If accounting is a means of communicating information for decision-making, then any attempt to define accounting must draw upon scholarly knowledge of communication and decision-making. This means understanding accounting as a professional jargon, a language, and also as a social and psychological object that influences individual and collective behavior. Only when all of these aspects are accounted for can we hope to achieve a truly descriptive, rather than normative, accounting theory that will stand up to the rigors of academic inquiry.
Here Gaétan Breton provides a comprehensive overview of what accounting really is, not just what it is presumed to be for the purposes of ordinary, day-to-day, practicality-oriented accounting courses. Drawing upon frameworks employed in the human sciences--including those used in sociology, psychology, the communication sciences, and decision theories--Breton builds a multi-faceted theory of accounting. He explains why it should be conceived as a fundamentally social activity, one that puts preparers of financial statements in contact with users--with the state, shareholders, stakeholders, and citizens--in order to help them make economic decisions based on financial information. It is from this position that he analyzes both the behavior of preparers of financial statements (who only relate financial situations) and the behavior of users (in their own analysis, understanding, and decisions). The result is a groundbreaking move towards the first science of accounting widely acceptable within academic circles.
For the fundamental questions it poses to the very heart of accounting studies, this book is a must-read for researchers and practitioners as well as teachers and undergraduate students of accounting.
Author(s): Gaétan Breton
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 256
City: Bingley
Cover
A POSTMODERN ACCOUNTING THEORY
A POSTMODERN ACCOUNTING THEORY:AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH
Copyright
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
About the Author
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
SECTION 1: THEORIES AND ACCOUNTING
2. Theories and Schools of Thought
2.1 “Economics” as a Science
2.2 Some Considerations About Mathematics and Sciences
2.3 The Social Representations
2.4 The Businessman as the New Leading Social Figure
2.5 Summary
Questions
Themes to Be Developed Further
3. The Traditional Vision of Accounting Theory
3.1 Wolk, Francis, and Tearney
3.2 Kam
3.2.1 The Spatial Representation of Accounting
3.2.2 Accounting as Evidence
3.2.3 A “Natural” Positivist
3.3 Repeated as a Mantra
3.4 Recent Developments
3.5 Assumptions, Principles, and the Like
3.5.1 Business Entity
3.5.2 Going Concern
3.5.3 Stable Monetary Unit
3.5.4 Accounting Periods and Matching
3.5.5 Historical Cost
3.5.6 Money Measurement
3.5.7 Objectivity
3.6 Summary
Questions
4. Accounting in the Scientific Institution
4.1 The Concept of Normative Theory
4.1.1 The Confusion in the Terms
4.1.2 The Notion of Paradigm
4.1.3 Other Sources of “Normative” Theories
4.2 Research Versus Practice
4.2.1 Saving Scarce Resources
4.2.2 The Difference Between Pure and Applied Research
4.3 Arguments for Constructivism
4.4 Decision-Making
4.5 Summary
Questions
Themes to Be Developed Further
5. For a Definition of Accounting
5.1 The Definitions From the Literature
5.2 Accounting as a Language
5.2.1 Carrying Knowledge
5.2.2 Natural and Accounting Languages
5.2.3 The Linguistic of the Accounting Language
5.3 The Mirage of the Market
5.4 Profit Against Market
5.5 Capital and Capitals
5.5.1 The Intangibles
5.5.2 The Social Capital
5.5.2.1 Bourdieu and the social capital
5.5.3 The Networks
5.6 The Knowledge
5.7 Summary
Questions
Topics for Further Reflections
6. Accounting: The State and the Firm
6.1 The Real Social Responsibility
6.1.1 Disclosure or Action
6.1.2 The Problem of the Externalities
6.2 Ethics and Goodwill
6.3 Public Decisions
6.4 Public Measures and Citizen's Decisions
6.4.1 Calculating the GDP
6.4.2 Calculating the Government's Accounts Correctly
6.4.2.1 Understanding the tradition
6.4.2.2 Governmental manipulation of accounts
6.5 Summary
Questions
Topics for Further Reflections
SECTION 2: THEORIES OF ACCOUNTING
7. Sociology of Accounting
7.1 Accounting for the Social Contract
7.1.1 The Firm as a Social Institution
7.1.2 The Legitimacy of the Firm
7.1.3 The Discursive Defenses
7.1.4 Accounting, Measurement, and Social Decisions
7.2 The Sociology of Accounting
7.3 Summary
Questions
8. The Psychological Aspects of Accounting
8.1 Psychology and Control
8.1.1 In Management Accounting
8.1.2 The Control of People
8.2 Accounting as Communication
8.2.1 Storytelling
8.2.2 The “Quality” of Information
8.2.2.1 From Grice to McCornack
8.3 Why Produce Information?
8.4 Summary
Questions
9. How Decisions Are Made
9.1 What Is Rationality?
9.2 The Contradictions of the Agency Theory
9.3 The Game Theory
9.4 The Theory of Bayes
9.4.1 Nobody Earns the Expected Result
9.4.2 Simplistic Games in Situation of Limited Information
9.4.3 Historical Period and References
9.4.4 Biased or Unbiased, That Is the Question?
9.4.4.1 The framing
9.4.4.2 The double process theory
9.5 Conclusion
Questions
10. A Theory of Accounting
10.1 Decision and Information
10.1.1 The Citizen Decision
10.1.2 The Governmental Decision
10.1.3 The Investor's Decision
10.2 What Would Be a Theory of Accounting?
Questions
SECTION 3: “TESTING” THE THEORY
11. Analyzing the Documents Accompanying Decisions
11.1 Content Analysis
11.1.1 Classical Content Analysis
11.1.2 The Accounting Content of Websites
11.2 Readability Analysis
11.2.1 Readability, Understandability, and Comprehensibility
11.2.2 The Construction of the Indexes
11.3 Semiotic Analysis
11.3.1 Aristotle's Rhetoric
11.3.1.1 Euresis
11.3.2 Transformation
11.3.2.1 The actantial structure
11.4 The Functions
11.4.1 Example of Functional Analysis
11.4.2 The Temporal Structure
11.5 The Apparent and the Hidden Programs
11.6 The Figures of Speech (the Lexis)
11.7 Hypocrisis
11.8 Analyzing the Images
11.9 Summary
Questions
12. Manipulating and Lying
12.1 Accounting Manipulations
12.1.1 Earnings Management
12.1.2 Income Smoothing
12.1.3 Big Bath Accounting
12.1.4 Creative Accounting
12.2 The Efficiency of Manipulation
12.2.1 Gains and Losses From Accounts Manipulation
12.2.2 Particular Studies
12.3 Far-fetched Interpretation or Lies
12.3.1 Detecting Lies
12.3.2 Restatements: Form 8-K
12.3.2.1 Transgression of the maxims
12.4 Testing the Truthfulness of Statements
12.5 Summary
Questions
Conclusion
References
Index
