyed definition of management, according to which its ultimate goal is to maximize shareholders’ income.  Thus, the role of accounting remains only to provide such information that is useful in achieving this goal.  Supporters of the classic doctrine still dare to believe that it guarantees fully objective, transparent and purely utilitarian treatment of accounting as simply a management tool.  The problem, however, was that there was a trap hidden in this approach.  The amalgamation of the informative, recreational accounting function with the Chicago Boys’ way of thinking or any other economic theory, is not the only one possibility.  Since accounting can only be used to multiply wealth and monetise all elements of human activity considered useful and beneficial – it is also possible to identify and choose other purposes that, in particular, financial reporting (but also management accounting) can be successfully used to the benefit of other value systems.

Why we should run hearing „Progress!”

It started innocently – by postulating a more holistic approach, a bit more digestible for the eyes of people who get used to read anything apart from numbers.  There was also an expectation of a broader context, expressing financial data through the prism of the impact of the presented values not only on the shareholders themselves, but also on the social environment of a given entity.  Finally, the 1990s and the beginning of this century in particular brought an emphasis on environmental effects and the theory of sustainable development, which some schools also considered necessary to be squeezed into the strictly defined framework of accounting reporting.  From the point of view of the history and theory of accounting, the process of its fictionalisation ran from integrated reporting, through environmental reporting, then the concept of Environmental, Social and Governance Accounting, to the inclusion of such doctrinal trends as deep ecology and feminism.

There is also a space for a systemic critique of accounting in general as a product and tool of a system that should be rejected in its entirety in the face of the threats it has caused for the survival of life on Earth.

Of course, the most extreme trends are still marginal in business practice.  However, the wheel of progress is accelerating, and in academic circles these tendencies almost reach for monopoly, efficiently censoring the competitors.  In addition, they clearly speak best to the political and bureaucratic superstructure of the modern economy, which, in turn, would not exist without representing the interests of the dominant class, i.e. global corporations and financiers.  These, moreover, are also slowly, though inexorably, overwhelmed by new tendencies.  Over the last decade, already approx. 85 percent of major global corporations have shifted to sustainable reporting.  But it is still too little, too slow and not enough radically for grassroots initiatives such as Socially Responsible Investment nor industry ones such as The Integrated Reporting Council 2013 Framework and Sustainability Accounting Standards Boards.  After all, the European Union would not be itself, if had not issued a relevant Directive 2014/95 / EU (“CSR Reporting Directive”), which extends the requirements for disclosure reports by issues of environmental protection, human rights, combating corruption, but also increasing diversity.

Accountant – species annihilator

According to some authors, there may not be time for a slow influence on consciousness, due to “the threat to the existence of our habitat”.  It is therefore necessary to determine what may be the “contribution of accountancy in stopping and reversing the processes of climate change and annihilation of species”.  This approach is justified by the view that “the hitherto role of accounting within Western civilization had its share in bringing about the present crisis”.  However, it is not just about recognizing this obviousness and “revealing the truth” (also in financial reports).  It would satisfy any wimpy, since it is known that everyone is guilty, including accountants, so it is not enough just to confess the sins.  No – it is not enough anymore.  Accounting is to roll up their sleeves and together – save the planet before everyone else!  And its recovery, especially MANAGEMENT according to new, only right rules…

One of the proposals on how to effectively impose these rightnesses – is Extinction Accounting and Accountability, postulating exhaustive mention in the reports of the impact of the company’s activity on the condition of the species affected by this activity.  In practice, such concepts come from the observation that many companies still do not see the sense of such inquiries, or (according to activists) “are afraid of an external reaction to reporting such dependencies”.  While that is a point that they should rather afraid not to do so.  In a word: you run a business – you have a duty to know and inform the universe whether the amount of cardboard packaging you used has exhausted the population of the scarce large blue in Siberia!  Because if not – you will meet a fate worse than a trampled caterpillar.  Therefore, we are dealing with forcing changes in management by increasing the scope of the reporting obligation.  And of course, since the accounting is being reformed – there are no limits.  Why, actually, being one male-racist construct – accounting uses another one as currency, and not, for example … ecological units?  Such ecological units as a measure of value – that would be something, let’s forget the emissions trading…!

And it is still nor the most radical approach, as the model of The Arch (Atkinson & Maroun, 2018), for example, assumes a certain balance between the imperative of human’s financial gain and his moral obligations (understood as ecological morality, of course).  Meanwhile, authors such as Gray and Milne (2018) are already approaching the rejection of not only the anthropocentric perspective, but also recognising it as a harmful obstacle, along with the traditional accounting methodology.  Accounting, as well as finance – were invented by people to obtain a reference scale, methods of comparability and measurability of what is material, and thus also to estimate the value of parts or even the whole of ecosystems for humanity.  And since humanity is not only irrelevant (“subjective”), but also directly harmful – then by what right does it want to measure and evaluate anything else?!

Aboriginal baby’s cat perspective

However, while these authors do not present a specific alternative, it can be found in the works of Sonja Gallhofer (1997, 2018), who proposes an eco-feminist approach.  Continuing the thought of Hines (1992) about the duality and imbalance of the Western world, also noticeable in classical accounting – Gallhofer declares a combination of deeply ecological and feminist analysis to reveal the “androcentric” nature of the oppression exerted on the female world and nature, also involving accounting as a tool of these male, white and yet ageist oppressors.  Because why exactly there are no financial statements prepared from the perspective of a child?  Or why is the history of accounting so racist Eurocentric when it does not consider for example the achievements of ancient Aboriginal accountants?  And why do we not even wonder how the profit and loss account would be prepared by such a cat (probably preferably a wild cat)? No, I am not kidding, who would make fun of accountants anyway – please read yourself…

And no, it is not over either. After all, the very form of accounting, this fascist construct, is also an expression of oppressiveness and its tool as well.  So down with tables, let’s throw spreadsheets to the trash.  Since priority should be given to intangible values and, as a rule, immeasurable ones – why not express them by means taken, for example, from… art?  Modern, of course, and possibly conceptual.  Why not express the financial report in the form of artistic photography, film, collage? Why not give it back … dancing?  And no, I did not make that up either (Gallhofer, S., 2018. “Going beyond western dualism: towards corporate nature responsibility reporting”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 31 No. 8, pp. 2110-2134).

We really want to know HOW MUCH?

A world that is not so much coming as it is already rising around us – does not need objective measuring tools.  Of course, this is one great business, but one whose civilisation-related, global scale is not to be known by anyone, except for the… interested parties.  And what is the point of this whole story, as it seems to crown not only the history of accounting, but also of economics and finance as we have known so far?  Professor Gallhofer is today one of the leading lecturers, scientists and … ideologists who set the tone for the once famous Adam Smith Business School – that is the Faculty of Economics and Finance at the University of Glasgow. The one created by The Father of Liberalism himself.  Thus his distant heirs finished his work. Because a good liberal can only be an eco-feminist liberal today. And the accountant, of course, too.