Exploring accounting education’s enabling possibilities

Abstract

Explores the possibilities that accounting could become a resource in a movement towards fairer and more just societies. Considers specifically the ways in which mainstream management accounting textbooks, as tools of management accounting education, have the effect of encouraging students of the discipline to be unaware, unquestioning and uncritical of the social and organizational effects of management accounting practice. Aims to explore, through illustrations from a leading mainstream management accounting text, both the obvious and the more subtle ways in which such texts can inculcate these future practitioners with norms of practice that preclude management accounting’s emancipatory role in society. Considers in the course of this analysis the described purpose of management accounting; the assumptions made about human behaviour; the presentation of class structures and interests; and the importance of cultural specificity when considering management accounting. Counter‐illustrations are offered of how accounting educators might move towards encouraging students to consider accounting’s enabling possibilities. Finally, suggests areas for further investigation and effort which are material to the development of an enabling accounting.