Handbook of Accounting in Society

The Handbook of Accounting in Society invites readers to consider the ways in which accounting affects organizations, institutions, communities, professions, and everyday life. Diverse in its reach, this Handbook campaigns for the need to reconsider our understanding of what accounting is and crucially, what it can become.

Hendrik Vollmer brings together an array of scholars to discuss how accounting practice is shaping the way we do business and government, the way we negotiate our values and valuations, and how we keep track of ourselves and prepare for the future. Contributors highlight how little of accounting is controlled by the accounting profession and raises key persistent issues in accounting practice that concern the professional practitioner as much as the everyday life accountant: accountability and unaccountability, inequality and social justice, and inclusion and exclusion. This dynamic Handbook argues for the redevelopment of accounting education and illustrates the emancipatory potential of alternative forms of accounting, counter accounting, and accounting activism.

Reinvigorating the interdisciplinary approach to accounting and its place in society, this Handbook will be a vital read for scholars, researchers and students specializing in accounting, management, governance and sustainability, business ethics, diversity and inclusion, public administration, organizational behaviour, and organizational culture. It will also be an informative read for accounting professionals, social scientists interested in accounting practice, and political activists engaged in counter accounting.