Accounting for Humanity

I do not claim to know the answer to this as I will admit I am working from the memory of all the academic papers I have read to date however, after attending another fascinating and exceptionally useful SGSSS Summer School this week, the content explored got me thinking about how ‘human’ is accounting research?

So far in my own research, I have been plagued by terrorising thoughts of “is my thesis going to be ‘accounting’ enough?”. The concept behind my work is to explore the human-technology relationship and how this complicated existence has, and will continue to shape our world of leisure and work. In my anxiety-fuelled terrors, I envision an examiner challenging me on not being centred enough on accounting, that it is too ‘people-focused’. Yet, what is accounting (there is that question again) if not a creation of humanity, would accounting even exist without people? unlikely.

Accounting research often looks to the experiences and realities of the Profession as opposed to the humans that make up this social group. We explore and analyse a plethora of issues and possibilities, how might be improve public trust?, can we save accounting from the robots?, or what went wrong in accounting scandal X?. Interestingly, in each of these questions, research often ignores that humans and human behaviours lie at the core of each of these issues. Trust requires trustworthy people in addition to improved practices, the robots will only ‘steal our jobs’ if the people with the decision-making power allow them to do so, and scandal x, y, and z generally resulted from the greed of a select group of people. Thus, if we are to fully understand accounting’s place in this society, should we be doing more to incorporate the human element driving it?

For myself, one way of achieving this goes back to the previous post’s discussion on the use of theory. Accounting as mentioned, has a set of ‘generally accepted’ theories that can be used; stakeholder theory, Actor-Network theory, legitimacy theory, normative theory, Neo-liberalism, and Marxism to name a few. However, these theories generally derive from management and business theory (there are exceptions of course that do stem from social theory), with the use of psychological, behavioural or religious (human-centric) theories being a rare occurrence.

Looking at those earlier questions; what would a study around accounting scandals look like if constructed on the theories of Psychopathy? What would Social Dominance theory in conjunction with Capitalist theory tell us about the probability of AI replacing humans in the workplace? Would a study exploring the psychology of professionals and public help us to better understand the gap in public trust in auditing? (writing this post between data collecting meaning I must stop myself from looking but if such studies exist please do let me know as I would be very interested to read them).

In academic society (and perhaps even in society overall) we are guilty of dehumanising our professions. Perhaps it makes it easier to be critical if we view accounting as an inanimate ‘thing’ rather than a collective of people, some good, some bad. Maybe, from an academic perspective at least, it is more professional or ethical to do so (certainly anonymisation is critical and must always be adhered to) yet, does this mean we should absolve ourselves of all accountability in what happens in accounting, good, bad, or mundane?

It is absolutely correct to carry out research to find practical solutions to issues or even just to identify issues and make them know but is it right to pretend that humans are not part of that problem or solution?

Side note: The SGSSS Summer School is one of many great events carried out by the SGSSS, if you are a Scottish-based social sciences graduate, I strongly recommend signing up to their newsletter, you can find information here