Accounting and Accountability: A Stakeholder-Agent Perspective

This paper is an effort at understanding the two contrary frameworks of accounting investigations in the sense of theoretical and philosophical underpinnings—the traditional agency view of accounting where the objective function is to maximize shareholders’ wealth, subject to the constraint of managerial egoism and a petty recognition to other corporate actors; and the newly emerged stakeholder view resulting out of an interdisciplinary research tradition, with the aim of satisfying a broad range of stakeholders, including the shareholders and their agent-managers, in terms of a contribution-inducement exchange relationship. Though on the ground of theoretical reasoning, the two frameworks are mutually exclusive to each other, nevertheless, there is a growing perception in contemporary accounting research that demonstrates the likelihood of an alternative framework of analysis by exploring the possibilities in the sense of a convergence of the two converse views. A methodical scrutiny of the two contrary positions has been made in the light of their commonalities and divergences and an attempt has been made to corroborate with the growing perception of converging the two by subsuming the agency approach into a broader stakeholder model.