The accountant as partisan
Article Abstract:
David Solomons' research fails to analyze how an accountant's choice of sides can be deliberate, systematic, socially reflective, and critically self-conscious. Instead, Solomons tries to legitimatize the neutrality of the status quo and the Financial Accounting Standards Board. The dualisms in Solomons' research are false, as is the dichotomy between evangelizing and partisanship. Solomons believes that accountants should develop multiple, independent personalities. In the real world, roles are intertwined and conflicting. Accountants who do not have an understanding of role interdependencies may contribute to their own exploitation and repression. Accountants should perceive and mediate the dialectical interdependence of conflicting roles.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1991
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Accounting and social change: a neutralist view
Article Abstract:
Accountants have a responsibility to provide unbiased information that will be useful to decision makers dealing with social and economic issues. Accounting radicals and activists are misguided in their objectives. The radicals' objective is to change society, and accounting is incidental to that goal. The activists want to use accounting to make small changes in society or to maintain the status quo by implementing barriers to change. Accountants should have the desire to change society, but that is not their responsibility. Accountants should portray particular aspects of society instead of changing it. Financial reporting must remain neutral for accounting to maintain credibility.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1991
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A rejoinder
Article Abstract:
Accountants should provide unbiased information to participants in social conflicts, but, according to Tony Tinker's research, they should become participants in social conflicts. Tinker is confusing accountants' role in the provision of information with their role in management. Accountants may not be able to avoid bias at all times, but that should be their goal. Accountants should do everything that they can to make accounting measures representationally faithful.
Publication Name: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Subject: Business
ISSN: 0361-3682
Year: 1991
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