A CALL FOR PAPERS
CMS 2009 —Accountability and Accounterability
Convenors:
Dr John Francis McKernan - University of Glasgow,
Professor Ken McPhail - University of Glasgow,
Dr Tobias Scheytt - University of Innsbruck,
Abstracts for the stream of no more than 1,000 words should be submitted electronically
to j.f.mckernan@accfin.gla.ac.uk no later than November 1st 2008.
Stream description:
This stream is concerned with critically exploring the practice and discourse of
accountability, and the relationships between accounting and accountability, and between
accountability and responsibility. In recent decades the notion of accountability has
become ever more ubiquitous in managerial contexts within both the private and public
sectors (see Munro & Mouritsen, eds., 1996). Notions, discourses, practices, devices, and
alternative styles of accountability (Ahrens, 1996) have been employed to shape and form
managerial commitments, action, and conceptions of the self (Roberts, 1991; Willmott,
1996), and of the corporation as a moral agent (Schweiker, 1993; Shearer, 2002).
Accountability has generally come to be understood in terms of “the giving and
demanding of reasons for conduct” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 447) and as such: “To be
‘accountable’ for one’s activities is both to explicate the reasons for them and to supply
the normative grounds whereby they may be ‘justified’” (Giddens, 1984, p. 30).
Normative justifications may be grounded in tradition, culture, organizational values, and
other normative discourses of rights and responsibilities, and it is perhaps inevitable that
there will be some tension between the narrative and calculative threads of accountability.
Yet, even when accountability becomes calculative, when subjects “become accountable to
accounting, the numbers never speak for themselves. They need to be compiled,
compared, and interpreted in ways which organisational members perceive as
reasonable” (Ahrens, 1996, p.168). Nevertheless, some critics suggest that there is always
a tendency for accountability to become dominated by calculative processes that displace
responsibility:
“The semantico-pragmatic range of ‘accountability’ has perhaps always displayed a
tendency to harden its connections to hard numbers, to the accounting of accountancy,
and to let its other more narrative, more ‘subjective’ connections be subsumed and
reduced to arithmetic figuration. This tendency can aptly be compared to what is
called ‘bottom-line thinking’, a phrase that already in itself bespeaks the will, or rather
the wish, to replace thinking by counting, to displace the responsibility of decision and
judgment from the ‘subjective’ place of thought to the balance sheet of summary
numbers that, as we also say, ‘speak for themselves’. As if numeric representation had
the greatest gravity, density, or solidity: it would be what is left at the bottom of the
testing container once all other superfluous, floating matter – language, discourse,
narrative, testimony, belief and unbelief – has been poured off and discarded. In this
downward pull, the term ‘accountability’ has moved to take over the semantic field of
‘responsibility’” (Kamuf, 2007, p.252)
Kamuf argues that there is a need for a counter practice to the prevailing regimes of
calculatively dominated accountability: A counter-institution of resistance to the
irresistible logic of accountability” (Kamuf, 2007, p.253). She argues that we need to
make openings, space and time, within processes of calculative accountability, to
facilitate rearticulations of our accounts (narrative and calculative) and our abilities. We
need to make “ a little time to think, to stop calculating and listen at another rhythm for
something else, for an incalculability and unforeseeability that cause the accountability
programme to stammer or stutter: account, er, ability” (Kamuf, 2007, p.253).
Possible Stream Contribution:
Contributions to this stream may take theoretical or empirical approaches to exploration
of the “possibilities of accountability” (Roberts, 1991) and “accounterability” (Kamuf,
2007), and could include discussions of:
 Accountability as a contested and ambiguous concept.
 The genealogy of accountability discourses and practices.
 Styles of accountability.
 New and emerging forms of accountability, including accountability to
administrative bodies, civil society, customers and clients, employees and
professional colleagues.
 Accountability deficits.
 The impact of accountability on conceptions of responsibility understood in terms
of duties and obligations owed.
 The accountingization of accountability.
 The dysfunctions and aporias of accountability.
 The ways in which practices of auditing, governance and risk management, or
management accounting fashions, add to a calculative domination of
accountability.
 The possibilities of “accounterability”.
References:
 Ahrens, T., (1996), “Styles of Accountability”, Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Vol.21, No.2/3, pp. 139-173.
 Giddens, A., (1984), The Constitution of Society, Polity Press, Cambridge.
 Kamuf, P., (2007), “Accounterability”, Textual Practice, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 251266.
 Munro, R. & Mouritsen, J. (Eds.) (1996) Accountability: power, ethos and the
technologies of managing, London: International Thompson Publishing.
 Roberts, J. Scapens, R., (1985), “Accounting systems and systems of
accountability - Understanding accounting practices in their organisational
contexts”, Accounting Organizations and Society, Vol. 10, No. 4. pp. 443-456.
 Roberts, J., (1991), “The Possibilities of Accountability”, Accounting
Organizations and Society, Vol.16, No.4, pp. 355-368.
 Schweiker, W., (1993), “Accounting for ourselves: Accounting practice and the
discourse of ethics”, Accounting Organizations and Society, Vol.18, No.2/3, pp.
231-252.
 Shearer, T., (2002), “Ethics and accountability: from the for-itself to the for-theother”, Accounting Organizations and Society, Vol.27, pp. 541-573.
 Willmott, H. (1996), “Thinking accountability: accounting for the disciplined
production of self”, in Munro, R. & Mouritsen, J. (Eds.) Accountability: power,
ethos and the technologies of managing, London: International Thompson
Publishing, pp. 23-39.
Abstract Submission Practicalities & Important Dates:
Abstracts (maximum 1000 words, one A4 page, single spaced, 12 point font) should be to
submitted to the lead convenor for the stream Dr John Francis McKernan at
j.f.mckernan@accfin.gla.ac.uk no later than 1st November 2008.
Notification of acceptance will be made by 5th December 2008.
Full papers will be required by 1st May 2009.