The book is about accountability processes and how they contribute solutions to our current environmental and global political problems. This book is different to other literature in this field. This is so because the dominant accountability discourse is shaped by what is defined as a neoliberal business case for social and environmental reform.
This book assumes a nirvana stance within globalisation where all citizens operate within the parameters of the free market and will recover from adverse economic and political damage. Further this book uses neoliberalism and free-market reforms aims as examples to implement efficient management technologies and create more competitive pressures.
Central to the argument of the book are perspectives on authenticity, expressivism and interpretivism which are found to provide a radical reworking of our understanding of being in the world. These frameworks offer a starting point for rethinking the way individuals, businesses and communities ought to be dealing politically with accountability and ecological crises. The argument builds to an accountability perspective that utilises work from expressivism, interpretivism, classical liberalism and postmodern theory. The theoretical quest undertaken in this book is to develop connections between accountability, democratic, ethical and ecological perspectives.
Author(s): Glen Lehman
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 284
City: Singapore
Preface
References
Acknowledgements
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1: Basic Issues in Accountability, Interpretation and Ontology
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basic Concepts in Ontology
1.3 Metaphysics of Nature and the Ontology of Accountability
1.4 Social Ontology and Future Industries
References
Chapter 2: Ontology and Reflection: The Internalist and Externalist Debate
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Markets and the Anthropocene
2.3 CAPM, Markets, Moral Hazard and Ontology
2.4 Implication of Ontology for Accountability
2.5 Ontology and Advocacy
2.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Thinking About the Ontology of Social and Environmental Accounting and Management
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Mathematical Approach to Accountability and Ontology
3.3 Bourdieu’s Habitus and Social Ontology
3.4 Rawls’s Social Ontology
3.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: The Ontological Dilemma of Nature: New Roles for Social and Environmental Accountability
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Categories for Social and Environmental Accounting
4.3 Early CSR to the Business Case
4.3.1 The Mathematical Approach to Business
4.3.2 Early Work
4.4 Business Case and Economic-Based Approaches to Sustainability
4.5 Neoliberalism and the Business Case
4.6 Are There Win-Win Solutions?
4.7 Social and Environmental Ontologies: Environmental Realism and Ontology Some Political Implications
4.8 Social Accounting and Environmentalism
4.9 Rawls’s Social Ontology Informs OGM
4.10 Social Accounting and Ontology
4.11 Conclusion
References
Part II
Chapter 5: Accounting’s Great Retreat: Decline of the Public Sphere and The Malaise of Accounting
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Role of the Public Sphere
5.3 Communicative Action and the Public Sphere
5.4 Theoretical Framing: Interpretivism and the Public Sphere
5.5 Vision of Liberal Accountability in the Public Sphere
5.6 The Radical Challenge to the Public Sphere
5.7 Postmodern Accountability and Post-political Accountability
5.8 Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Challenging Corruption in Civil Society: Community, Accounting and Interpretation
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Interpreting Corruption
6.2.1 The Art of Interpretation
6.2.2 Issues of Corruption
6.2.3 Framing – Defining Corruption and Civil Society
6.2.4 Selling Degrees by the Pound in a Post Coronavirus World
6.3 Civil Society, Interpretivism and the Governable Self
6.4 Postmodern Framing of the Corrupt Subject
6.5 Analysis of the New Dark Ages: Neoliberalism, Corruption and Community
6.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Perspectives on Transparency: Interpretivism and Language
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Précis of the Argument for Language
7.3 A Basic Framework for Expressive-Interpretivism
7.4 The Nature of Accountability – Further Reflections on the Gray-Owen School of Thought
7.5 Extending Accountability from the aporia to Expressive-Interpretivism
7.6 Interpretivists Challenge Derridean Inspired Accountability
7.7 Perspectives on Accountability, Interpretation and Transparency: Language and Expressivism
7.8 Expressivism, Accountability and Transparency
7.9 Conclusions: An Interpretative and Environmentally Aware Civil Society
References
Chapter 8: Perspectives on Transparency, Corruption and Civil Society
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The nature of Accountability: Extending the language of Chap. 7
8.3 Summarising Perspectives on Accountability, Interpretation and Transparency
8.4 The Limits of Liberal Accountability
8.5 Critical Approaches to Accountability
8.6 Further Reflections on Accountability and Governance
8.6.1 Postmodern Criticisms of Accountability
8.6.2 The Language of Postmodern Accountability
8.7 Extending the Postmodern Language of Civil Society and Business
8.8 Taking Accountability to the Limit
8.9 Conclusion
References
Part III
Chapter 9: The Accountability of NGOs in Civil Society and Its Public Spheres
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Framing of the Literature
9.3 NGO Accountability and Critique
9.4 Critiques of NGO Accountability
9.5 Accountability & NGOs
9.6 Addressing NGO Accountability
9.7 Evaluating NGOs Using Civil Society Research
9.8 Accounting, Dialectical Logic and the Public Sphere: A Way Forward?
9.9 Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: Challenging Corruption and Globalisation Using Interpretivist-Republicanism
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Globalisation and the Ideal of Authenticity: Free-Market Liberalism
10.3 Kantian Global Republicanism and Authenticity
10.4 Kantian Republicanism and Habermas’s Solution
10.5 Critical and Democratic Deliberation in a Global Republic
10.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: Accountability Implications of Harmonising Accounting in a Globalising Economy
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Hopwood’s Model: International Harmonisation
11.3 International Democracy and Republican Self-Rule: Kant to Foucault
11.4 Global International Accounting: Kant, Foucault and the State: The Role of the State: Thinking About Being-in-the-World
11.5 Interpreting and Visualising the World: The World as World
11.6 Battling Neo-liberal Pathologies
11.7 Conclusions: Globalising Accountability as a Dialectical Process
References
Chapter 12: Depth Experiences in a Globalising World: Recognising Dearth and Fullness
12.1 Introduction
12.2 A Disquieting Suggestion on Absence and Depth
12.3 The Limits of Globalisation and Financialisation: Processes of Neoliberalism: Financialisation, Globalisation and Harmonisation
12.4 Processes of Financialisation and Globalisation
12.5 From Cosmopolitanism to Depth Thinking
12.6 Depth Thinking: Dearth and Fullness
12.7 Agonism and Justice: Rawls, Taylor and White
12.8 Accountability for the Otherness of Nature: The Politics of Pluralism
12.9 Conclusion
References
Chapter 13: Applying Depth Thinking to Accountability
13.1 Introduction
13.2 From Habermas to Cosmopolitan Agonism
13.3 A Dialectical Examination of Dearth and Fullness
13.4 Cosmopolitan Globalisation and Harmonisation – Depth and Fullness
13.5 Accounting for Pluralism: Richard Laughlin’s and Kerry Jacobs’ Work on the Secular and Sacred Divide
13.6 Depth Versus Fullness – Some Further Implications for Accounting and Accountability
13.7 Conclusion
References
Chapter 14: Using ‘Engaged Agency’ to Re-think Sustainability and Accountability Research
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Problems with Interpretivist Accountability
14.3 The Limits of Neoliberal Accounting: Social and Environmental Accounting Re-considered
14.4 Literature Review – Alternative Perspectives for SEAR
14.5 Aligning SEAR with Taylor’s Deep Ecology
14.6 Economic and Procedural Approaches to Sustainability: Growth and the Steady-State
14.7 Enchanting the Public Sphere
14.8 Conclusions
References
Chapter 15: Interpretation, Sustainability and Accountability Research
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Further Issues with Globalisation and Harmonisation Reforms
15.3 Critical Theory and Ethics: Globalisation, Free Markets and Financialisation
15.4 Further Challenging Globalisation and Harmonisation Approaches to Business and Ethics
15.5 Extending Interpretivism to Accountability: Self Interpreting Animals
15.6 Interpretation, CSR and Procedure
15.7 Extending Stakeholder Theory Through Language
15.8 Interpretivism and the Postmodern Turn
15.9 Applications: The Role of Hermeneutics, Ethics and Business
15.10 Accountability, Social Accounting and Environmental Change
15.11 Engaging Pluralism and Stakeholder Theory
15.12 Ethics and Reconciliation – Accountability and Community
15.13 Applying Interpretivism to Accountability – The Problem with Rules
15.14 Critical Based Interpretations of Business and Sustainability
15.15 Culture, Globalisation and New Social Imaginaries
15.16 Conclusion
References
Chapter 16: Conclusion
References
Index
