Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice

TLDR

Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice compiles critical socio‑historical analyses that challenge the view of accounting as merely technical bookkeeping and highlight its growing importance across diverse social spheres. The book aims to bring together renowned scholars’ work on accounting’s social and institutional nature to explore its conditions and consequences, offering insights for organizational analysts, sociologists, political scientists, and general readers. It does so by assembling a collection of international scholarship on accounting’s social and institutional dimensions.

Abstract

Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice is the first major collection of critical and socio-historical analyses of accounting. It gathers together work by scholars of international renown on the social and institutional nature of accounting to address the conditions and consequences of accounting practice. Challenging conventional views that accounting is a technical practice, and that it comprises little more than bookkeeping, this collection demonstrates the importance of analysing the multiple arenas in which accounting emerges and operates. As accounting continues to gain in importance in so many spheres of social life, an understanding of the conditions and consequences of this calculative technology is vital. Its relevance extends far beyond the discipline of accounting. This book will be of considerable interest for specialists in organisational analysis, sociologists, and political scientists, as well as the general reader interested in understanding the increasing significance of accounting in contemporary society.