Prospects for accounting, accountability and governance

The Handbook of Accounting, Accountability and Governance demonstrates how these three bodies of practice are interwoven. Accountability is a fundamental attribute of humanity, and both accounting and governance have developed to make accountability possible. However, accounting has come under challenge as an excessively "technical" activity that fails to address many of the important aspects of organizational performance by favouring what can be measured (however problematically) in terms of money. Governance has moved from an idea of "good government" to a corporate governance model predicated on a shareholder primacy view of the corporate enterprise. This model is increasingly drawn on outside the corporate sector, even in circumstances where the core assumptions of modern corporate governance do not apply. The chapter calls for more qualitative research in accounting, accountability and governance, for example opening up the "black box" of the corporate board through research that investigates how accountability and governance actually work in practice. The chapter also calls for collaborative research that seeks new ways of accounting for the broader impacts of organizations on society and on the environment.