The Limits to Cheating History – Changing the Reference for Accounting

I had been asked by the Academy of Social Sciences of Shanxi Province to write a contribution for their journal – some special challenge not because of the academy but as accounting is surely not my special working area. Still …, well …, challenges are there to be taken up, right?

The aim of the present article is to reflect on accounting in the light of the general developmental perspectives. From here, it will be concluded that accounting is requested to develop new perspectives, opening ways for socially responsible accounting.

The five developmental frictions are fundamentally defining factors in two respects:

(1) with their consideration we will be able to substantialise accounting, assessing it as means that is not neutral

(2) this way the consideration of these ruptures also allows us to see accounting as means that is systematically hiding – or disclosing – mechanisms behind the applied theory of value.

Such perspective highlights not least the need for questioning a fundamental presumption, namely the static perspective that is implicit in accounting. Though being employed with cash, finance, material flows and others, the fact that accounting deals with a given structure – the household – brings about a static perspective of self-referentiality.

I hope you find some inspirations in it.

The English draft document can be found here.

I do not know about possible requests for changes and the document will be translated (poor translator …).