Accounting for One’s Actions
A Talking Economics Evening in Stroud – Monday 9th January 2006-01-10

Much use is made of the idea of accountability, normally understood as a kind of democratic answerability. But can the human being act in an accountable way without an external pressure acting on him? Is one person accountable to another, or to an interest group, such as share-holders, or to humanity at large? How can that be made real and what is the role of accounting in understanding what accountability entails? How is one to describe the reality of the potential in each human being to act in a way that is not only self-interested (and thereby overcome the prevailing anti-human perception that brings so many restrictive measures in its wake)? How can true and full accounting support and make objective this aim?

Such questions stand behind the subject, and in order to explore it in greater depth something needs to be said about the origin and development of accounting so that one can better see its relevance and purpose in present times. Its lifelessness may be akin to the lifelessness of the brain – best suited for making objective what it records. Just as the brain enables the human being to be individually self-conscious, so too accounting may act as a social brain, which allows human beings to become economically conscious, if they choose. Accounting is a universal language that enables human beings to communicate across cultural differences.

By forming companies which give the power neither to capital (which in reality should not be thought of so much as the interests of the shareholders, but as a purely abstract force), nor to a supervising board, the responsible human being is able to remain effective in his initiative. Through accounting he can share the narrative of that initiative (which represents the biography of a being, whose body is the company). Meeting with his financial backers and reporting, gives rise to a conversation that enables him to draw into a closer relationship with the intuition that guides the company. By becoming aware of the inherent wisdom that lies in accounting and describing the company in a new set of relationships, the potential is present to metamorphose current arrangements such that a corporate culture can arise whose behaviour does not engender the many and varied charges of anti-social behaviour.