Description
The accounting industry plays an important role in the production and implementation of
accountability mechanisms surrounding corporate social responsibility practices. Operating
as both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron, Cooper, & Townley,
2007), the expert activities of accountants are never purely technical. This paper focuses
on the mediating role of accounting firms and professional bodies in aligning the socially
responsible practices of organizations with the rational morality of the market. I show that
the construction of the market as a moral marker of socially responsible action is the result
of a major effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the emergence of a social and moral
conscience in business, not in the name of subjective feelings or human values, but in the
name of an economic and depoliticized logic of profitability. Drawing on the political analysis
of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy] and his
metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’
Politicizing the expertise of the accounting industry
in the realm of corporate social responsibility
q
Bertrand Malsch
HEC Montréal, 3000, chemin de la Côte Ste-Catherine, Bureau 5.358, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3T 2A7
a b s t r a c t
The accounting industry plays an important role in the production and implementation of
accountability mechanisms surrounding corporate social responsibility practices. Operat-
ing as both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron, Cooper, & Townley,
2007), the expert activities of accountants are never purely technical. This paper focuses
on the mediating role of accounting ?rms and professional bodies in aligning the socially
responsible practices of organizations with the rational morality of the market. I show that
the construction of the market as a moral marker of socially responsible action is the result
of a major effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the emergence of a social and moral
conscience in business, not in the name of subjective feelings or human values, but in the
name of an economic and depoliticized logic of pro?tability. Drawing on the political anal-
ysis of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy] and his
metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’, I view the economicization of corporate social
responsibility as symptomatic of the power imbalance between the world of humans
and the world of objects governing the political structure of contemporary society and
weakening democratic activity.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
‘Socially responsible’ practices and attitudes have be-
come crucial markers of identity in a growing number of
organizations, not only among the business community,
but also in the eyes of public opinion and policy-makers
alarmed by the increasing number of social and environ-
mental scandals (Power, 2007).
As a result, many initiatives aimed at bringing together
leading political and economic actors have emerged in re-
cent years in a bid to standardize and certify socially
responsible practices (Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). For
example, the United Nations World Pact, which includes
thousands of ?rms and private organizations, commits its
signatory companies to align their operations and business
strategies with ten universally accepted principles relating
to human rights, labor laws, the environment and the ?ght
against corruption. In a similar, albeit more normative,
vein, the AA1000 standards de?ned by the British Institute
for Social and Ethical AccountAbility aims to provide a
framework of reference enabling companies to de?ne their
objectives in the realm of social and ethical performance
and to initiate a dialogue with stakeholders.
The accounting industry plays an important role in the
production and implementation of these (more or less)
restrictive regulatory mechanisms (Hopwood, 2009). By
absorbing social and environmental auditing within its
?eld of expertise, the accounting industry has established
itself as a key player in this area (O’Dwyer, 2011; Power,
1997). Out of a total sample of 2113 companies showing
evidence of social and environmental performance results,
Simnett, Vanstraelen, and Wai Fong (2009) found that 42%
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2012.09.003
q
I am grateful for the insightful comments provided by David Cooper,
Sylvain Durocher, Yves Gendron, Henri Guénin-Paracini and Mike Power.
I am also grateful for the comments made by the participants at the IPA
2009 Emerging Scholars Colloquium.
E-mail address: [email protected]
Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
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of those which resorted to independent certi?cations em-
ployed the services of accounting ?rms. Though less visi-
ble, the in?uence of auditors in international social and
environmental certi?cation bodies should also not be
underestimated. For example, under the patronage of the
Prince of Wales, the Accounting Bodies Network (ABN)
operates as a group of powerful actors (composed of pro-
fessional associations, big four ?rms and private sector
enterprises) drawn from across the globe and brought to-
gether ‘to use their collective spheres of in?uence to pro-
mote A4S (The Accounting for Sustainability Project) and
the use of connected reporting to their members and
communities’.
However, it would be an illusion to think that the
engagement of the industry is purely technical. As noted
by Gendron et al. (2007, p. 127), the mobilization of exper-
tise invariably involves particular ideological and inter-
ested views:
Expertise is always interested, with intended effects. It
is produced to support the aims of some members of
society, and not of others.
Drawing on the work of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature:
How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy], this paper exam-
ines the mediating political role of the accounting industry
in aligning the socially responsible practices of organiza-
tions with the rational morality of the market. The paper
begins by highlighting the market-based system of repre-
sentation used by accounting ?rms and professional bodies
to instrumentalize and economicize corporate social
responsibility as an apolitical object of risk. Secondly, the
paper examines the ‘mediating’ role (Miller & O’Leary,
2007) of the accounting industry in connecting this system
of representation with the management systems of organi-
zations. Finally, the paper discusses the effects of this
mediation on democratic activity.
By adopting a political perspective, the paper paves the
way for a critical examination of the legitimacy of the
operations performed by the accounting industry in the
area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – an examina-
tion voluntarily ‘set aside’ by Power in his 1997 paper (p.
142), entitled ‘Expertise and the construction of relevance:
accountants and environmental audit’:
I have attempted to set aside questions of whether the
involvement of accountants [in social and environmen-
tal audit] is a good thing, despite a few critical reference
points, in order to analyse the discursive strategies by
which accounting know-how is promoted.
Since accountants, and in particular auditors, operate as
both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron
et al., 2007), their legitimacy and the underlying political
nature of their expertise represent a central issue that
needs to be examined and questioned. Research in this
area is particularly important at a time when the demo-
cratic potential of elected governments to de?ne the regu-
latory framework of society is increasingly challenged by
powerful international accounting ?rms with a power
and in?uence sometimes greater than states (Sikka, 2008;
Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood, 2007). In other words,
the main contribution of this paper is not to show how
the accounting industry has imposed its expertise in the
realm of CSR (Power, 1997), but to analyze the political ef-
fects of this professional expansion. The political agency of
global and globalizing experts should not go unchecked by
society: the stakes involved are too high to promote
unconstrained freedom on the grounds of faith in profes-
sionalism or the effectiveness of the invisible hand.
At a theoretical level, this study combines traditional
dimensions of discourse analysis (Hall, 1997) with more re-
cent aspects of the ‘engaged program’ (Sismondo, 2007) in
the ?eld of science and technology studies, where politics is
construed as a full-?edged object of critical investigation
and reform rather than a simple analytical lens used to ac-
count for the production of experts’ knowledge. Without
any programmatic statements, the center of gravity of the
?eld has gradually shifted in recent years, turning the
democratization of systems of expertise into an object of re-
search (not to say the object of research)
1
(Callon,
Lascoumes, &Barthe, 2001; Collins and Evans, 2002; Jasanoff,
2005; Latour, 2004). From Jasanoff’s (2005) concept of ‘civic
epistemologies’ to Collins and Evans’s (2002) normative the-
ory of expertise, this shift has involved a range of different
perspectives. In this paper, I approach the topic fromthe per-
spective of Latour’s political analysis and his metaphorical
concept of the ‘modern constitution’ (Latour, 2004). I show
how the economicization process of CSR is symptomatic of
the power imbalance between the world of humans and
the world of objects structuring contemporary societies.
As noted by Hopwood (2009, p. 439), ‘being at such an
early stage of our understanding [of the role of accounting
in the environmental and sustainability spheres], both the
opportunities and need for research are very real’. This pa-
per provides a basis for extending beyond apolitical under-
standings of instruments and models designed by the
accounting industry to help companies measure and con-
trol their social performance and for highlighting the polit-
ical signi?cance of environmental and sustainability issues
in the corporate sphere. I analyze the involvement of
accounting ?rms in the realm of business sustainability
not from a technical point of view (i.e. in relation to the
ef?ciency of their structures) but from a political perspec-
tive, in relation to the constant effort of auditors to respond
to political ‘pressures for the rationalization [and] formal-
ization of the audit process’ (Power, 2003, p. 392). Despite
a number of ‘counter-mainstream’ studies in the literature,
the political dimension of auditing remains under-
theorized and under-researched (Humphrey, 2008; Power,
2003). Lastly, this paper is designed as a response to
continuing calls for researchers to extend examinations
of the complex backstage of new arenas of expertise in
the ?eld of accountancy and to understand their underly-
ing dynamics (Gendron & Spira, 2010; O’Dwyer, 2011).
Constructivism and the politics of expertise
Although the political elites continue to exercise the
formal power associated with their of?cial mandates,
1
An ambiguous shift for an originally constructivist line of thought
increasingly marked by the prescriptions of normative policies.
150 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
many of their decisions are now taken on the basis of tech-
nical analyses provided by experts – scientists, consultants,
entrepreneurs, economic decision-makers, specialized
journalists, think tanks, etc. – with whom they form coali-
tions that are as powerful as they are unstable (Beck, 2001;
Fisher, 1990; Jasanoff, 1990). The close relationship be-
tween the political sphere and experts is particularly
apparent in the area of environmental protection, where
the current in?uence of experts in major international
negotiations tends to extend beyond the political will of
states and their representatives (Bäckstrand, 2003).
In this sense, expertise can be viewed as a political
problem – i.e. a breach of the conditions of equality and
transparency presupposed by democratic accountability.
Some activities appear to be out of the reach of democratic
control since the ‘public’, as a public, cannot understand or
see the issues. As noted by Turner (2001, p. 124), ‘we are
faced with the dilemma of capitulation to ‘rule by experts’
or democratic rule which is ‘populist’ – that is to say, that
valorizes the wisdom of the people even when ‘‘the peo-
ple’’ are ignorant’.
In political philosophy, a range of approaches have been
adopted to examine this dilemma. Of particular impor-
tance is Habermas’s critique of the culture of expertise
and his attempt to develop a theory of communicative ac-
tion and discourse ethics as a means of containing the col-
onizing tendencies of expertise (Power & Laughlin, 1996).
However, the following paragraphs focus more speci?cally
on how the social study of science, and in particular the
work of Latour (2004), has emphasized the politically con-
structed dimensions of systems of expertise and laboratory
activities (Latour, 1987, 2001), thus resulting in a radical
expansion of its initial object of study – from analyzing
expertise politically to analyzing the politics of expertise
(Sismondo, 2007).
Civic epistemologies
The ?eld began to change under the impulse of Jasanoff
(1990, 2005), who showed that expertise is not merely
something in the heads and hands of skilled persons, ‘but
rather that it is something acquired, and deployed, within
particular historical, political, and cultural contexts’ (Jasa-
noff, 2003, p. 393). Based on a comparative study of bio-
technology in the United States, Britain and Germany,
Jasanoff (2005) highlighted national cultural differences
in the political organization of research. The national gov-
ernments of these countries have developed policies and
politics to incubate biotechnological research and industry.
They have also submitted biotechnological research and
the biotechnological industry to democratic control. Yet
the outcomes have been strikingly different in different
countries: the industries are different, their relations with
academia are different, and the regulations dealing with
them and their risks are different.
These differences are the result of what Jasanoff calls
‘national civic epistemologies’, which shape the democratic
practice of science and technology (Jasanoff, 2005, p. 255).
What operates as credible expertise in a given society is a
re?ection of the criteria by which members of that society
evaluate the validity of public knowledge. Accordingly,
who counts as an expert and what counts as expertise in
Germany may not necessarily be who, or what, would
count for the same purpose in the USA. Therefore, a histor-
ically grounded and locally situated understanding of
expertise demands historically grounded and locally situ-
ated normative approaches. No single template can im-
prove democratic accountability in different risk settings
and cultural contexts.
A ‘modern constitution’
Also from a constructivist perspective, but entirely clear
of the cultural contingencies noted by Jasanoff (2005) and
Latour (2004) set out to identify and reform the logic gov-
erning a certain conception of scienti?c activity shaping
modern systems of political decision-making. Latour be-
gins his theoretical journey with a political reading of the
Allegory of the Cave at the heart of one of Plato’s most
important dialogues, The Republic. In Plato’s famous alle-
gory, men are chained up and held with their backs turned
to the entrance of the cave, and are only able to see shad-
ows and the projected shadows of objects far behind them.
The cave is a symbol of the sensible world in which men
live in the belief that they have access to the truth through
their senses. Yet their life is a mere illusion. According to
Plato, true knowledge of reality is to be found outside the
cave, in the world of objects. The world of objects is acces-
sible to philosophers and scientists capable of reaching be-
yond their ‘human’ limitations and of contemplating the
truth of objects. However, when the latter strive to share
their knowledge and experience with their contemporar-
ies, they are likely to encounter incomprehension com-
bined with hostility, since the people are protective of
the comfort provided by their subjective illusions.
For Latour, the allegory of the cave is not merely a sym-
bolic description of the dif?culty of knowing reality and
the no less dif?cult transmission of this knowledge. It also
implies a speci?c conception of the relations between the
world of humans and the world of objects. With the advent
of modernity,
2
this conception emerged as a dominant
mode of thought in the West (Latour, 2004). At a political le-
vel, it is manifested in what Latour metaphorically terms the
‘modern constitution’.
The constitutional edi?ce posited by Latour is founded
on the hypothesis that it is not only possible but desirable
to draw a clear distinction between the world of subjective
values and the realm of objective facts. Based on this fun-
damental law, the modern constitution distinguishes be-
tween two types of subjects represented in two different
assemblies. The ?rst assembly, the social and political
world, contains human beings linked and limited by the
chains of their subjective values and feelings. The second
assembly, the world of knowledge and laboratories, is
2
‘Modernity has long been de?ned by a well-directed arrow of time that
tore us away from our archaic past to lead us toward an increasingly
radiant future. This future was always de?ned by an increasing separation
between feelings and values on the one hand and the three divinities of
Ef?ciency, Truth and Pro?tability on the other. The sense of progress was
therefore highly dependent on the certainty that, at a later stage, we would
be ?nally capable of clearly distinguishing between facts and values, even
if, in our distant past, we confused the two’ (Latour, 1996).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 151
composed of all non-human objects, which, since they are
not subject to the limits of human representations, are
characterized by ef?ciency and truth. ‘Non-human’ objects
include material artifacts with objectively identi?able
physical properties, but also immaterial artifacts con-
structed and delimited by the production of objecti?ed
knowledge. In this sense, the ‘state’ or the ‘market’ belong
to the world of objects in the same way as a chemical
molecule.
Because they have no voice (in the sense of being de-
void of speech, i.e. language), objects cannot express or
convey the truth they describe or the ef?ciency they prom-
ise. In other words, the authority and objecti?ed ef?ciency
of the state, the market or a molecule cannot be deployed
by themselves. The result is a paradoxical power relation
between the voice of humans (devoid of truth) and the
truth of non-humans (without a voice). The order implied
by the modern constitution is therefore ineffective unless
it can invert this power relation by giving a voice to non-
humans while simultaneously withdrawing it from
humans.
In contemporary society, experts are those who have
the ability to invert this power relation. Armed with appa-
ratuses designed for the production and validation of
knowledge (Gendron et al., 2007), experts act as the
spokespeople of non-human objects. Chemists speak on
behalf of molecules, economists speak on behalf of the
market, and technocrats speak on behalf of the state. In
the name of objects and their properties, experts become
involved in the political world, organizing the relations be-
tween social actors and systems of regulation based on an
extreme rationalization. Chemists organize pharmaceutical
regulations, economists organize ?nancial regulations, and
technocrats organize administrative regulations. In other
words, under the regime of the modern constitution, polit-
ical authority is recognized provided it removes any trace
of the human within it (i.e. its attachments to subjective
values rooted in cultural, moral, social, historical or spiri-
tual sensibility) and establishes in its stead (through the
voice of experts and their mastery of objects) a disembod-
ied program of objective rationality and ef?ciency.
For Latour, the rationalization of the political space is
responsible for the neutralization of the democratic appa-
ratus. Since political activity and scienti?c activity are inti-
mately connected (Latour, 2001), it would be an illusion to
distinguish or isolate the subjectivity of human values and
political activity from the objective rationality of objects
and scienti?c activity. By forcing political action to express
itself in the legitimate language of modernity, whether it
be the rationality and ef?ciency of the state or of the mar-
ket (Latour, 2004), the modern constitution also discredits
and marginalizes those who express their claims or inter-
ests in terms of subjective values or feelings, i.e. in terms
deemed to be ‘too human’. As observed by Roberts (2010,
p. 5), the tactical argument of rationalization claims ‘‘that
it is important to impose constraints on elected of?cials
and voters to ensure that they cannot make ill-advised
decisions [. . .] Broadly, the task is sometimes called ‘depo-
liticization’, because it involves removing certain subjects
from the realm of everyday politics’’. In this sense, Latour’s
political analysis has a strong critical potential, seeking
both to uncover and to root out a structure of domination
founded on a hyper-rationalization of the political world
by the scienti?c world. Not unlike Foucault or Habermas,
both marked by a clear shift in their thought (Flyvbjerg,
2001), the work of Latour is thus not one-dimensional,
and its developments in political studies are partly consis-
tent with a critical and reformist sociology.
Bringing expertise into democracy
Rather than distinguishing between the world of ob-
jects and the world of humans, Latour suggests abolishing
the conceptual distinctions between science and politics
and replacing them with a single collective that would
deliberate and decide on its membership (Latour, 2004).
To abolish the arbitrary hold of reason over the political
world, Latour’s suggestion is to politicize the production
of knowledge by extending the demand for democratic
representation to both humans and non-humans. The rep-
resentation of a molecule by a chemist, of the market by
economists or of the state by top political of?cials should
comply with the same logic governing the political repre-
sentation of citizens by political representatives. Instead
of isolating a problem of political representation and a
problem of scienti?c representation, Latour argues that
there is only one problem of representation requiring the
assignment of an explicit political status to experts, but
also the coexistence of both humans and non-humans
within the same assembly of representatives.
Latour’s position on the democratization of systems of
expertise differs markedly from the position adopted by
Habermas. First, Habermas’s aim is to differentiate science
from ethics with a view to granting experts a greater de-
gree of autonomy in the resolution of problems that are
not political in nature (Callon, Lascoumes, & Barthe,
2003). In other words, there is an assumption that depolit-
icization is to some extent feasible – that is, that some is-
sues or organizations can be made nonpolitical. By
contrast, according to Latour, the separation of scienti?c
activity and political ethics is based on an epistemological
?ction responsible for the neutralization of democratic
vitality.
3
Second, the Habermasian ethics of discussion ap-
pears to be designed as far as possible to re?ect an ideal
speech situation. Though unattainable, the ideal of regula-
tion posited by Habermas must serve as a guide to the
democratization of civil society colonized by experts (Power,
2007). Latour refuses the idealist position, basing his enter-
prise of decolonization on a principle of reality stating that it
is impossible to distinguish between facts and values and
that as such there is no reason to grant experts any particu-
lar form of authority. Third, subjected to the demands of
communicative rationality, the Habermasian actor must be
capable of being detached from his/her subjective beliefs
and commitments. On the contrary, Latour refuses to with-
3
As noted by Roberts (2010, p. 141), from a philosophical point of view,
it is easier to make a case for the proposition that depoliticization is simply
unfeasible: ‘‘What evidence is there that it is actually possible to place
certain subjects about politics? What examples can be given of subjects
that really have been depoliticized?’’
152 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
draw the exercise of rationality from the human subjectivity
of social actors.
It is important to recognize that the metaphor of the
‘modern constitution’ used by Latour to describe political
modernity and to provide avenues for reform has a number
of limitations. First, it distorts and partly caricatures the
Platonic myth by overlooking ‘the Socratic aspect of the
Platonic tradition, that is to say, the emergence of truth
out of dialogues between citizens in the agora’ (Tucker,
2007). Latour also tends to view technocracy as a key ele-
ment in the Western political tradition. Yet technocracy
may be a cultural exception more than the rule (Jasanoff,
2005). Finally, while they stimulate re?ection, Latour’s pro-
posals overlook the ambiguity of a program calling for the
critical deconstruction of the political nature of systems of
expertise while recommending their reconstruction based
on intensely normative prescriptions (Sismondo, 2007).
In other words, the metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’
accounts only partially for the reality it claims to describe.
Yet its imperfection is precisely what makes the
strength of Latour’s metaphor. As noted by Morgan
(1980, p. 611), the creative potential of metaphor depends
on there being a degree of difference between the subjects
involved in the metaphorical process:
Metaphor is based upon but partial truth; it requires of
its user a somewhat one-sided abstraction in which cer-
tain features are emphasized and others suppressed in a
selective comparison. If the two subjects brought
together are perceived to be completely unalike [. . .]
or are seen as almost identical [. . .] the metaphorical
process produces either nonsensical or weak imagery.
The most powerful use of metaphor arises in instances
[. . .] in which the differences between the two phenom-
ena are perceived to be signi?cant but not total.
Accordingly, effective metaphor can be seen as a formof
creative expression that relies on constructive falsehood as
a means of liberating the imagination (Alvesson & Sand-
berg, 2011; Morgan, 1980) and therefore conceiving
change. As noted by Clegg (2006, p. 849): ‘Imagination –
the capacity to conceive a difference – is at the kernel of
planned change [. . .] and has to be allied to the capacity
to make a difference – power’. In this sense, Latour’s polit-
ical analysis is critical not only in terms of content – insofar
as it challenges the process of rationalization of the politi-
cal world – but also in terms of its form, using a metaphor-
ical style that is conducive to stimulating the imaginative
creation of an alternative social and political order. In
short, both despite and because of its limitations, the polit-
ical metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’ has a produc-
tive heuristic potential for describing and analyzing the
political power of experts.
The way individuals (especially experts) think and act
never comes from nothing, but emerges in a discursive
context characterized by certain conditions of possibility
(Foucault, 1983). ‘Just as a discourse ‘rules in’ certain ways
of talking about a topic, de?ning an acceptable and intelli-
gible way to talk, write, or conduct oneself, so also, by def-
inition, it ‘rules out’, limits and restricts other ways of
talking, of conducting ourselves in relation to the topic’
(Hall, 1997, p. 44). In this respect, the political power of
experts metaphorically described by Latour implies the
production of a discursive system of representation mak-
ing possible the separation between the world of humans
and the world of objects.
In the context of this study, the use of Latour’s meta-
phor to politicize the expertise of the accounting industry
in the realm of CSR implies addressing the following ques-
tions: (1) What system of representation underlies the
accounting industry’s conception of corporate social
responsibility and how does this system of representation
enable and re?ect the separation and opposition between
the world of humans and the world of objects? (2) Through
what process of mediation are accounting ?rms and pro-
fessional bodies able to connect this system of representa-
tion to business management systems? (3) What are the
consequences of this mediation at a political and demo-
cratic level?
From apolitical representation to political mediation
The constant renewal of concepts and theories is one of
the key features of management science. Management the-
ories are often derived from the empirical observation of
management practices. Their purpose is to highlight the
contemporary actions of businesses, at the risk of being
criticized for contributing to the emergence of the ‘man-
agement fashions’ of the moment (Abrahamson, 1996).
This criticism also applies to the CSR agenda, which has en-
joyed increasing success over the last decade both in the
academic world (Spence, Husillos, & Correa-Ruiz, 2010)
and in the professional sphere (Power, 2007). In retrospect,
the conversion of the business world to a form of compas-
sionate capitalism appears to have generated both enthusi-
asm and skepticism in equal measure
4
. On the one hand,
the countless ?nancial scandals and sometimes dubious pro-
fessional ethics of large multinationals are indicative of the
persistent and signi?cant gap between discourse and prac-
tice (Spar & La Mure, 2003). On the other hand, far from
being spared by power relations, social responsibility is also
at the center of a con?ict between different visions from
which a dominant logic eventually emerges, producing win-
ners and losers (Archel, Husillos, & Spence, 2011).
In the race to demonstrate a highly developed social
and environmental conscience, the same goes for the
accounting industry
5
:
Like all businesses, we’re shaped by the world around
us. We can’t think about our success without consider-
ing the society and economy that give us the two mar-
kets in which we compete: for clients and for talent
4
The increasing ?nancialization of the economy shows that shareholder
service still remains the key structuring principle of business development
strategies (Williams, 2000). The primacy of the interests of shareholders is
also re?ected in academic research, where agency theory (which posits that
good governance involves ensuring that managers act in the interests of
shareholders) serves as the frame of reference of many studies (Erturk et al.,
2007).
5
Academic accounting research, partly under the in?uence of the
industry (Flottes & Gendron, 2010; Francis, 2004), plays a key role in this
respect (Spence et al., 2010).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 153
(Salzberg, CEO, Deloitte Corporate Responsibility Inau-
gural Report, 2007/2008, p. 4).
Social solidarity is rooted in our values: ‘We are com-
mitted to the collectivity’. [. . .] In recent years, while
volunteering initiatives were taking shape, employees
responded with boundless enthusiasm [. . .] Celebrating
the merits of individuals who get involved to give back
to society is enough to cause the sphere of in?uence of
the company to widen. (De Mara, Rapport 2006 sur le
programme Responsabilité sociale de KPMG, p. 3)
The same also applies to skepticism. It would be rela-
tively easy to draw a list of socially irresponsible practices
in the accounting industry. This work has already begun,
and an extensive literature has emerged to show that the
defense of the public interest has not always been at the
center of the work of auditors, not only in ?nancial audit-
ing (Cooper & Robson, 2006; Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Baz-
erman, 2006; Sikka, 2008), but also in social auditing.
O’Rourke (2000) identi?ed many shortcomings in the audit
work performed by accounting ?rms on working condi-
tions in poor countries. Over the last decade, the increasing
number of professional failures has resulted in a reexami-
nation of the historical regulatory autonomy granted to
accountants in many jurisdictions (Malsch & Gendron,
2011).
Accounting ?rms and professional bodies continue
nonetheless to play a central role in the production and
implementation of accountability mechanisms surround-
ing the social responsibility practices of organizations. By
absorbing social and environmental auditing within its
?eld of expertise, the accounting industry has established
itself as a key player in this area (O’Dwyer, 2011; Power,
1997; Simnett et al., 2009). Though less visible, the deci-
sion of auditors to in?uence international social and envi-
ronmental certi?cation institutions should also not be
underestimated:
As a member of the Executive Committee of the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCSD), a coalition of 175 international companies
united by a shared commitment to sustainable develop-
ment, I am personally committed to driving sustainable
development and corporate responsibility into business
thinking. (DiPiazza, CEO PwC, 2009)
The network of ?rms and professional associations con-
stitutes a key passage point for in?uential ideas in the area
of corporate social responsibility (Sahlin-Andersson, 2006).
These entities publish numerous documents (annual rank-
ings and surveys, public reports, performance measure-
ment systems, etc.) through which we can observe the
production of ideas about what CSR is, how organizations
should deal with their new responsibilities and how
accountants can help. In particular, several conceptual
framework documents (i.e. Corporate Responsibility: Strat-
egy, management and value. How PwC can help; Accounting
for sustainability project: Governance and Collaboration –
Connected reporting; Sustainability: the role of accountants
(ICAEW)) have been signi?cant in developing and promot-
ing these ideas.
In the following sections, using the Latourian metaphor
of the ‘modern constitution’ (Latour, 2004), I examine the
mediating political role of the accounting industry in align-
ing the socially responsible practices of organizations with
the rational morality of the market. First, in analyzing con-
ceptual documents, I highlight the market-based system of
representation used by accounting ?rms and professional
bodies to instrumentalize and economicize corporate so-
cial responsibility as an apolitical object of risk. I show that
this system of representation enables and re?ects the sep-
aration and opposition between the world of humans and
the world of objects. Second, I examine the ‘mediating’ role
of the accounting industry in connecting this system of
representation to business management systems.
Economicizing corporate social responsibility
The socially responsible market
‘Science discovers, genius invents, industry applies, and
man adapts himself’, insisted the slogan of the 1933 Uni-
versal Exhibition in Chicago, at a time when humanity still
had its eyes ?rmly ?xed on the arrow of time. This episte-
mological position has been deconstructed by Latour
(1987) and many others (Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970),
supported in their endeavors by the major disasters of
the twentieth century; yet it still lies at the heart of the dis-
course of the accounting profession. The advancement of
knowledge and the control of nature should enable the de-
mands of social and environmental protection to be regu-
lated and reconciled with the demands of economic
development:
Eco-ef?ciency and awareness of the social and eco-
nomic impacts of business operations are essential to
business success in the 21st century. The 19th century
invented large-scale industrial manufacturing. The
20th century converted it into an applied science and
learned to control it from a keyboard and monitor.
The 21st century will bring it to maturity by learning
to integrate enterprise of all kinds – both manufactur-
ing and services – with the needs of the natural envi-
ronment and social enterprise. (DiPiazza, CEO PwC,
2009)
Consistent with the ‘modernist’ ideal (Gray, 2010) –
which posits the cumulative and linear nature of scienti?c
progress, itself responsible for technical progress, and ulti-
mately human progress – sustainable business develop-
ment is essentially viewed from a long-term perspective.
The effects of economic activity on the planet’s ecosystems
can already be felt. However, it is not too late to change the
dominant model of economic development. Thus, contrary
to the arguments of radical critique directed toward a rapid
and profound change of economic paradigm, the current
system of exchange can be maintained provided it is grad-
ually reformed. The process of reform implies a gradual
process of ‘incremental’ planning to enable the adoption
of technologies and business models adapted to the new
social and environmental order:
Our progress towards sustainable development will be
largely incremental. It will be a process of evolution
154 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
rather than revolution, since the barriers to rapid
change – for example, the tendency to use short-term
planning horizons and the dif?culties in accommodat-
ing diverse global needs and perspectives – are unlikely
to alter for many years yet. (Corporate Responsibility:
Strategy, management and value – How PwC can help,
2009)
Commerce is the glue that holds the world together, the
source of the wealth that has made life in the 21st cen-
tury easier for more people than ever before. Activists
and NGOs sometimes argue that the objectives of busi-
ness are fundamentally self-serving – and the business
sector often faces a reputational assault [. . .] However,
this does not mean that we need fewer businesses. It
means, rather, that we need better businesses. (Sunner,
PwC global leader for sustainable solution, 2009)
Far from being perceived and de?ned as two con?icting
poles, business activities and social responsibility commit-
ments thus share a common destiny. It is not merely that
the success of a company has come to be measured in
terms of its capacity to generate pro?ts and to take account
of social and environmental issues. The concern for social
and environmental issues may itself become an instrument
for securing an economic advantage:
In fact, we think that Corporate Social Responsibility is
more than just an add-onto our business. It’s much
more important than that. People want to work for,
buy from and deal with companies that make a positive
contribution to the world. So responsibility and com-
mercial success can, and should, go hand in hand.
(KPMG, Corporate Social Responsibility)
With growing scrutiny of business operations, organiza-
tions are increasingly being driven to satisfy the expec-
tations of opinion formers, governments and customers
in order to thrive. In essence, businesses adopting cor-
porate social responsibility principles believe that by
operating ethically and responsibly, they have a greater
chance of success. (Grant Thornton International Busi-
ness Report 2008, Corporate Social Responsibility: a
necessity not a choice, p. 2)
The conception of CSR suggested by the accounting
industry is thus based on the following syllogism: (1) The
raison d’être of a company is to increase its pro?ts; (2) In
the current context, adopting socially responsible practices
is a source of pro?tability; (3) Therefore, it is in the interest
of companies to adopt socially responsible practices’. It is
dif?cult not to equate this syllogism with the arguments
of the economist Milton Friedman. Friedman recognized
that despite the inherent danger of the concept of corpo-
rate responsibility,
6
if CSR becomes a public expectation en-
abling companies to promote their economic interests, it can
legitimately become an element of their development
strategy:
It would be inconsistent of me to call on corporate exec-
utives to refrain from this hypocritical window-dress-
ing [corporate social responsibility] because it harms
the foundation of a free society. That would be to call
on them to exercise a ‘social responsibility’! If our insti-
tutions and the attitudes of the public make it in their
self-interest to cloak their actions in this way, I cannot
summon much indignation to denounce them. (Fried-
man, 1970, p. 5)
The long-term horizon is not merely re?ected in the
promotion of an ideal of planning and moderate reformism
in which social and environmental responsibility becomes
a key factor of economic success. Another consequence is
to consign the social and environmental effects of eco-
nomic activity to a relatively distant future and at the scale
of the planet, beyond the temporal and spatial horizon of
most citizens and enterprises. Any contribution that
companies and even whole countries might make to the
prevention of climate change or to maintaining the well-
being of people is accordingly insigni?cant. It therefore
makes no sense for a ?rm or a country to standardize
norms of business sustainability on a unilateral basis:
Many companies, investors and governments have
already recognized the importance of reporting sustain-
ability-related information. In response, some govern-
ments are implementing national regulations.
However, activity is often undertaken in silos, with
the risk of increasing the volume of information
reported, while reducing the insight provided.
(Accounting for Sustainability, Governance and Collabo-
ration, 2009)
What we are faced with is a ‘tragedy of the global com-
mons’ (Hardin, 1962). The underlying problem of business
sustainability is a lack of global governance and planning
capable of reining in and steering global markets and pro-
tecting global commons. The only acceptable regulatory
response is to create international governance structures
capable of supervising and coordinating the production of
an international regulatory framework:
International coordination would help to reduce dupli-
cation and create the cohesion and consistency in
reporting that is needed to aid sound decision-making.
(Accounting for Sustainability, Governance and Collabo-
ration, 2009)
International institutions will be responsible for formu-
lating de?nitive global and regional policies [. . .] A
number of factors will ensure that it takes place. They
include the increasing pressure on scarce resources;
changing patterns of global demand; the trans-national
impact of human activity and natural events; and grow-
ing awareness that we are both a single global commu-
nity and a collection of local societies that need to
remain effective. (Corporate Responsibility: Strategy,
management and value – How PwC can help, 2009)
As shown by these extracts, the issues raised by social
environmental responsibility imply adherence to a speci?c
representation of the notion of authority in general and of
state power in particular. Through international gover-
6
‘Very few currents are as dangerous for the very foundations of our free
society as the acceptance among business managers of a conception of
social responsibility not de?ned in terms of the need to serve the interests
of shareholders’ (Friedman, 1962).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 155
nance schemes, governments relinquish some of their priv-
ileged ‘control’ authority and are recon?gured as merely
one source of authority among others, as if operating in a
‘market of authorities’ (Shamir, 2008). In short, govern-
ments are placed on a par with private sources of
authority:
There are growing expectations that companies should
use their signi?cant power and in?uence for the com-
mon good. But how far should corporations go? Should
they really be expected to address issues that have tra-
ditionally been the responsibility of governments –
such as poverty, basic infrastructure, public health,
corruption and social justice? Like it or not, many
companies have had to begin addressing these issues
in pursuit of their business objectives and in response
to stakeholder pressures. However, most companies
are still working – some may say struggling – to de?ne
how best to meet their business objectives while bene-
?ting the common good. (Sunner, PwC global leader for
sustainable solution, 2009)
Accordingly, corporations, trade and technical–profes-
sional associations, accountancy and credit-rating agencies
and standard-setting organizations have tended increas-
ingly to perform regulatory roles and to experiment with
novel forms of legality (Danielsen, 2005; Sassen, 1996).
Their role today is somewhat ambiguous since these
experiments are not merely directed toward the construc-
tion of a new regulatory environment, but also contribute
to a ferocious battle between different interest groups
seeking to maintain or extend their professional jurisdic-
tions (Dezalay & Sugarman, 1995). In the accounting
industry, the development of an international regulatory
apparatus has long been part and parcel of a strategy
aimed at promoting the emergence of a global auditing
market (whether ?nancial, social or environmental) regu-
lated by international organizations freed from the restric-
tions of traditional state regulation (Arnold, 2005):
The accountancy profession has traditionally responded
to market changes and shifts in public expectations.
Sustainability offers such opportunities and it is hardly
surprising that some accountancy practices have
become involved in recent years in providing advice
and assurance service relating to sustainability perfor-
mance and reporting. (Sustainability: the role of
accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
In this sense, the adoption of socially responsible prac-
tices does not imply a renunciation of market principles.
The market represents a common good that must be pro-
tected from the failings of humans in much the same
way as natural resources. As a common good, the market
is particularly important since it also preserves other
goods:
In fact, there is mounting evidence that companies that
act in a responsible manner consistently do better than
others in the long run. People often blame capitalismfor
encouraging bad corporate behavior. But the global cap-
ital markets are not immoral; they are merely amoral.
The same market mechanisms apply whatever product
or service a company sells. If it does the right things, it
makes money. If it does the wrong things, it goes out of
business. So it’s unfair to blame the philosophy of cap-
italism for the wrongs that humans do. (Sunner, PwC
global leader for sustainable solution, 2009)
In this view, the issue is simply to substitute market
laws for the tyranny of man over man. The apolitical and
amoral sphere of the market ensures the greatest degree
of economic freedom and therefore the greatest degree of
political freedom. While any syllogism is necessarily
reductive, the following sequence summarizes the basic
gist of the reasoning: ‘(1) Engaging in social responsibility
results in increased pro?ts; (2) The market naturally elim-
inates companies that fail to increase their pro?ts; (3)
Therefore, the market is the natural and impartial judge
of good social responsibility practices’. In this sense, there
is no need to impose further collective and political control
over companies. Free competition is enough to determine
the winners and the losers in the ?ght for social
responsibility:
As for the rest, it is surely only a matter of time before
all privately held businesses have to adhere to greater
pressure to do business in a more socially responsible
and transparent manner. The businesses that are
responsive, quick and innovative will be the ones who
not only survive the change, but emerge as winners.
(Grant Thornton, International Business Report, Corpo-
rate Social Responsibility: a necessity not a choice, p. 3)
Therefore, in the eyes of professional associations and
accounting ?rms, social responsibility represents a pro?t
opportunity for businesses capable of responding to the
‘social responsibility’ pressures of the market. At the same
time, it is also seen as a considerable source of danger for
businesses struggling to adapt and whose survival is threa-
tened. In other words, social and environmental responsi-
bility is seen as a risk for organizations. In particular, it is
constructed as one of these new risks that ‘are no longer
[only] the dark side of opportunities, but are also market
opportunities’ (Beck, 1992, p. 46).
The human risk
In the simplest and most common sense of the term, the
notion of risk is generally associated with a degree of
uncertainty and danger. However, the endless con?icts be-
tween experts of all kinds to classify objects as risks indi-
cate that the perception of what is uncertain or
dangerous is far from being culturally, socially or even
politically uniform (Douglas, 1992; Froud, 2003). The risk
associated by the accounting industry with CSR derives
from a category that has only recently emerged in manage-
ment thinking on the issue of reputation: ‘Reputation has
come to be seen as both at risk and at the limits of conven-
tional management control. It has become a governing risk
object of large organizations and is infused with both fear
and opportunity’ (Power, 2007, p. 129). The prevailing dis-
course of the accounting industry clearly reveals the
increasingly serious image risks generated by networks of
militants or non-governmental organizations involved in
social or environmental causes:
156 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
Efforts to build, maintain, and protect corporate reputa-
tion have been made all the more dif?cult by the
continuing increase in the variety and complexity of
the potential sustainability-related risks to corporate
reputation. These risks have resulted from the global-
ization of business operations and the rise of a network
of socially, environmentally, and ethically aware global
actors that monitor and report on corporate activities
on a 24/7 basis. (KPMG, Governance, Risk and Reputa-
tion, 2011)
One of the driving factors on corporate social responsi-
bility is the increasing importance of image and reputa-
tion and the demand for more information about the
conditions in which products and services are gener-
ated. [. . .] As so often happens, it is not just a CSR debate
but a question of business risk, although the risks
involved may be more concerned with the durability
of the organization than sustainable development. (Sus-
tainability: the role of accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
At a programmatic level, the key dimensions of reputa-
tional risk management are based on the ideal of ‘stake-
holder analysis’ (Power, 2007). Minimizing reputational
risks and converting them into market opportunities im-
plies listening to stakeholders affected by business
activities:
To ask questions about the sustainability of any human
activity is to take an overall look at how that activity
affects people, the economy, society, and natural envi-
ronment and to ask, in the light of all this, whether it
has a long-term future. (Sustainability: the role of
accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
The moral collectivism implied by this view is indica-
tive of a major political shift since it involves recognizing
new rights for groups of actors that had previously been
largely ignored
7
(Archel et al., 2011). However, its adoption
is also symptomatic of a shift in the traditional system of
representation associated with risk objects. In the ?eld of
regulatory risk assessment, causation is generally viewed
as a linear and mechanistic process, while risk agency is
deemed to originate in the inanimate world of objects
(Jasanoff, 1999). With the ‘moral’ and ‘socially responsible’
renovation of the concept of stakeholder, the causes of rep-
utational risk have spread throughout the social world (with
each stakeholder representing a different risk according to
their interests or rights) through militants – a ‘human’ and
‘animate’ façade. This shift is not simply epistemic. Assign-
ing the responsibility of risks to inanimate objects generally
increases the sense of control and social order (Jasanoff,
1999). After all, managing things is easier than managing
people, especially when people are known to be part of
the problem.
Therefore, to objectivize CSR as a risk is not without
consequence. First, the implication is that the content of
socially responsible practices is no longer discussed from
an absolute standpoint, i.e. in terms of the common social
or political good, but from a defensive perspective based
on the identi?ed reputational risks and their impact on
business. In addition, as noted by Power (2007, p. 150):
‘Reputational risk is [. . .] the product of evaluative institu-
tions which explicitly manufacture a kind of uncertainty
with a high degree of calculative rationalization’. The is-
sues raised by CSR are thus rationalized, economicized,
and in some sense depoliticized by invoking the amoral
and disembodied authority of market mechanisms, but
also by deploying a technical arsenal of calculations and
rankings aimed at measuring and improving corporate rep-
utation. Finally, with the notion of reputational risk, the
political and social awareness of civil society is seen as a
source of danger unless it can be politically neutralized.
In market-based terms, neutralization implies capitalizing
on the social and environmental expectations of the public
to develop and commercialize new products and services.
In other words, the process of neutralization implies the
instrumental collaboration of the public.
This collaborative process involves both good will and
power relations. As noted by Taylor (1992, p. 5), far from
being marginal, the exercise of instrumental rationality is
a constituent feature of modern Western culture and in?u-
ences the way of thinking of the vast majority of citizens.
In converting reputational risk into market opportunities,
businesses can rely on the benevolent support of public
opinion, already convinced of the ideal of ef?ciency and
pro?tability. However, public cooperation is not a perma-
nent given, and may turn into resistance. In the spirit of
the market, this resistance can and must be conducted pri-
marily in the name of consumer rights. Organizations are
the constituents of the market and consumers have rights
against them in their capacity as consumers.
Consumer sovereignty has a long tradition in classical
and neoclassical economic theories (Slater, 1997). Adam
Smith was among the ?rst to extol the consumer as the
hero of modern market societies. According to this model,
‘‘the self-determined and dispassionate market choices of
sovereign consumers are instrumental in directing the
market’s so-called invisible hand, which results in more
ef?cient production, better and cheaper products, social
progress, and increased general welfare’’ (Denegri-Knott,
Zwick, & Schroeder, 2006, p. 955).
8
From this point of view,
reputational risk is conceived, managed and converted
(more or less easily) as an opportunity provided it is located
within the instrumental, demanding but legitimate market
relationship between organizations and their consumers.
The exercise of consumer rights is in a sense the practical
embodiment of economic reasoning, which construes the
market as the judge of good socially responsible business
practices.
7
Stakeholder consultation processes can also have problematic func-
tions: ‘on one level, these processes legitimize dominant discourses on CSR
by giving the impression that the latter are the outcome of a democratic
dialogue that is free from power relations; on another level, these processes
themselves show to heretic social actors the futility of their heresy and thus
encourage those actors to actively adopt the dominant discourse’ (Archel
et al., 2011, p. 327).
8
In this model, we may include studies examining mechanisms of
consumer boycotts (Friedman, 1996; Garrett, 1987) or consumers’ ability to
maximize utility over cost (Nelson, 2002; Pitt, Berthon, Watson, & Zinkhan,
2002).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 157
When it escapes the logic of instrumental rationality
and refuses to see its rights de?ned solely in terms of its
status as a consumer, the political and social consciousness
of civil society thus represents a disturbing area of uncer-
tainty for organizations driven by a neoliberal imagination.
In this sense, the ‘dark side’ of reputational risk is that any
human can refuse (as a human and not as a consumer
9
) to
submit to the demand for ef?ciency and pro?tability im-
posed by instrumental reason in the name of a moral sense
rooted in subjective feelings or beliefs or an adherence to
certain ideals, and question its domination in the organiza-
tion of economic exchange. Accordingly, the emergence of
reputational risk is not only the expression of an entirely
‘man-made risk’, as suggested by Power (2007, p. 150), but
is also a sign of distrust of the risk represented by humans
and their subjective capacity to organize the social and polit-
ical sphere against the instrumental economic rationality of
the market and outside their market-based rights as
consumers.
Overall, the system of representation that lies beneath
accounting ?rms and professional bodies’ conception of
CSR provides a striking illustration of the political meta-
phor used by Latour (2004) to describe the modern power
imbalance between the world of humans and the world of
non-humans. On one side, the market object appears to be
characterized by an amoral and apolitical rationality mak-
ing it the undisputed arbiter of good social responsibility
practices. On the other side, the ability of humans to adopt
a subjective horizon of political meaning that differs from
the horizon dictated by the technical and instrumental lo-
gic of the market is discredited and perceived as a threat.
The neoliberal imagination of the accounting industry thus
collapses the historical order between economy and soci-
ety. At the birth of capitalism, the business enterprise
could claim moral exemption because other socio-political
mechanisms, most notably governments, assumed the task
of managing populations and things according to humanist
principles of welfare and society (Foucault, 1978). Today, it
posits the economic rationality of the ‘market object’ as the
organizational and moral principle for politics and society
as a whole.
In this bipolar world, and armed with its expertise
(Power, 1997), the accounting industry establishes itself
as a mediator capable of giving a political voice to voiceless
market mechanisms and of making their voice heard in the
social and political world of organizations. This is well
illustrated by the following ?gure produced by the ICAEW
in a report on the role of accountants in the new issues
raised by social and environmental responsibility (Fig. 1).
According to the authors and commissioner of the report,
assurance and disclosure of information services are de-
signed to facilitate the integration of CSR within the logic
of the market:
As noted by Power (2007, p. 4), ‘managing risks depends
critically [not only] on managements systems of represen-
tation [but also] on instruments for framing objects for the
purpose of action and intervention’. Therefore, representing
the market as the keystone of the social responsibility agen-
da of businesses is a necessary but not suf?cient condition
for economicizing corporate social responsibility. The fol-
lowing section examines the mediating role of the account-
ing industry in aligning organizational practices with the
moral ideal of the market.
In the name of the market
Capitalizing on their ?nancial audit expertise (Power,
1997), most accounting ?rms provide their clients with a
wide range of instruments designed to support businesses
to produce the social and environmental information dis-
closed in their activity reports (O’Dwyer, 2011). These
instruments are used to measure performance and certi?-
cation. They are the armed wing of a strategy of commer-
cial conquest. However, their mode of production and the
type of practices they encourage also operate as ef?cient
instruments of market rationality.
The following scorecard illustrates this issue (Fig. 1).
Developed by Deloitte to assess the quality of business re-
ports from a social and environmental point of view, the
scorecard is based on a list of thirty criteria. A scale of
1–4 is used to assign a grade to the organization for the
overall quality of its report (Fig. 2).
The inscriptions and programs included in a scorecard
transit easily from one organization to another (Cooper,
Ezzamel, & Qu, 2012). Accounting technologies are mod-
eled on standardized de?nitions and generic measure-
ments to appeal to a wide audience (Armstrong, 2002)
and ‘‘as a generalized expert system, [a scorecard] has
interpretative ?exibility, which allows it to seem applica-
ble for various purposes’’ (Qu & Cooper, 2011, p. 347). In
this sense, because of its (diverse) origins and (unpredict-
able) destination, the material produced by Deloitte ex-
tends far beyond the con?nes of the ?rm and local team
of accountants that originally developed it. As a symbol
of the discursive power of the accounting industry, and
borne by a global network of consultants spread across
many professional sites, the scorecard represents a ?exible
tool of knowledge that may have a signi?cant impact on
the development of practices. In what follows, I will mobi-
lize the speci?c content of the scorecard developed by Del-
oitte in order to illustrate the analysis.
A ?exible morality
I have shown that the economicization of social and
environmental responsibility issues implies adapting the
organizing principles of the social and political world to
the ?eld of market relations. At a political level, one of
the most visible manifestations of this process is the ten-
dency to place the moral responsibility of the state toward
society on an equal footing with the responsibility of pri-
vately-held organizations and non-governmental organi-
zations. For example, in the project known as ‘Accounting
for Sustainability’, accounting ?rms and professional
bodies are viewed as stakeholders – ‘the accounting com-
munity’ – in the same way as investors, business associa-
tions, regulators, non-governmental organizations and
international institutions. In practice, the recon?guration
of the regulatory space has resulted in the emergence of
9
See, for example, Deutch (1995) on the difference between human
rights and consumer rights.
158 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
?exible and relatively unrestrictive regulations co-
produced by the private sector, civil society and a number
of international institutions competing with the traditional
regulatory authority of the state:
The means through which governmental authority is
deployed, namely laws, rules and regulations, are par-
tially replaced by a variety of ‘guidelines’, ‘codes of con-
ducts’, ‘principles’ and ‘standards’ that do not
necessarily enjoy the coercive backing of the state.
Rather, the means of authority, as well as the means
of producing these means, are treated as commodities
that are produced, distributed, exchanged, negotiated
and ultimately consumed by the host of state and
inter-state agencies, commercial enterprises and non-
pro?t organizations that comprise the ‘market of
authorities’. (Shamir, 2008, p. 7)
As shown by the following extracts, the accounting
industry has largely endorsed this shift in the regulatory
apparatus – a shift that tends to construe disclosure stan-
dards and codes of conduct as objects with unstable nor-
mative contours, adaptable to the conditions of activity
of every company, and therefore constantly renegotiable.
Having presented the general principles and basic norms
that must govern the production of social and environmen-
tal reports, the authors of the scorecard make the following
comment:
We concentrate much more on quality than on quan-
tity, and intend to give guidance on the process of
reporting, on the content of a report and on the format
to make sure that the report is able to communicate
effectively. We do not specify or require information
on speci?c topics, as these will always depend highly
on the circumstances of the reporting organization on
the one hand, and the needs of the report user on the
other. This makes assessment indeed more challenging
than just checking against a given list of impacts or
indicators following a ?xed format. (Deloitte Sustain-
ability Reporting Scorecard, p. 3)
In illustrating their conceptual framework with several
examples, the conceivers of the ‘Accounting for Sustain-
ability’ project are careful to underline that the examples
‘are not intended to provide a template for organizations
to follow, nor to represent a model set of issues, impacts
and actions’:
Instead, it is anticipated that organizations which wish
to adopt connected reporting will be able to use both
the guidance and the examples to help them consider
how to develop a connected approach in the context of
their business. It is hoped that there will be co-
ordination between organizations in the same industry
group to agree a common approach to connected report-
ing in their sector. [. . .] It is important that this work is
co-ordinated internationally to create the cohesion and
consistency in reporting that is needed, while retaining
?exibility for an organization to adopt the approach that
is speci?c to its business. (Accounting for sustainability,
Connected reporting: practical guide with worked
examples)
These extracts illustrate the mediating role of a ?exible
and unrestrictive regulatory framework. By replacing the
rigidity of the law and the state, the new framework offers
a vast array of moral instruments (reporting framework,
rating devices, auditing techniques, etc.) that businesses
can use according to the speci?c situation in which they
?nd themselves and in line with the market principle of
?exible and dynamic adaptation. Accordingly, morality is
implicitly de?ned in terms of a ‘preferential freedom-
of-choice model’ (Shamir, 2008), thus facilitating the
Fig. 1. A market-based approach to sustainability.
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 159
rejection of morally prescriptive regulation exerted from
above (e.g. by regional, national or supra-national regula-
tors). In return, this competitive and fragmented moral uni-
verse provides the accounting profession with ideal
conditions for offering moral advice to organizations:
The development of voluntary codes has taken place in a
largely unstructured way, resulting in a wide range of
principles designed to achieve worthy objectives and
offering, or appearing to offer, competitive bene?ts.
Accountants maybe involvedinidentifyinga code appro-
priate to the business or in integrating operation of the
code with an existing management information system.
(Sustainability: the role of accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
The deployment of a ?exible and dynamic market
morality is also facilitated by recognition of the principle
of stakeholder consultation as a cornerstone of socially
responsible practices. Among the criteria used in the Del-
oitte scorecard, three are directly related to the identi?ca-
tion of and interaction with stakeholders. To justify the
importance of these criteria, the authors argue that the rel-
evance of the information that needs to be disclosed is
dependent on the ‘needs and expectations’ expressed by
stakeholders:
In order to make reporting and communication effec-
tive management instruments, it is important that
reporting organizations – ?rst and foremost – identify
the target audiences of their communication and con-
sult these audiences about their actual information
needs and expectations. It might also be important to
know what the relevant problems and concerns of these
stakeholders are. (Deloitte Sustainability Reporting
Scorecard, p. 2)
The argument appears to be a sensible and convincing
one, but is not without consequence. By de?nition, every
stakeholder group directly involved in the issues and chal-
lenges of its environment bases its claims on criteria
(whether social, economic or ethical) that are speci?c to
it. Since criteria vary from one group to another, stake-
holder claims will vary from one group or situation to an-
other. In this sense, a universal and unilateral regulation of
the social responsibility information to be disclosed is at
best pointless and at worst counterproductive. As shown
by the following de?nition provided by the authors of
the scorecard, consulting and engaging with stakeholders
also implies discussions and negotiations aimed (at least
in appearance) at reaching a satisfactory compromise:
Stakeholder Dialogue or multistakeholder dialogue is a
dedicated interaction with one or a group of multiple
stakeholders on a particular subject, program or
towards a particular goal of achieving understanding,
consensus or progress. (Deloitte Sustainability Report-
ing Scorecard, p. 38)
Fig. 2. Deloitte sustainability reporting scorecard: The 30 criteria.
160 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
Far from any kind of abstract universalism, the ideal of
stakeholder consultation thus implicitly fosters the emer-
gence of an ‘à la carte’ morality. Given their proximity to
the ?eld, it is up to stakeholders to promote recognition
of the key issues that concern them and to devise solutions
on a collaborative basis. In other words, rather than an
ordering activity, the adoption of socially responsible prac-
tices primarily becomes a shared problem-solving process
– expressed by notions such as ‘multi-party cooperation’,
‘constructive dialogue’, ‘multistakeholder consultation’,
and ‘democratic participation’ – facilitating creative, ?exi-
ble and ef?cient solutions that leave ‘the greatest possible
amount of control in the hands of those closest to the prob-
lems’ (Lobel, 2004, p. 362). The systematic mobilization of
stakeholders is thus not merely designed to serve a sym-
bolic and illusory goal of ‘[legitimizing] existing manage-
ment decisions through symbolic consultation processes’
(Archel et al., 2010, p. 14), but is also a means of further
undermining the historical monopoly of the state and
elected representatives (relegated, as shown by criterion
19, to the status of mere stakeholders) over the de?nition
and resolution of social problems.
Responsibilizing stakeholders
Deresponsibilizing the state implies responsibilizing
stakeholders. A transfer of responsibility is possible pro-
vided it enables stakeholders to take charge of their eco-
nomic and moral destiny, but also to accept the positive
and negative consequences of their decisions (Lemke,
2001). Accordingly, multiple sources of authority, includ-
ing non-governmental organizations, international institu-
tions, professional service ?rms and commercial
enterprises, are currently in the process of responsibilizing
their relevant audience ‘to adjust to the harsh realities of
the free market by adopting a certain entrepreneurial form
of practical relationship to themselves’ (Shamir, 2008, p. 8)
as a condition of their effectiveness and as evidence of their
re?exive moral capacities.
This is precisely the meaning of criteria 13 and 14 used
in the scorecard designed by Deloitte, which establish the
description of management systems, and in particular the
description of risk management systems, as a key element
of disclosure for demonstrating the social responsibility
commitment of the organization. As noted by Power
(2007, p. 40), ‘internal control [and risk management] sys-
tems embody both potentials of greater ef?ciency and
coordination on the one hand, and of greater sensitivity
to social responsibility on the other’. Therefore, by high-
lighting their internal responsibilization processes while
improving the management of their economic ef?ciency,
internal control and risk management systems provide
organizations with an ideal technological support for the
economicization of social responsibility issues.
As a preamble to criterion 14, the authors indicate ‘that
the report should describe and demonstrate how signi?-
cant risks and opportunities are managed proactively’.
Therefore, the disclosure of such information should con-
tribute to informing stakeholders of the capacity of the
organization to recognize its failings and to remedy them,
but also to identify opportunities for economic develop-
ment. The term ‘proactively’ is signi?cant since it indicates
the intention of the organization to identify problems but
also to anticipate them without waiting for the potential
imposition of a regulatory restriction from outside the
organization. In other words, the promotion of disclosure
criteria relating to risk management and internal control
systems implies a rede?nition of organizations as autono-
mous and responsible social agents capable of self-
governance.
The instrumental bene?t of risk management systems is
not merely that they enable organizations to combine a
demonstration of their responsibility with a demonstration
of their economic ef?ciency. They also provide a technol-
ogy capable of reformulating social responsibility issues
in purely managerial terms. In a presentation of their vi-
sion of sustainable development at an annual meeting of
the ‘Global Accounting Alliance’
10
, the representatives of
the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants concluded
their intervention in the following terms:
While we acknowledge there can be time delays before
an organization realizes that some activities that may
be pro?table in the short run are unsustainable and
therefore indefensible in the longer term, we would
argue that this is a problem of short-termism (to be
resolved through better information and risk manage-
ment practices) rather than a problem of environmental
or social irresponsibility (to be resolved somehow by
encouraging enterprises to behave in a more ‘moral’
way [. . .] through appeal to altruism or fear). (Pollard
and Stephen, 2008)
By reducing the social responsibility agenda of organiza-
tions to an information disclosure issue, risk management
systems are more than mere instruments of control. On
the one hand, they imply a conception of corporate social
responsibility as a management issue rather than as a fun-
damentally social or political matter. On the other hand,
they operate as a Trojan horse of the market agenda in orga-
nizations. Indeed, the notion of information is central in the
practices of ?nancial market participants characterized by a
constant search for relevant information – a search which,
according to ?nancial economics, shapes their decisions
and is re?ected in the dynamics of transactions and securi-
ties prices (Vollmer, Mennicken, & Preda, 2009). In this
sense, there is only one step from de?ning information dis-
closure as a major criterion of corporate responsibilization
in the name of a certain ideal of democratic transparency
(Drori, 2006) to establishing the market as the ultimate
judge of the process of responsibilization based on a logic
of information communication to market participants. As
shown in the following extract, this step is easily – and even
enthusiastically – taken:
Good governance is not just a matter of morality. The
business case for sustainable development is also very
strong. Research conducted by the PwC shows, for
example, that more than half of institutional investors
and analysts think evidence of compliance with
10
The Global Accounting Alliance is made up of 11 of the world’s leading
accounting bodies brought together to promote quality services, share
information and collaborate on important international issues.
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 161
environmental protocols and compliance with health
and safety regulations are critical indicators of a com-
pany’s value, regardless of the sector in which it oper-
ates. They also believe that communicating more
effectively with the ?nancial markets improves a com-
pany’s access to new capital, lowers its cost of capital
and boosts its share price. In short, good governance
and disclosure of information about sustainability can
have a tangible impact on a company’s ?nancial perfor-
mance. (Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, manage-
ment and value – How PwC can help, 2009)
The disclosure of quality information from ef?cient risk
management systems is thus critical, not only in terms of
its effects on the way stakeholders may perceive, organize
and justify their activities and their decisions relating to an
organization, but also, and ultimately, in terms of its effects
on the variation of the company’s market price. Therefore,
independently of their content and methodology, the score-
cards and certi?cation procedures developed by accounting
?rms toenable organizations toprovide evidence of their so-
cial responsibility agenda play an extremely powerful medi-
ating role by placing organizations under the disciplinary
authority of the market and its quest for information.
I suggested previously that the adoption of internal con-
trol and risk management systems was seen as a sign of
moral self-regulation on the part of organizations. Yet the
two panelists from the Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants and the extract from the document published
by PwC appear by contrast to promote risk management
systems to the detriment of morality – the former, quite
straightforwardly and in a similar way to Milton Friedman,
by rejecting any humanistic and altruistic sensitivity that
might justify the adoption of socially responsible practices,
and the latter by carefully distinguishing between moral
action and the action of the markets. But let us not be de-
ceived. The moral action that is rejected here is a particular
kind of moral action. In Latourian terms, we might say that
what is rejected is a human kind of morality. Serving as
ef?cient instruments of this rejection, internal control
and risk management systems operate on the basis of a dif-
ferent moral framework – i.e. market morality founded on
the imperatives of economic rationality, adaptable to a lo-
gic of dissemination and reception of information, and
?rmly based on the capacity of social actors for self-
determination and self-regulation.
Ultimately, the mediating role of the accounting indus-
try in incorporating the rationality of the market into cor-
porate social responsibility practices is structured around
three main foci. The ?rst implies the production of codes
of conduct and standards enabling organizations to adopt
a pragmatic morality to suit a particular context. The sec-
ond involves the systematic introduction of stakeholder
consultation procedures enabling the responsibilization
and moral self-regulation of stakeholders in general and
of corporations in particular. Finally, the third is based on
the adoption of risk management and internal control sys-
tems viewed as a means of promoting responsibilization
and which rede?ne social responsibility as a matter of
information to be collected and communicated to the
market.
At the beginning of my analysis, I highlighted how pro-
fessional associations and accounting ?rms conceptualize
an economicized representation of corporate social and
environmental responsibility. I then showed how the
accounting industry performs an ef?cient mediating role
in applying and deploying the rationality of the market
within the social responsibility practices of organizations.
In Latourian terms, this mediating role is fundamentally
political since it contributes to actualizing the ‘constitu-
tional’ power imbalance between the world of objects
(the market) and the social and political world inhabited
by human organizations.
As a symbol of signi?cant political power, this involve-
ment and imbalance are also, according to Latour (2004),
symptomatic of the neutralization of the democratic appa-
ratus by experts. The underlying political dimension of the
expertise of professional bodies and accounting ?rms
therefore raises two key questions: (1) How is the vitality
of the democratic environment affected by the dissemina-
tion of the moral rationality of the market in organiza-
tions?, and (2) How can we rebalance the distribution of
power between humans and non-humans, and what place
should be given to experts in this process? Or to put it in
terms more in line with the speci?c focus of this paper:
How can CSR be made to become a more human issue
and what place should be given to experts and the
accounting industry in this humanizing process?
Discussion
Democracy via the market
In practice, the alignment of the criteria of social and
environmental responsibility with the rationality of the
market implies a utilitarian and instrumental vision of
business morality. At a political level, this alignment is
made possible by a ?exible regulatory framework based
on the capacity of organizations and individuals for self-
regulation, enabling the responsibility of judgment and
moral action to be delegated away from the central power
of the state.
In some sense, the transfer of responsibility from the
state to stakeholders may appear to be a positive outcome
at a democratic level. Democratic activity is not merely a
matter of electoral representation, but is also a matter of
participation. As noted by Arendt (1979, p. 218), ‘‘a free cit-
izen is a citizen who participates actively in the handling of
human affairs’’. The application of the principle of stake-
holder consultation thus represents the fundamental back-
bone of a deliberative democracy in which the main issue
is the de?nition of and compliance with an ethics of delib-
eration (Yuthas, Rogers, & Dillard, 2002). However, among
its major pitfalls, it also implies a possible conversion of
this process of deliberation into a source of legitimization
and maintenance of the dominant order. As noted by
Archel et al. (2011, p. 341):
Social movements often articulate isolated heretic dis-
courses which are all too easily absorbed into the dom-
inant discourse, conferring on the latter the appearance
[and the legitimacy] of broad social endorsement.
162 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
The apparent process of democratization implied by the
transfer of responsibility from the state to stakeholders is
thus constantly haunted by the threat of unequal power
relations between stakeholders required to engage in dia-
logue and to reach a consensus. The conditions of possibility
of this transfer, organizedunder the aegis of the moral ratio-
nality of the market, also contain within themthe seeds of a
signi?cant weakening of the democratic environment.
This weakening is manifested ?rst of all in the rein-
forcement of an individualistic framework of action. Stake-
holder self-regulation goes hand in hand with the almost
universal recognition of the right of individuals and groups
to freely organize their personal or community sphere, to
de?ne the content of their opinions, and more generally
to determine their lifestyles in line with their own partic-
ular interests. In many ways, this recognition represents
a considerable privilege and an advance of civilization.
However, critics argue that the darker side of individualism
also involves a centering on the self, which tends both to
?atten and to narrow our lives, making them poorer in
meaning, less concerned with society and largely unaware
of wider issues (whether social, political, or historical) that
transcend the self (Taylor, 1992). In other words, individu-
alism is not conducive to accepting sacri?ce or renuncia-
tion in favor of a horizon of meaning above the egoistic
self of individuals and/or organizations (Selznick, 2002).
In this respect, stakeholder self-regulation ensures the con-
ditions of exercise of greater freedom, but also causes a
greater fragmentation of the interests of individuals and
organizations to the detriment of the political, social or
ecological interests promoted by the collectivity. Thus, by
positing the capacity of organizations for responsibiliza-
tion, i.e. self-determination, and by de?ning the service
of shareholders’ interests as the ultimate goal of all deci-
sions, the moral rationality of the market limits the adop-
tion of socially responsible practices aimed at reducing or
sacri?cing the appetite for pro?t in the name of a higher
(social, political or historical) ideal.
When the structure of social arrangements and modes
of action are no longer founded on a horizon of meaning
that is external to and above the ego of individuals and
organizations, everything can be reconceived and rede-
?ned more easily according to the search for categorical
advantages. In other words, once the entities composing
the world lose the meaning and place assigned to them
by the collective objectives of a social and political order,
they are more easily converted into means subjected to
private ends. Instrumental reason – i.e. the rationality we
use when assessing the most effective means of achieving
a given end – therefore determines the new dominant
standard, with the associated fear that the decisions which
should be subject to other criteria will only be made in
terms of ef?ciency or cost-bene?t ratio (Taylor, 1992). In
this view, the instrumental foundation of the transfer of
social and environmental responsibility from the state to
corporations represents an additional factor weakening
the democratic apparatus. Faced with a social and political
problem, the moral technologies of corporate responsibili-
zation involve technical solutions such as the development
of risk management systems allowing moral issues to be
converted into information processing and communication
to market participants. The result is to subordinate socio-
moral corporate sensibilities to the calculus of possible
outcomes and to the typically self-interested criteria of
reputational-risk management (Power, 2007). For instance,
by complying with the criteria of the scorecard developed
by Deloitte (Fig. 2), we might easily conclude that arms
dealers accounting for their environmental action to their
shareholders, engaging in discussion with the populations
they trade with, and seeking to take account of the social
and ecological impact of their activities in the warzones
they supply deserve to be awarded the same high level of
social responsibility performance as a company dedicated
to economic solidarity in Sub-Saharan Africa. While some
may ?nd this conclusion absurd, it is perfectly in keeping
with the instrumental rationality of the market, which
makes us seek for technological solutions despite the fact
that the issue is of an altogether different nature.
Ultimately, the use of instrumental reason, combined
with individualism, causes a narrowing of the space of
political freedom. Since they are only too happy to desert
the political arena in order to concentrate on the pursuit
of their own particular interests, individuals and organiza-
tions adapt to the soft despotism of a regulatory apparatus
fragmented into a multitude of authorities prescribing
principles to be followed (i.e. guidelines) rather than rules
to be complied with, and counting on social actors’ poten-
tial for self-determination. The only defense against this,
Tocqueville argued, was an energetic political culture in
which citizen participation is greatly valued. In other
words, the force that might contain the galloping hege-
mony of instrumental reason is democratic initiative. In
this sense, modern democratic societies, with their pro-
tests and free initiatives, are still far from the soft despo-
tism portrayed by Tocqueville. Yet this apparent
democratic vitality conceals something that may pose a
far more serious threat than the fear of despotic control,
something that Charles Taylor designates as fragmentation
– implying people and organizations increasingly less
capable of forming a common purpose and of pursuing it
successfully. Fragmentation occurs when people ‘come to
see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise
put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in com-
mon projects and allegiances’ (Taylor, 1992, p. 112).
According to this view, what tends to emerge is a fear that
most social protests and challenges to authority come
more from stakeholders – ethnic minorities, followers of
certain religions or ideologies, the promoters of certain
speci?c interests – than from society as a whole. As a result
of such fragmentation, people and organizations struggle
to identify with their political society as a community. This
lack of identi?cation may re?ect an atomistic way of think-
ing in which organizations come to see society in purely
instrumental terms. Conversely, it may also foster atomism
since the absence of effective common action only serves
to throw organizations back on themselves.
Humanizing expertise
The construction of the market as an ‘obligatory passage
point’ of socially responsible action is the result of a
signi?cant effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 163
emergence of a social and moral conscience in the business
world in the name not of altruistic feelings or political con-
victions, but of an economic and objecti?ed logic of pro?t-
ability, to which it would be unreasonable and
counterproductive for businesses not to adhere.
For Latour, the process of rationalization is the liberal
inheritor of a political modernity founded on a distinction
between facts, i.e. the world of non-humans and science,
and values, i.e. the world of politics and humans (Latour,
2004). This distinction is questionable since the anthropol-
ogy of laboratories has shown that it is not reason that
guarantees the triumph of a scienti?c truth. Rather, it is be-
cause and in spite of the fact that one is socially or politi-
cally victorious that one is imputed with an excess of
reason over one’s rivals (Latour, 1987). However, it is also
harmful at a democratic level since it implies placing con-
siderable power in the hands of experts entrusted with the
task of making the world of objects speak in order to deter-
mine the arrangement of economic, social or political rela-
tions accordingly. When this arrangement is organized on
the basis of the individualizing and instrumental rational-
ity of the market, democratic activity is also negatively
affected.
If one agrees with Latour, any reformof the way systems
of expertiseoperate implies rebalancingthe relationshipbe-
tween the world of humans and the world of non-humans
by resisting the excessive rationalization of the political
worldand explicitly politicizing the use of reasonin the pro-
duction and manipulation of non-human objects. In other
words, unless we adhere to an epistemologically ?ctitious
representation of the distinction between facts and values,
the need for political representation must apply equally to
humans and objects: ‘I only ask for a tiny concession: that
the question of democracy [and political representation]
be extended to non-humans’ (Latour, 2004, p. 294).
It is from this perspective that we need to view Latour’s
suggestion of bringing together the representatives of hu-
mans and non-humans within the same assembly or col-
lective and on an equal footing. Latour’s proposed
assembly has two ‘houses’. The ?rst, aimed at answering
the question ‘How many of us are there?’, is entrusted with
the task of listing the entire range of human or non-human
external realities peopling the world and that are con-
stantly emerging, transforming or disappearing as a result
of scienti?c and technical advances. The demand for exter-
nal reality, enabling non-humans to be made visible, im-
plies drawing up a long list of relevant representatives
authorized to speak on behalf of humans or non-humans.
The task of the second house, aimed at answering the ques-
tion ‘How can we live together?’, is to organize and develop
a hierarchy by taking account of the evolution of non-
humans and their different attachments or the type of rela-
tionships between each of the realities identi?ed in the
?rst house. Within the two houses, Latour de?nes the right
of experts to sit in the assembly based not only on their
technical or scienti?c competence in relation to the objects
of experience but also on their capacity to consider the hu-
mans attached to these objects.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to do justice to the
complexity of Latour’s political project – a project which
seems at any rate unlikely to result in an institutional
reform in the short or medium term. In addressing con-
temporary issues, the main contribution of Latour’s work
is not to be sought in the implementation of a radically
new and relatively complex institutional system. Its chief
contribution is its critique of the arbitrary rationalization
of political action and its effects on democratic systems.
This critique represents a signi?cant change of direction
in the ?eld of corporate social responsibility – a ?eld that
remains heavily marked by the Habermasian ideal of a hy-
per-rational dialogue among stakeholders (Archel et al.,
2011; Scherer and Palazzo, 2007) and which has the gen-
eral effect of relocating the management of this communi-
cation in the hands of all-powerful experts (in particular
the accounting industry) and of disqualifying or discredit-
ing anything that escapes this logic of rationalization, i.e.
choices or claims based on subjective human values rooted
in a moral, cultural, historical or even spiritual sense.
Politicizing the production and implementation of a so-
cially responsible business framework therefore implies
emphasizing two directions. First, to restore the political
dimension of the corporate social responsibility agenda,
it is important to ensure that it can be discussed within
an explicitly political arena by explicitly politicized stake-
holders. Until the Latourian project of agreeing on the def-
inition and assignment of a political status to experts (and
to accountants in particular) is realized, it will be up to the
elected members of national parliaments to regain control
of the responsibilization of the business world. Second, it is
impossible to conceive a political discussion without the
object of the discussion also being political. This presup-
poses (particularly for the accounting industry) a radical
revision of the moral technologies offered to ?rms by
addressing social responsibility issues more or at least as
much in terms of human values as in terms of instrumental
ef?ciency and information quality.
There are, of course, good reasons to view these sugges-
tions with pessimism. Faced with the globalized power of
expert ?rms, states are not currently in the healthiest con-
dition (Suddaby et al., 2007), while the instrumental ratio-
nality of the market has perhaps never been so in?uential
(Williams, 2010). However, the philosopher Charles Taylor
(1992) provides some cause for hope. Taylor reminds us
that at the beginning of the seventeenth century (at the
dawn of modernity), the scienti?c community was intent
on criticizing traditional Aristotelian science for failing to
contribute anything to the improvement of the human
condition. An alternative form of science was posited in
which the criterion of truth would be instrumental ef?-
ciency: ‘you have discovered something when you can
intervene to change things’. Therefore, the impulse toward
instrumental reason was not only epistemological, but also
moral – in the name of a principle of benevolent
responsibility toward others and society. Instrumental
reason implies its own moral foundations (Malsch &
Guénin-Paracini, 2012) and is not merely driven by an
excessive libido dominandi. However, captured by the spirit
of the market, it betrays its initial moral constitution by
appearing increasingly to serve the private ends of a great-
er control over, and a greater economicization of, nature
and the environment. Despite this historical tendency,
‘the return to richer moral principles that constitute its
164 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
foundation may show that there is no fatalism in this’ (Tay-
lor, 1992, p. 131).
Conclusion
Having reached the end of this paper, I am now in a po-
sition to provide some answers to the question ‘set aside’
by Power in his 1997 essay:
I have attempted to set aside questions of whether the
involvement of accountants [in social and environmen-
tal audit] is a good thing.
First, in considering the history of the accounting pro-
fession and its development, it is hardly surprising to ?nd
that professional associations and large ?rms have also be-
come involved in the effort to produce new information
disclosure standards and new assurance and certi?cation
services (Malsch & Gendron, 2013). Even if they are moti-
vated by commercial considerations, there is nothing ille-
gitimate about ?nancial audit experts wanting to transfer
part of their expertise into the sphere of social or environ-
mental auditing. In this sense, the interest and involve-
ment of the accounting industry in the construction of a
socially responsible ?eld of business is not problematic
or reprehensible as such. What is politically questionable
are the effects of the deployment of this expertise.
From this perspective, I showed that the accounting
industry plays an important role as a political mediator
by regulating the socially responsible practices of organi-
zations based on a rational and instrumental market logic
and by sidelining the moral dimension of human values
such as altruism and benevolence as a justi?cation for so-
cially responsible action. As a symbol of genuine political
power, the mediating role of the accounting industry is
conducive to the deployment of an individualistic and
instrumental moral rationality, reinforcing the fragmenta-
tion of the social body into a multitude of stakeholders and
undermining the prospect of a collective agreement on the
de?nition and protection of a common good such as the
preservation of natural resources or the maintenance of so-
cial protection for the most vulnerable groups in society.
At an institutional level, the main victim of this political
process of depoliticization and of the logic of regulation
and discipline is, without doubt, the state (Roberts,
2010). As noted by Sahlin-Andersson (2006, p. 567), ‘‘the
demand for socially responsible operations and the moni-
toring of these operations has increasingly been channeled
through organizations other than states, and the emphasis
favors a high proportion of self-regulation’’. As a result, we
have seen the emergence of corporate ‘‘soft law’’, encom-
passing voluntary codes of conduct and elaborate ranking
schemes and reporting initiatives (Knill & Lehmkuhl,
2002; Moran, 2002; Mörth, 2004). Soft law – which in-
volves little restriction and signi?cant self-regulation –
also prevails in international relations
11
, shaping the
architecture of major international treaties (Abbott & Snidal,
2000; Kirton & Trebilcock, 2004), whether it be a matter of
resolving armed con?icts, regulating global ?nance or pro-
ducing international accounting standards (Arnold, 2012).
From this point of view, the value of this paper extends
beyond the simple question of the involvement of the
accounting industry in the ?eld of social responsibility. All
the regulatory literature on soft law and the search for
foundations of normative action outside the state can
(potentially) be included in the stakeholder and political cri-
tique of my essay.
One of the essential conditions of the democratization
of expertise is the desacralization of the word of experts
in favor of an explicit reassertion of the intrinsically polit-
ical and human nature of the activity of knowledge pro-
duction. However, though necessary, this movement is
double-edged. The ideal of rationality is also an ideal of
freedom and autonomous thought in relation to cultural,
social or economic contingencies. It is easy to see the ben-
e?t that certain ‘obscurantists’ (groups or ideologies)
might derive from a signi?cant weakening of Reason as
an analytical and decision-making tool (Taylor, 1992).
The process of deconstructing the power of experts and
of ‘re-enchanting’ the social world requires much discern-
ment and presents many dangers.
Based on the epistemological model of the natural sci-
ences, critical sociology tends to study what society makes
of man (Bourdieu, 2004). By contrast, the originality of
pragmatic sociology – to which the work of Latour (Béna-
touïl, 1999) has belonged from the outset – involves refo-
cusing sociology on what man does and on what man
makes of himself and others, i.e. the actions undertaken
and performed by man and the discourses used and sup-
ported by man (Latour & Woolgar, 1979). In his political
analysis, Latour shows how political action is forced to ex-
press itself in the legitimate language of modernity (specif-
ically the language of market rationality), which tends to
marginalize those whose interests are expressed more in
terms of subjective human values and feelings. In calling
for a wider space of political representation, Latour’s impli-
cit aim is to help those whose social and political impo-
tence excludes them from of?cial debates. In this sense,
there is a clear critical dimension to Latour’s political pro-
ject – a project aimed at rooting out a structure of political
domination founded on the epistemological and liberal
heritage of modernity. The use of Latourian sociology is
not monolithic, and potential meeting-points with critical
sociology merit further development.
Ironically, far from merely colonizing the political
world, the scienti?c world has also become a victim of its
own veneration of the world of objects and of a style of ra-
tionalist research aimed exclusively at the production of
tangible and veri?able facts, discrediting the realm of
imagination with some degree of contempt (Clegg, 2006).
As noted by Morgan (1980, p. 610), ‘[m]etaphor is often re-
garded as no more than a literary and descriptive device for
embellishment, but more fundamentally is a creative form
which produces its effects through a crossing of images’.
Alvesson and Sandberg (2011, p. 257) picked up this line
of thought, arguing that it is possible to carve out assump-
tions by looking at the metaphors behind the metaphors
11
In the ?eld of international relations, soft law can be described as ‘‘a
self-contained regime of obligations that emerges out of the occasional
preference of states to reach nonbinding agreements and to model their
relations in ways that exclude the application of treaty or customary law’’
(Shamir, 2004, p. 645).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 165
used. ‘For example, behind the metaphor that conceptual-
izes organization as a political arena, one could imagine
different views of this arena, one being a parliamentary
democracy (with rules of the game) and another being
more like a jungle, where the political battles are less dem-
ocratic and rule bound’. Therefore, the metaphor of the
‘modern constitution’ used by Latour to describe the sepa-
ration of powers between the world of humans and the
world of non-humans should not be interpreted as the sign
of a poetic or romantic vision of reality. On the contrary, by
liberating itself from the constraints imposed on the col-
lective imagination by liberal modernity, it can act as a
potentially fertile source of counter-narratives, ‘as part of
a multiple and plural expression of sustainability in organ-
isations’ (Gray, 2010, p. 59).
Though a formidable enterprise that must go beyond
utopian naivety and the pragmatic status quo (Rorty,
1989), the normative position of this essay inevitably
raises the following question: What might a world in
which accounting expertise is more politicized look like?
In other words, the liberation of the imagination would
not be complete if I remained con?ned to the domain of
critique without seeking to outline some avenues for insti-
tutional reform (Clegg, 2006). While I recognize that the
three following propositions will not be realized in the
immediate (or near) future, I would argue, nevertheless,
that they are suf?ciently realistic and suf?ciently provoca-
tive to be worthy of political debate. The ?rst proposition
would involve requiring large accounting ?rms to be
accountable before a parliamentary committee on an an-
nual basis, during public hearings, for their involvement
(whether ?nancial, intellectual or professional) in the pro-
duction of ‘soft law’, the new regulatory framework of cor-
porate social responsibility actions. In addition to
accountability, a second avenue for reform would involve
requiring the various actors of the accounting industry to
produce a motion stating their vision of a socially respon-
sible business world by clearly outlining their conception
of the common good and of the means of achieving it.
These motions would be debated in parliament and would
be the object of a vote of con?dence, resulting in delega-
tions of power being granted to (or withheld from) profes-
sional orders or ?rms to act in the area of social and
environmental responsibility. Lastly, the politicization of
accounting expertise cannot be envisaged without consid-
ering how to transform the habitus of those exercising
such power (Malsch & Gendron, 2013). This process might
involve introducing political subjects in professional exam-
inations. The aim would be to promote awareness of the
political nature of accounting among future accountants.
Thus, instead of only testing technical knowledge, exams
would also include questions aimed at assessing the ability
of candidates to conduct social and political analyses of the
production and content of accounting standards.
Ultimately, this essay also suggests the need for further
research on three very contemporary political phenomena.
The ?rst phenomenon is the extraordinary resilience of
capitalism, which, despite the successive crises it has suf-
fered and the many challenges it faces, is only becoming
stronger and more legitimized. The resilience of capitalism
is indicative of its capacity to absorb and reformulate the
criticisms leveled against it in positive terms (Boltanski &
Chiapello, 2006). From this point of view, the mediating
role of the accounting industry in economicizing social
responsibility issues provides a striking illustration of the
absorption of critique and its reformulation.
The second phenomenon relates to the in?uence of the
instrumental rationality of the market, which represents a
challenge to the political authority of states, but may also
undermine some of their democratic foundations. At ?rst
sight, this might seem at odds with ‘‘the widely accepted
view that the era of liberalization was also one of democ-
ratization’’ (Roberts, 2010, p. 6). However, it is particularly
disturbing to see how easily the structures of the market
economy appear to adapt to the political structures of cer-
tain authoritarian regimes (Roy, 1994; Xu & Xu, 2008).
Fukuyama (1992, pp. 60–61) saw Robert Scalapino’s model
of ‘‘soft authoritarianism’’ (Scalapino, 1986) and its capac-
ity to combine a market-oriented economic system with ‘‘a
kind of paternalistic authoritarianism’’ as an increasingly
popular ‘‘potential competitor to Western liberal democ-
racy’’. In line with my argument, the apparent compatibil-
ity of marketization and non-democratic governance raises
the provocative question of whether trade or the large
accounting ?rms are a vehicle for democratic reform or
its opposite.
The third phenomenon is the emergence of a general
opposition to feelings such as benevolence and moral
sense in the study and management of economic behaviors
(Sen, 1987). In this sense, the only criterion to be followed
is the criterion of utility. At the beginning of his famous es-
say on the relations between morality and economics, the
Nobel prize-winning economist Sen (1987, p. 6) expressed
concern over this tendency:
It is hard to believe that real people could be completely
unaffected by the reach of the [moral] self-examination
induced by the Socratic question ‘how should one live?’
[. . .] It is possible that the people the economy studies
are truly unmoved by this penetrating question and
exclusively follow the rudimentary rigid line of reason-
ing that the modern economy attributes to them.
For accounting research, the challenge of utilitarianism
is therefore twofold. We need to resist the pressure to con-
duct exclusively useful research (i.e. research that is exclu-
sively ef?cient and economically pro?table) (Malsch &
Guénin-Paracini, 2012), but we also need to document
the effects of instrumental reason in contemporary society
and the role of the accounting industry and accountability
systems in its maintenance and diffusion.
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168 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
doc_433564224.pdf
The accounting industry plays an important role in the production and implementation of
accountability mechanisms surrounding corporate social responsibility practices. Operating
as both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron, Cooper, & Townley,
2007), the expert activities of accountants are never purely technical. This paper focuses
on the mediating role of accounting firms and professional bodies in aligning the socially
responsible practices of organizations with the rational morality of the market. I show that
the construction of the market as a moral marker of socially responsible action is the result
of a major effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the emergence of a social and moral
conscience in business, not in the name of subjective feelings or human values, but in the
name of an economic and depoliticized logic of profitability. Drawing on the political analysis
of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy] and his
metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’
Politicizing the expertise of the accounting industry
in the realm of corporate social responsibility
q
Bertrand Malsch
HEC Montréal, 3000, chemin de la Côte Ste-Catherine, Bureau 5.358, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3T 2A7
a b s t r a c t
The accounting industry plays an important role in the production and implementation of
accountability mechanisms surrounding corporate social responsibility practices. Operat-
ing as both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron, Cooper, & Townley,
2007), the expert activities of accountants are never purely technical. This paper focuses
on the mediating role of accounting ?rms and professional bodies in aligning the socially
responsible practices of organizations with the rational morality of the market. I show that
the construction of the market as a moral marker of socially responsible action is the result
of a major effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the emergence of a social and moral
conscience in business, not in the name of subjective feelings or human values, but in the
name of an economic and depoliticized logic of pro?tability. Drawing on the political anal-
ysis of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy] and his
metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’, I view the economicization of corporate social
responsibility as symptomatic of the power imbalance between the world of humans
and the world of objects governing the political structure of contemporary society and
weakening democratic activity.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
‘Socially responsible’ practices and attitudes have be-
come crucial markers of identity in a growing number of
organizations, not only among the business community,
but also in the eyes of public opinion and policy-makers
alarmed by the increasing number of social and environ-
mental scandals (Power, 2007).
As a result, many initiatives aimed at bringing together
leading political and economic actors have emerged in re-
cent years in a bid to standardize and certify socially
responsible practices (Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). For
example, the United Nations World Pact, which includes
thousands of ?rms and private organizations, commits its
signatory companies to align their operations and business
strategies with ten universally accepted principles relating
to human rights, labor laws, the environment and the ?ght
against corruption. In a similar, albeit more normative,
vein, the AA1000 standards de?ned by the British Institute
for Social and Ethical AccountAbility aims to provide a
framework of reference enabling companies to de?ne their
objectives in the realm of social and ethical performance
and to initiate a dialogue with stakeholders.
The accounting industry plays an important role in the
production and implementation of these (more or less)
restrictive regulatory mechanisms (Hopwood, 2009). By
absorbing social and environmental auditing within its
?eld of expertise, the accounting industry has established
itself as a key player in this area (O’Dwyer, 2011; Power,
1997). Out of a total sample of 2113 companies showing
evidence of social and environmental performance results,
Simnett, Vanstraelen, and Wai Fong (2009) found that 42%
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2012.09.003
q
I am grateful for the insightful comments provided by David Cooper,
Sylvain Durocher, Yves Gendron, Henri Guénin-Paracini and Mike Power.
I am also grateful for the comments made by the participants at the IPA
2009 Emerging Scholars Colloquium.
E-mail address: [email protected]
Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
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of those which resorted to independent certi?cations em-
ployed the services of accounting ?rms. Though less visi-
ble, the in?uence of auditors in international social and
environmental certi?cation bodies should also not be
underestimated. For example, under the patronage of the
Prince of Wales, the Accounting Bodies Network (ABN)
operates as a group of powerful actors (composed of pro-
fessional associations, big four ?rms and private sector
enterprises) drawn from across the globe and brought to-
gether ‘to use their collective spheres of in?uence to pro-
mote A4S (The Accounting for Sustainability Project) and
the use of connected reporting to their members and
communities’.
However, it would be an illusion to think that the
engagement of the industry is purely technical. As noted
by Gendron et al. (2007, p. 127), the mobilization of exper-
tise invariably involves particular ideological and inter-
ested views:
Expertise is always interested, with intended effects. It
is produced to support the aims of some members of
society, and not of others.
Drawing on the work of Latour (2004) [Politics of Nature:
How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy], this paper exam-
ines the mediating political role of the accounting industry
in aligning the socially responsible practices of organiza-
tions with the rational morality of the market. The paper
begins by highlighting the market-based system of repre-
sentation used by accounting ?rms and professional bodies
to instrumentalize and economicize corporate social
responsibility as an apolitical object of risk. Secondly, the
paper examines the ‘mediating’ role (Miller & O’Leary,
2007) of the accounting industry in connecting this system
of representation with the management systems of organi-
zations. Finally, the paper discusses the effects of this
mediation on democratic activity.
By adopting a political perspective, the paper paves the
way for a critical examination of the legitimacy of the
operations performed by the accounting industry in the
area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – an examina-
tion voluntarily ‘set aside’ by Power in his 1997 paper (p.
142), entitled ‘Expertise and the construction of relevance:
accountants and environmental audit’:
I have attempted to set aside questions of whether the
involvement of accountants [in social and environmen-
tal audit] is a good thing, despite a few critical reference
points, in order to analyse the discursive strategies by
which accounting know-how is promoted.
Since accountants, and in particular auditors, operate as
both politicians and implementers of knowledge (Gendron
et al., 2007), their legitimacy and the underlying political
nature of their expertise represent a central issue that
needs to be examined and questioned. Research in this
area is particularly important at a time when the demo-
cratic potential of elected governments to de?ne the regu-
latory framework of society is increasingly challenged by
powerful international accounting ?rms with a power
and in?uence sometimes greater than states (Sikka, 2008;
Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood, 2007). In other words,
the main contribution of this paper is not to show how
the accounting industry has imposed its expertise in the
realm of CSR (Power, 1997), but to analyze the political ef-
fects of this professional expansion. The political agency of
global and globalizing experts should not go unchecked by
society: the stakes involved are too high to promote
unconstrained freedom on the grounds of faith in profes-
sionalism or the effectiveness of the invisible hand.
At a theoretical level, this study combines traditional
dimensions of discourse analysis (Hall, 1997) with more re-
cent aspects of the ‘engaged program’ (Sismondo, 2007) in
the ?eld of science and technology studies, where politics is
construed as a full-?edged object of critical investigation
and reform rather than a simple analytical lens used to ac-
count for the production of experts’ knowledge. Without
any programmatic statements, the center of gravity of the
?eld has gradually shifted in recent years, turning the
democratization of systems of expertise into an object of re-
search (not to say the object of research)
1
(Callon,
Lascoumes, &Barthe, 2001; Collins and Evans, 2002; Jasanoff,
2005; Latour, 2004). From Jasanoff’s (2005) concept of ‘civic
epistemologies’ to Collins and Evans’s (2002) normative the-
ory of expertise, this shift has involved a range of different
perspectives. In this paper, I approach the topic fromthe per-
spective of Latour’s political analysis and his metaphorical
concept of the ‘modern constitution’ (Latour, 2004). I show
how the economicization process of CSR is symptomatic of
the power imbalance between the world of humans and
the world of objects structuring contemporary societies.
As noted by Hopwood (2009, p. 439), ‘being at such an
early stage of our understanding [of the role of accounting
in the environmental and sustainability spheres], both the
opportunities and need for research are very real’. This pa-
per provides a basis for extending beyond apolitical under-
standings of instruments and models designed by the
accounting industry to help companies measure and con-
trol their social performance and for highlighting the polit-
ical signi?cance of environmental and sustainability issues
in the corporate sphere. I analyze the involvement of
accounting ?rms in the realm of business sustainability
not from a technical point of view (i.e. in relation to the
ef?ciency of their structures) but from a political perspec-
tive, in relation to the constant effort of auditors to respond
to political ‘pressures for the rationalization [and] formal-
ization of the audit process’ (Power, 2003, p. 392). Despite
a number of ‘counter-mainstream’ studies in the literature,
the political dimension of auditing remains under-
theorized and under-researched (Humphrey, 2008; Power,
2003). Lastly, this paper is designed as a response to
continuing calls for researchers to extend examinations
of the complex backstage of new arenas of expertise in
the ?eld of accountancy and to understand their underly-
ing dynamics (Gendron & Spira, 2010; O’Dwyer, 2011).
Constructivism and the politics of expertise
Although the political elites continue to exercise the
formal power associated with their of?cial mandates,
1
An ambiguous shift for an originally constructivist line of thought
increasingly marked by the prescriptions of normative policies.
150 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
many of their decisions are now taken on the basis of tech-
nical analyses provided by experts – scientists, consultants,
entrepreneurs, economic decision-makers, specialized
journalists, think tanks, etc. – with whom they form coali-
tions that are as powerful as they are unstable (Beck, 2001;
Fisher, 1990; Jasanoff, 1990). The close relationship be-
tween the political sphere and experts is particularly
apparent in the area of environmental protection, where
the current in?uence of experts in major international
negotiations tends to extend beyond the political will of
states and their representatives (Bäckstrand, 2003).
In this sense, expertise can be viewed as a political
problem – i.e. a breach of the conditions of equality and
transparency presupposed by democratic accountability.
Some activities appear to be out of the reach of democratic
control since the ‘public’, as a public, cannot understand or
see the issues. As noted by Turner (2001, p. 124), ‘we are
faced with the dilemma of capitulation to ‘rule by experts’
or democratic rule which is ‘populist’ – that is to say, that
valorizes the wisdom of the people even when ‘‘the peo-
ple’’ are ignorant’.
In political philosophy, a range of approaches have been
adopted to examine this dilemma. Of particular impor-
tance is Habermas’s critique of the culture of expertise
and his attempt to develop a theory of communicative ac-
tion and discourse ethics as a means of containing the col-
onizing tendencies of expertise (Power & Laughlin, 1996).
However, the following paragraphs focus more speci?cally
on how the social study of science, and in particular the
work of Latour (2004), has emphasized the politically con-
structed dimensions of systems of expertise and laboratory
activities (Latour, 1987, 2001), thus resulting in a radical
expansion of its initial object of study – from analyzing
expertise politically to analyzing the politics of expertise
(Sismondo, 2007).
Civic epistemologies
The ?eld began to change under the impulse of Jasanoff
(1990, 2005), who showed that expertise is not merely
something in the heads and hands of skilled persons, ‘but
rather that it is something acquired, and deployed, within
particular historical, political, and cultural contexts’ (Jasa-
noff, 2003, p. 393). Based on a comparative study of bio-
technology in the United States, Britain and Germany,
Jasanoff (2005) highlighted national cultural differences
in the political organization of research. The national gov-
ernments of these countries have developed policies and
politics to incubate biotechnological research and industry.
They have also submitted biotechnological research and
the biotechnological industry to democratic control. Yet
the outcomes have been strikingly different in different
countries: the industries are different, their relations with
academia are different, and the regulations dealing with
them and their risks are different.
These differences are the result of what Jasanoff calls
‘national civic epistemologies’, which shape the democratic
practice of science and technology (Jasanoff, 2005, p. 255).
What operates as credible expertise in a given society is a
re?ection of the criteria by which members of that society
evaluate the validity of public knowledge. Accordingly,
who counts as an expert and what counts as expertise in
Germany may not necessarily be who, or what, would
count for the same purpose in the USA. Therefore, a histor-
ically grounded and locally situated understanding of
expertise demands historically grounded and locally situ-
ated normative approaches. No single template can im-
prove democratic accountability in different risk settings
and cultural contexts.
A ‘modern constitution’
Also from a constructivist perspective, but entirely clear
of the cultural contingencies noted by Jasanoff (2005) and
Latour (2004) set out to identify and reform the logic gov-
erning a certain conception of scienti?c activity shaping
modern systems of political decision-making. Latour be-
gins his theoretical journey with a political reading of the
Allegory of the Cave at the heart of one of Plato’s most
important dialogues, The Republic. In Plato’s famous alle-
gory, men are chained up and held with their backs turned
to the entrance of the cave, and are only able to see shad-
ows and the projected shadows of objects far behind them.
The cave is a symbol of the sensible world in which men
live in the belief that they have access to the truth through
their senses. Yet their life is a mere illusion. According to
Plato, true knowledge of reality is to be found outside the
cave, in the world of objects. The world of objects is acces-
sible to philosophers and scientists capable of reaching be-
yond their ‘human’ limitations and of contemplating the
truth of objects. However, when the latter strive to share
their knowledge and experience with their contemporar-
ies, they are likely to encounter incomprehension com-
bined with hostility, since the people are protective of
the comfort provided by their subjective illusions.
For Latour, the allegory of the cave is not merely a sym-
bolic description of the dif?culty of knowing reality and
the no less dif?cult transmission of this knowledge. It also
implies a speci?c conception of the relations between the
world of humans and the world of objects. With the advent
of modernity,
2
this conception emerged as a dominant
mode of thought in the West (Latour, 2004). At a political le-
vel, it is manifested in what Latour metaphorically terms the
‘modern constitution’.
The constitutional edi?ce posited by Latour is founded
on the hypothesis that it is not only possible but desirable
to draw a clear distinction between the world of subjective
values and the realm of objective facts. Based on this fun-
damental law, the modern constitution distinguishes be-
tween two types of subjects represented in two different
assemblies. The ?rst assembly, the social and political
world, contains human beings linked and limited by the
chains of their subjective values and feelings. The second
assembly, the world of knowledge and laboratories, is
2
‘Modernity has long been de?ned by a well-directed arrow of time that
tore us away from our archaic past to lead us toward an increasingly
radiant future. This future was always de?ned by an increasing separation
between feelings and values on the one hand and the three divinities of
Ef?ciency, Truth and Pro?tability on the other. The sense of progress was
therefore highly dependent on the certainty that, at a later stage, we would
be ?nally capable of clearly distinguishing between facts and values, even
if, in our distant past, we confused the two’ (Latour, 1996).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 151
composed of all non-human objects, which, since they are
not subject to the limits of human representations, are
characterized by ef?ciency and truth. ‘Non-human’ objects
include material artifacts with objectively identi?able
physical properties, but also immaterial artifacts con-
structed and delimited by the production of objecti?ed
knowledge. In this sense, the ‘state’ or the ‘market’ belong
to the world of objects in the same way as a chemical
molecule.
Because they have no voice (in the sense of being de-
void of speech, i.e. language), objects cannot express or
convey the truth they describe or the ef?ciency they prom-
ise. In other words, the authority and objecti?ed ef?ciency
of the state, the market or a molecule cannot be deployed
by themselves. The result is a paradoxical power relation
between the voice of humans (devoid of truth) and the
truth of non-humans (without a voice). The order implied
by the modern constitution is therefore ineffective unless
it can invert this power relation by giving a voice to non-
humans while simultaneously withdrawing it from
humans.
In contemporary society, experts are those who have
the ability to invert this power relation. Armed with appa-
ratuses designed for the production and validation of
knowledge (Gendron et al., 2007), experts act as the
spokespeople of non-human objects. Chemists speak on
behalf of molecules, economists speak on behalf of the
market, and technocrats speak on behalf of the state. In
the name of objects and their properties, experts become
involved in the political world, organizing the relations be-
tween social actors and systems of regulation based on an
extreme rationalization. Chemists organize pharmaceutical
regulations, economists organize ?nancial regulations, and
technocrats organize administrative regulations. In other
words, under the regime of the modern constitution, polit-
ical authority is recognized provided it removes any trace
of the human within it (i.e. its attachments to subjective
values rooted in cultural, moral, social, historical or spiri-
tual sensibility) and establishes in its stead (through the
voice of experts and their mastery of objects) a disembod-
ied program of objective rationality and ef?ciency.
For Latour, the rationalization of the political space is
responsible for the neutralization of the democratic appa-
ratus. Since political activity and scienti?c activity are inti-
mately connected (Latour, 2001), it would be an illusion to
distinguish or isolate the subjectivity of human values and
political activity from the objective rationality of objects
and scienti?c activity. By forcing political action to express
itself in the legitimate language of modernity, whether it
be the rationality and ef?ciency of the state or of the mar-
ket (Latour, 2004), the modern constitution also discredits
and marginalizes those who express their claims or inter-
ests in terms of subjective values or feelings, i.e. in terms
deemed to be ‘too human’. As observed by Roberts (2010,
p. 5), the tactical argument of rationalization claims ‘‘that
it is important to impose constraints on elected of?cials
and voters to ensure that they cannot make ill-advised
decisions [. . .] Broadly, the task is sometimes called ‘depo-
liticization’, because it involves removing certain subjects
from the realm of everyday politics’’. In this sense, Latour’s
political analysis has a strong critical potential, seeking
both to uncover and to root out a structure of domination
founded on a hyper-rationalization of the political world
by the scienti?c world. Not unlike Foucault or Habermas,
both marked by a clear shift in their thought (Flyvbjerg,
2001), the work of Latour is thus not one-dimensional,
and its developments in political studies are partly consis-
tent with a critical and reformist sociology.
Bringing expertise into democracy
Rather than distinguishing between the world of ob-
jects and the world of humans, Latour suggests abolishing
the conceptual distinctions between science and politics
and replacing them with a single collective that would
deliberate and decide on its membership (Latour, 2004).
To abolish the arbitrary hold of reason over the political
world, Latour’s suggestion is to politicize the production
of knowledge by extending the demand for democratic
representation to both humans and non-humans. The rep-
resentation of a molecule by a chemist, of the market by
economists or of the state by top political of?cials should
comply with the same logic governing the political repre-
sentation of citizens by political representatives. Instead
of isolating a problem of political representation and a
problem of scienti?c representation, Latour argues that
there is only one problem of representation requiring the
assignment of an explicit political status to experts, but
also the coexistence of both humans and non-humans
within the same assembly of representatives.
Latour’s position on the democratization of systems of
expertise differs markedly from the position adopted by
Habermas. First, Habermas’s aim is to differentiate science
from ethics with a view to granting experts a greater de-
gree of autonomy in the resolution of problems that are
not political in nature (Callon, Lascoumes, & Barthe,
2003). In other words, there is an assumption that depolit-
icization is to some extent feasible – that is, that some is-
sues or organizations can be made nonpolitical. By
contrast, according to Latour, the separation of scienti?c
activity and political ethics is based on an epistemological
?ction responsible for the neutralization of democratic
vitality.
3
Second, the Habermasian ethics of discussion ap-
pears to be designed as far as possible to re?ect an ideal
speech situation. Though unattainable, the ideal of regula-
tion posited by Habermas must serve as a guide to the
democratization of civil society colonized by experts (Power,
2007). Latour refuses the idealist position, basing his enter-
prise of decolonization on a principle of reality stating that it
is impossible to distinguish between facts and values and
that as such there is no reason to grant experts any particu-
lar form of authority. Third, subjected to the demands of
communicative rationality, the Habermasian actor must be
capable of being detached from his/her subjective beliefs
and commitments. On the contrary, Latour refuses to with-
3
As noted by Roberts (2010, p. 141), from a philosophical point of view,
it is easier to make a case for the proposition that depoliticization is simply
unfeasible: ‘‘What evidence is there that it is actually possible to place
certain subjects about politics? What examples can be given of subjects
that really have been depoliticized?’’
152 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
draw the exercise of rationality from the human subjectivity
of social actors.
It is important to recognize that the metaphor of the
‘modern constitution’ used by Latour to describe political
modernity and to provide avenues for reform has a number
of limitations. First, it distorts and partly caricatures the
Platonic myth by overlooking ‘the Socratic aspect of the
Platonic tradition, that is to say, the emergence of truth
out of dialogues between citizens in the agora’ (Tucker,
2007). Latour also tends to view technocracy as a key ele-
ment in the Western political tradition. Yet technocracy
may be a cultural exception more than the rule (Jasanoff,
2005). Finally, while they stimulate re?ection, Latour’s pro-
posals overlook the ambiguity of a program calling for the
critical deconstruction of the political nature of systems of
expertise while recommending their reconstruction based
on intensely normative prescriptions (Sismondo, 2007).
In other words, the metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’
accounts only partially for the reality it claims to describe.
Yet its imperfection is precisely what makes the
strength of Latour’s metaphor. As noted by Morgan
(1980, p. 611), the creative potential of metaphor depends
on there being a degree of difference between the subjects
involved in the metaphorical process:
Metaphor is based upon but partial truth; it requires of
its user a somewhat one-sided abstraction in which cer-
tain features are emphasized and others suppressed in a
selective comparison. If the two subjects brought
together are perceived to be completely unalike [. . .]
or are seen as almost identical [. . .] the metaphorical
process produces either nonsensical or weak imagery.
The most powerful use of metaphor arises in instances
[. . .] in which the differences between the two phenom-
ena are perceived to be signi?cant but not total.
Accordingly, effective metaphor can be seen as a formof
creative expression that relies on constructive falsehood as
a means of liberating the imagination (Alvesson & Sand-
berg, 2011; Morgan, 1980) and therefore conceiving
change. As noted by Clegg (2006, p. 849): ‘Imagination –
the capacity to conceive a difference – is at the kernel of
planned change [. . .] and has to be allied to the capacity
to make a difference – power’. In this sense, Latour’s polit-
ical analysis is critical not only in terms of content – insofar
as it challenges the process of rationalization of the politi-
cal world – but also in terms of its form, using a metaphor-
ical style that is conducive to stimulating the imaginative
creation of an alternative social and political order. In
short, both despite and because of its limitations, the polit-
ical metaphor of the ‘modern constitution’ has a produc-
tive heuristic potential for describing and analyzing the
political power of experts.
The way individuals (especially experts) think and act
never comes from nothing, but emerges in a discursive
context characterized by certain conditions of possibility
(Foucault, 1983). ‘Just as a discourse ‘rules in’ certain ways
of talking about a topic, de?ning an acceptable and intelli-
gible way to talk, write, or conduct oneself, so also, by def-
inition, it ‘rules out’, limits and restricts other ways of
talking, of conducting ourselves in relation to the topic’
(Hall, 1997, p. 44). In this respect, the political power of
experts metaphorically described by Latour implies the
production of a discursive system of representation mak-
ing possible the separation between the world of humans
and the world of objects.
In the context of this study, the use of Latour’s meta-
phor to politicize the expertise of the accounting industry
in the realm of CSR implies addressing the following ques-
tions: (1) What system of representation underlies the
accounting industry’s conception of corporate social
responsibility and how does this system of representation
enable and re?ect the separation and opposition between
the world of humans and the world of objects? (2) Through
what process of mediation are accounting ?rms and pro-
fessional bodies able to connect this system of representa-
tion to business management systems? (3) What are the
consequences of this mediation at a political and demo-
cratic level?
From apolitical representation to political mediation
The constant renewal of concepts and theories is one of
the key features of management science. Management the-
ories are often derived from the empirical observation of
management practices. Their purpose is to highlight the
contemporary actions of businesses, at the risk of being
criticized for contributing to the emergence of the ‘man-
agement fashions’ of the moment (Abrahamson, 1996).
This criticism also applies to the CSR agenda, which has en-
joyed increasing success over the last decade both in the
academic world (Spence, Husillos, & Correa-Ruiz, 2010)
and in the professional sphere (Power, 2007). In retrospect,
the conversion of the business world to a form of compas-
sionate capitalism appears to have generated both enthusi-
asm and skepticism in equal measure
4
. On the one hand,
the countless ?nancial scandals and sometimes dubious pro-
fessional ethics of large multinationals are indicative of the
persistent and signi?cant gap between discourse and prac-
tice (Spar & La Mure, 2003). On the other hand, far from
being spared by power relations, social responsibility is also
at the center of a con?ict between different visions from
which a dominant logic eventually emerges, producing win-
ners and losers (Archel, Husillos, & Spence, 2011).
In the race to demonstrate a highly developed social
and environmental conscience, the same goes for the
accounting industry
5
:
Like all businesses, we’re shaped by the world around
us. We can’t think about our success without consider-
ing the society and economy that give us the two mar-
kets in which we compete: for clients and for talent
4
The increasing ?nancialization of the economy shows that shareholder
service still remains the key structuring principle of business development
strategies (Williams, 2000). The primacy of the interests of shareholders is
also re?ected in academic research, where agency theory (which posits that
good governance involves ensuring that managers act in the interests of
shareholders) serves as the frame of reference of many studies (Erturk et al.,
2007).
5
Academic accounting research, partly under the in?uence of the
industry (Flottes & Gendron, 2010; Francis, 2004), plays a key role in this
respect (Spence et al., 2010).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 153
(Salzberg, CEO, Deloitte Corporate Responsibility Inau-
gural Report, 2007/2008, p. 4).
Social solidarity is rooted in our values: ‘We are com-
mitted to the collectivity’. [. . .] In recent years, while
volunteering initiatives were taking shape, employees
responded with boundless enthusiasm [. . .] Celebrating
the merits of individuals who get involved to give back
to society is enough to cause the sphere of in?uence of
the company to widen. (De Mara, Rapport 2006 sur le
programme Responsabilité sociale de KPMG, p. 3)
The same also applies to skepticism. It would be rela-
tively easy to draw a list of socially irresponsible practices
in the accounting industry. This work has already begun,
and an extensive literature has emerged to show that the
defense of the public interest has not always been at the
center of the work of auditors, not only in ?nancial audit-
ing (Cooper & Robson, 2006; Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Baz-
erman, 2006; Sikka, 2008), but also in social auditing.
O’Rourke (2000) identi?ed many shortcomings in the audit
work performed by accounting ?rms on working condi-
tions in poor countries. Over the last decade, the increasing
number of professional failures has resulted in a reexami-
nation of the historical regulatory autonomy granted to
accountants in many jurisdictions (Malsch & Gendron,
2011).
Accounting ?rms and professional bodies continue
nonetheless to play a central role in the production and
implementation of accountability mechanisms surround-
ing the social responsibility practices of organizations. By
absorbing social and environmental auditing within its
?eld of expertise, the accounting industry has established
itself as a key player in this area (O’Dwyer, 2011; Power,
1997; Simnett et al., 2009). Though less visible, the deci-
sion of auditors to in?uence international social and envi-
ronmental certi?cation institutions should also not be
underestimated:
As a member of the Executive Committee of the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCSD), a coalition of 175 international companies
united by a shared commitment to sustainable develop-
ment, I am personally committed to driving sustainable
development and corporate responsibility into business
thinking. (DiPiazza, CEO PwC, 2009)
The network of ?rms and professional associations con-
stitutes a key passage point for in?uential ideas in the area
of corporate social responsibility (Sahlin-Andersson, 2006).
These entities publish numerous documents (annual rank-
ings and surveys, public reports, performance measure-
ment systems, etc.) through which we can observe the
production of ideas about what CSR is, how organizations
should deal with their new responsibilities and how
accountants can help. In particular, several conceptual
framework documents (i.e. Corporate Responsibility: Strat-
egy, management and value. How PwC can help; Accounting
for sustainability project: Governance and Collaboration –
Connected reporting; Sustainability: the role of accountants
(ICAEW)) have been signi?cant in developing and promot-
ing these ideas.
In the following sections, using the Latourian metaphor
of the ‘modern constitution’ (Latour, 2004), I examine the
mediating political role of the accounting industry in align-
ing the socially responsible practices of organizations with
the rational morality of the market. First, in analyzing con-
ceptual documents, I highlight the market-based system of
representation used by accounting ?rms and professional
bodies to instrumentalize and economicize corporate so-
cial responsibility as an apolitical object of risk. I show that
this system of representation enables and re?ects the sep-
aration and opposition between the world of humans and
the world of objects. Second, I examine the ‘mediating’ role
of the accounting industry in connecting this system of
representation to business management systems.
Economicizing corporate social responsibility
The socially responsible market
‘Science discovers, genius invents, industry applies, and
man adapts himself’, insisted the slogan of the 1933 Uni-
versal Exhibition in Chicago, at a time when humanity still
had its eyes ?rmly ?xed on the arrow of time. This episte-
mological position has been deconstructed by Latour
(1987) and many others (Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970),
supported in their endeavors by the major disasters of
the twentieth century; yet it still lies at the heart of the dis-
course of the accounting profession. The advancement of
knowledge and the control of nature should enable the de-
mands of social and environmental protection to be regu-
lated and reconciled with the demands of economic
development:
Eco-ef?ciency and awareness of the social and eco-
nomic impacts of business operations are essential to
business success in the 21st century. The 19th century
invented large-scale industrial manufacturing. The
20th century converted it into an applied science and
learned to control it from a keyboard and monitor.
The 21st century will bring it to maturity by learning
to integrate enterprise of all kinds – both manufactur-
ing and services – with the needs of the natural envi-
ronment and social enterprise. (DiPiazza, CEO PwC,
2009)
Consistent with the ‘modernist’ ideal (Gray, 2010) –
which posits the cumulative and linear nature of scienti?c
progress, itself responsible for technical progress, and ulti-
mately human progress – sustainable business develop-
ment is essentially viewed from a long-term perspective.
The effects of economic activity on the planet’s ecosystems
can already be felt. However, it is not too late to change the
dominant model of economic development. Thus, contrary
to the arguments of radical critique directed toward a rapid
and profound change of economic paradigm, the current
system of exchange can be maintained provided it is grad-
ually reformed. The process of reform implies a gradual
process of ‘incremental’ planning to enable the adoption
of technologies and business models adapted to the new
social and environmental order:
Our progress towards sustainable development will be
largely incremental. It will be a process of evolution
154 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
rather than revolution, since the barriers to rapid
change – for example, the tendency to use short-term
planning horizons and the dif?culties in accommodat-
ing diverse global needs and perspectives – are unlikely
to alter for many years yet. (Corporate Responsibility:
Strategy, management and value – How PwC can help,
2009)
Commerce is the glue that holds the world together, the
source of the wealth that has made life in the 21st cen-
tury easier for more people than ever before. Activists
and NGOs sometimes argue that the objectives of busi-
ness are fundamentally self-serving – and the business
sector often faces a reputational assault [. . .] However,
this does not mean that we need fewer businesses. It
means, rather, that we need better businesses. (Sunner,
PwC global leader for sustainable solution, 2009)
Far from being perceived and de?ned as two con?icting
poles, business activities and social responsibility commit-
ments thus share a common destiny. It is not merely that
the success of a company has come to be measured in
terms of its capacity to generate pro?ts and to take account
of social and environmental issues. The concern for social
and environmental issues may itself become an instrument
for securing an economic advantage:
In fact, we think that Corporate Social Responsibility is
more than just an add-onto our business. It’s much
more important than that. People want to work for,
buy from and deal with companies that make a positive
contribution to the world. So responsibility and com-
mercial success can, and should, go hand in hand.
(KPMG, Corporate Social Responsibility)
With growing scrutiny of business operations, organiza-
tions are increasingly being driven to satisfy the expec-
tations of opinion formers, governments and customers
in order to thrive. In essence, businesses adopting cor-
porate social responsibility principles believe that by
operating ethically and responsibly, they have a greater
chance of success. (Grant Thornton International Busi-
ness Report 2008, Corporate Social Responsibility: a
necessity not a choice, p. 2)
The conception of CSR suggested by the accounting
industry is thus based on the following syllogism: (1) The
raison d’être of a company is to increase its pro?ts; (2) In
the current context, adopting socially responsible practices
is a source of pro?tability; (3) Therefore, it is in the interest
of companies to adopt socially responsible practices’. It is
dif?cult not to equate this syllogism with the arguments
of the economist Milton Friedman. Friedman recognized
that despite the inherent danger of the concept of corpo-
rate responsibility,
6
if CSR becomes a public expectation en-
abling companies to promote their economic interests, it can
legitimately become an element of their development
strategy:
It would be inconsistent of me to call on corporate exec-
utives to refrain from this hypocritical window-dress-
ing [corporate social responsibility] because it harms
the foundation of a free society. That would be to call
on them to exercise a ‘social responsibility’! If our insti-
tutions and the attitudes of the public make it in their
self-interest to cloak their actions in this way, I cannot
summon much indignation to denounce them. (Fried-
man, 1970, p. 5)
The long-term horizon is not merely re?ected in the
promotion of an ideal of planning and moderate reformism
in which social and environmental responsibility becomes
a key factor of economic success. Another consequence is
to consign the social and environmental effects of eco-
nomic activity to a relatively distant future and at the scale
of the planet, beyond the temporal and spatial horizon of
most citizens and enterprises. Any contribution that
companies and even whole countries might make to the
prevention of climate change or to maintaining the well-
being of people is accordingly insigni?cant. It therefore
makes no sense for a ?rm or a country to standardize
norms of business sustainability on a unilateral basis:
Many companies, investors and governments have
already recognized the importance of reporting sustain-
ability-related information. In response, some govern-
ments are implementing national regulations.
However, activity is often undertaken in silos, with
the risk of increasing the volume of information
reported, while reducing the insight provided.
(Accounting for Sustainability, Governance and Collabo-
ration, 2009)
What we are faced with is a ‘tragedy of the global com-
mons’ (Hardin, 1962). The underlying problem of business
sustainability is a lack of global governance and planning
capable of reining in and steering global markets and pro-
tecting global commons. The only acceptable regulatory
response is to create international governance structures
capable of supervising and coordinating the production of
an international regulatory framework:
International coordination would help to reduce dupli-
cation and create the cohesion and consistency in
reporting that is needed to aid sound decision-making.
(Accounting for Sustainability, Governance and Collabo-
ration, 2009)
International institutions will be responsible for formu-
lating de?nitive global and regional policies [. . .] A
number of factors will ensure that it takes place. They
include the increasing pressure on scarce resources;
changing patterns of global demand; the trans-national
impact of human activity and natural events; and grow-
ing awareness that we are both a single global commu-
nity and a collection of local societies that need to
remain effective. (Corporate Responsibility: Strategy,
management and value – How PwC can help, 2009)
As shown by these extracts, the issues raised by social
environmental responsibility imply adherence to a speci?c
representation of the notion of authority in general and of
state power in particular. Through international gover-
6
‘Very few currents are as dangerous for the very foundations of our free
society as the acceptance among business managers of a conception of
social responsibility not de?ned in terms of the need to serve the interests
of shareholders’ (Friedman, 1962).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 155
nance schemes, governments relinquish some of their priv-
ileged ‘control’ authority and are recon?gured as merely
one source of authority among others, as if operating in a
‘market of authorities’ (Shamir, 2008). In short, govern-
ments are placed on a par with private sources of
authority:
There are growing expectations that companies should
use their signi?cant power and in?uence for the com-
mon good. But how far should corporations go? Should
they really be expected to address issues that have tra-
ditionally been the responsibility of governments –
such as poverty, basic infrastructure, public health,
corruption and social justice? Like it or not, many
companies have had to begin addressing these issues
in pursuit of their business objectives and in response
to stakeholder pressures. However, most companies
are still working – some may say struggling – to de?ne
how best to meet their business objectives while bene-
?ting the common good. (Sunner, PwC global leader for
sustainable solution, 2009)
Accordingly, corporations, trade and technical–profes-
sional associations, accountancy and credit-rating agencies
and standard-setting organizations have tended increas-
ingly to perform regulatory roles and to experiment with
novel forms of legality (Danielsen, 2005; Sassen, 1996).
Their role today is somewhat ambiguous since these
experiments are not merely directed toward the construc-
tion of a new regulatory environment, but also contribute
to a ferocious battle between different interest groups
seeking to maintain or extend their professional jurisdic-
tions (Dezalay & Sugarman, 1995). In the accounting
industry, the development of an international regulatory
apparatus has long been part and parcel of a strategy
aimed at promoting the emergence of a global auditing
market (whether ?nancial, social or environmental) regu-
lated by international organizations freed from the restric-
tions of traditional state regulation (Arnold, 2005):
The accountancy profession has traditionally responded
to market changes and shifts in public expectations.
Sustainability offers such opportunities and it is hardly
surprising that some accountancy practices have
become involved in recent years in providing advice
and assurance service relating to sustainability perfor-
mance and reporting. (Sustainability: the role of
accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
In this sense, the adoption of socially responsible prac-
tices does not imply a renunciation of market principles.
The market represents a common good that must be pro-
tected from the failings of humans in much the same
way as natural resources. As a common good, the market
is particularly important since it also preserves other
goods:
In fact, there is mounting evidence that companies that
act in a responsible manner consistently do better than
others in the long run. People often blame capitalismfor
encouraging bad corporate behavior. But the global cap-
ital markets are not immoral; they are merely amoral.
The same market mechanisms apply whatever product
or service a company sells. If it does the right things, it
makes money. If it does the wrong things, it goes out of
business. So it’s unfair to blame the philosophy of cap-
italism for the wrongs that humans do. (Sunner, PwC
global leader for sustainable solution, 2009)
In this view, the issue is simply to substitute market
laws for the tyranny of man over man. The apolitical and
amoral sphere of the market ensures the greatest degree
of economic freedom and therefore the greatest degree of
political freedom. While any syllogism is necessarily
reductive, the following sequence summarizes the basic
gist of the reasoning: ‘(1) Engaging in social responsibility
results in increased pro?ts; (2) The market naturally elim-
inates companies that fail to increase their pro?ts; (3)
Therefore, the market is the natural and impartial judge
of good social responsibility practices’. In this sense, there
is no need to impose further collective and political control
over companies. Free competition is enough to determine
the winners and the losers in the ?ght for social
responsibility:
As for the rest, it is surely only a matter of time before
all privately held businesses have to adhere to greater
pressure to do business in a more socially responsible
and transparent manner. The businesses that are
responsive, quick and innovative will be the ones who
not only survive the change, but emerge as winners.
(Grant Thornton, International Business Report, Corpo-
rate Social Responsibility: a necessity not a choice, p. 3)
Therefore, in the eyes of professional associations and
accounting ?rms, social responsibility represents a pro?t
opportunity for businesses capable of responding to the
‘social responsibility’ pressures of the market. At the same
time, it is also seen as a considerable source of danger for
businesses struggling to adapt and whose survival is threa-
tened. In other words, social and environmental responsi-
bility is seen as a risk for organizations. In particular, it is
constructed as one of these new risks that ‘are no longer
[only] the dark side of opportunities, but are also market
opportunities’ (Beck, 1992, p. 46).
The human risk
In the simplest and most common sense of the term, the
notion of risk is generally associated with a degree of
uncertainty and danger. However, the endless con?icts be-
tween experts of all kinds to classify objects as risks indi-
cate that the perception of what is uncertain or
dangerous is far from being culturally, socially or even
politically uniform (Douglas, 1992; Froud, 2003). The risk
associated by the accounting industry with CSR derives
from a category that has only recently emerged in manage-
ment thinking on the issue of reputation: ‘Reputation has
come to be seen as both at risk and at the limits of conven-
tional management control. It has become a governing risk
object of large organizations and is infused with both fear
and opportunity’ (Power, 2007, p. 129). The prevailing dis-
course of the accounting industry clearly reveals the
increasingly serious image risks generated by networks of
militants or non-governmental organizations involved in
social or environmental causes:
156 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
Efforts to build, maintain, and protect corporate reputa-
tion have been made all the more dif?cult by the
continuing increase in the variety and complexity of
the potential sustainability-related risks to corporate
reputation. These risks have resulted from the global-
ization of business operations and the rise of a network
of socially, environmentally, and ethically aware global
actors that monitor and report on corporate activities
on a 24/7 basis. (KPMG, Governance, Risk and Reputa-
tion, 2011)
One of the driving factors on corporate social responsi-
bility is the increasing importance of image and reputa-
tion and the demand for more information about the
conditions in which products and services are gener-
ated. [. . .] As so often happens, it is not just a CSR debate
but a question of business risk, although the risks
involved may be more concerned with the durability
of the organization than sustainable development. (Sus-
tainability: the role of accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
At a programmatic level, the key dimensions of reputa-
tional risk management are based on the ideal of ‘stake-
holder analysis’ (Power, 2007). Minimizing reputational
risks and converting them into market opportunities im-
plies listening to stakeholders affected by business
activities:
To ask questions about the sustainability of any human
activity is to take an overall look at how that activity
affects people, the economy, society, and natural envi-
ronment and to ask, in the light of all this, whether it
has a long-term future. (Sustainability: the role of
accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
The moral collectivism implied by this view is indica-
tive of a major political shift since it involves recognizing
new rights for groups of actors that had previously been
largely ignored
7
(Archel et al., 2011). However, its adoption
is also symptomatic of a shift in the traditional system of
representation associated with risk objects. In the ?eld of
regulatory risk assessment, causation is generally viewed
as a linear and mechanistic process, while risk agency is
deemed to originate in the inanimate world of objects
(Jasanoff, 1999). With the ‘moral’ and ‘socially responsible’
renovation of the concept of stakeholder, the causes of rep-
utational risk have spread throughout the social world (with
each stakeholder representing a different risk according to
their interests or rights) through militants – a ‘human’ and
‘animate’ façade. This shift is not simply epistemic. Assign-
ing the responsibility of risks to inanimate objects generally
increases the sense of control and social order (Jasanoff,
1999). After all, managing things is easier than managing
people, especially when people are known to be part of
the problem.
Therefore, to objectivize CSR as a risk is not without
consequence. First, the implication is that the content of
socially responsible practices is no longer discussed from
an absolute standpoint, i.e. in terms of the common social
or political good, but from a defensive perspective based
on the identi?ed reputational risks and their impact on
business. In addition, as noted by Power (2007, p. 150):
‘Reputational risk is [. . .] the product of evaluative institu-
tions which explicitly manufacture a kind of uncertainty
with a high degree of calculative rationalization’. The is-
sues raised by CSR are thus rationalized, economicized,
and in some sense depoliticized by invoking the amoral
and disembodied authority of market mechanisms, but
also by deploying a technical arsenal of calculations and
rankings aimed at measuring and improving corporate rep-
utation. Finally, with the notion of reputational risk, the
political and social awareness of civil society is seen as a
source of danger unless it can be politically neutralized.
In market-based terms, neutralization implies capitalizing
on the social and environmental expectations of the public
to develop and commercialize new products and services.
In other words, the process of neutralization implies the
instrumental collaboration of the public.
This collaborative process involves both good will and
power relations. As noted by Taylor (1992, p. 5), far from
being marginal, the exercise of instrumental rationality is
a constituent feature of modern Western culture and in?u-
ences the way of thinking of the vast majority of citizens.
In converting reputational risk into market opportunities,
businesses can rely on the benevolent support of public
opinion, already convinced of the ideal of ef?ciency and
pro?tability. However, public cooperation is not a perma-
nent given, and may turn into resistance. In the spirit of
the market, this resistance can and must be conducted pri-
marily in the name of consumer rights. Organizations are
the constituents of the market and consumers have rights
against them in their capacity as consumers.
Consumer sovereignty has a long tradition in classical
and neoclassical economic theories (Slater, 1997). Adam
Smith was among the ?rst to extol the consumer as the
hero of modern market societies. According to this model,
‘‘the self-determined and dispassionate market choices of
sovereign consumers are instrumental in directing the
market’s so-called invisible hand, which results in more
ef?cient production, better and cheaper products, social
progress, and increased general welfare’’ (Denegri-Knott,
Zwick, & Schroeder, 2006, p. 955).
8
From this point of view,
reputational risk is conceived, managed and converted
(more or less easily) as an opportunity provided it is located
within the instrumental, demanding but legitimate market
relationship between organizations and their consumers.
The exercise of consumer rights is in a sense the practical
embodiment of economic reasoning, which construes the
market as the judge of good socially responsible business
practices.
7
Stakeholder consultation processes can also have problematic func-
tions: ‘on one level, these processes legitimize dominant discourses on CSR
by giving the impression that the latter are the outcome of a democratic
dialogue that is free from power relations; on another level, these processes
themselves show to heretic social actors the futility of their heresy and thus
encourage those actors to actively adopt the dominant discourse’ (Archel
et al., 2011, p. 327).
8
In this model, we may include studies examining mechanisms of
consumer boycotts (Friedman, 1996; Garrett, 1987) or consumers’ ability to
maximize utility over cost (Nelson, 2002; Pitt, Berthon, Watson, & Zinkhan,
2002).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 157
When it escapes the logic of instrumental rationality
and refuses to see its rights de?ned solely in terms of its
status as a consumer, the political and social consciousness
of civil society thus represents a disturbing area of uncer-
tainty for organizations driven by a neoliberal imagination.
In this sense, the ‘dark side’ of reputational risk is that any
human can refuse (as a human and not as a consumer
9
) to
submit to the demand for ef?ciency and pro?tability im-
posed by instrumental reason in the name of a moral sense
rooted in subjective feelings or beliefs or an adherence to
certain ideals, and question its domination in the organiza-
tion of economic exchange. Accordingly, the emergence of
reputational risk is not only the expression of an entirely
‘man-made risk’, as suggested by Power (2007, p. 150), but
is also a sign of distrust of the risk represented by humans
and their subjective capacity to organize the social and polit-
ical sphere against the instrumental economic rationality of
the market and outside their market-based rights as
consumers.
Overall, the system of representation that lies beneath
accounting ?rms and professional bodies’ conception of
CSR provides a striking illustration of the political meta-
phor used by Latour (2004) to describe the modern power
imbalance between the world of humans and the world of
non-humans. On one side, the market object appears to be
characterized by an amoral and apolitical rationality mak-
ing it the undisputed arbiter of good social responsibility
practices. On the other side, the ability of humans to adopt
a subjective horizon of political meaning that differs from
the horizon dictated by the technical and instrumental lo-
gic of the market is discredited and perceived as a threat.
The neoliberal imagination of the accounting industry thus
collapses the historical order between economy and soci-
ety. At the birth of capitalism, the business enterprise
could claim moral exemption because other socio-political
mechanisms, most notably governments, assumed the task
of managing populations and things according to humanist
principles of welfare and society (Foucault, 1978). Today, it
posits the economic rationality of the ‘market object’ as the
organizational and moral principle for politics and society
as a whole.
In this bipolar world, and armed with its expertise
(Power, 1997), the accounting industry establishes itself
as a mediator capable of giving a political voice to voiceless
market mechanisms and of making their voice heard in the
social and political world of organizations. This is well
illustrated by the following ?gure produced by the ICAEW
in a report on the role of accountants in the new issues
raised by social and environmental responsibility (Fig. 1).
According to the authors and commissioner of the report,
assurance and disclosure of information services are de-
signed to facilitate the integration of CSR within the logic
of the market:
As noted by Power (2007, p. 4), ‘managing risks depends
critically [not only] on managements systems of represen-
tation [but also] on instruments for framing objects for the
purpose of action and intervention’. Therefore, representing
the market as the keystone of the social responsibility agen-
da of businesses is a necessary but not suf?cient condition
for economicizing corporate social responsibility. The fol-
lowing section examines the mediating role of the account-
ing industry in aligning organizational practices with the
moral ideal of the market.
In the name of the market
Capitalizing on their ?nancial audit expertise (Power,
1997), most accounting ?rms provide their clients with a
wide range of instruments designed to support businesses
to produce the social and environmental information dis-
closed in their activity reports (O’Dwyer, 2011). These
instruments are used to measure performance and certi?-
cation. They are the armed wing of a strategy of commer-
cial conquest. However, their mode of production and the
type of practices they encourage also operate as ef?cient
instruments of market rationality.
The following scorecard illustrates this issue (Fig. 1).
Developed by Deloitte to assess the quality of business re-
ports from a social and environmental point of view, the
scorecard is based on a list of thirty criteria. A scale of
1–4 is used to assign a grade to the organization for the
overall quality of its report (Fig. 2).
The inscriptions and programs included in a scorecard
transit easily from one organization to another (Cooper,
Ezzamel, & Qu, 2012). Accounting technologies are mod-
eled on standardized de?nitions and generic measure-
ments to appeal to a wide audience (Armstrong, 2002)
and ‘‘as a generalized expert system, [a scorecard] has
interpretative ?exibility, which allows it to seem applica-
ble for various purposes’’ (Qu & Cooper, 2011, p. 347). In
this sense, because of its (diverse) origins and (unpredict-
able) destination, the material produced by Deloitte ex-
tends far beyond the con?nes of the ?rm and local team
of accountants that originally developed it. As a symbol
of the discursive power of the accounting industry, and
borne by a global network of consultants spread across
many professional sites, the scorecard represents a ?exible
tool of knowledge that may have a signi?cant impact on
the development of practices. In what follows, I will mobi-
lize the speci?c content of the scorecard developed by Del-
oitte in order to illustrate the analysis.
A ?exible morality
I have shown that the economicization of social and
environmental responsibility issues implies adapting the
organizing principles of the social and political world to
the ?eld of market relations. At a political level, one of
the most visible manifestations of this process is the ten-
dency to place the moral responsibility of the state toward
society on an equal footing with the responsibility of pri-
vately-held organizations and non-governmental organi-
zations. For example, in the project known as ‘Accounting
for Sustainability’, accounting ?rms and professional
bodies are viewed as stakeholders – ‘the accounting com-
munity’ – in the same way as investors, business associa-
tions, regulators, non-governmental organizations and
international institutions. In practice, the recon?guration
of the regulatory space has resulted in the emergence of
9
See, for example, Deutch (1995) on the difference between human
rights and consumer rights.
158 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
?exible and relatively unrestrictive regulations co-
produced by the private sector, civil society and a number
of international institutions competing with the traditional
regulatory authority of the state:
The means through which governmental authority is
deployed, namely laws, rules and regulations, are par-
tially replaced by a variety of ‘guidelines’, ‘codes of con-
ducts’, ‘principles’ and ‘standards’ that do not
necessarily enjoy the coercive backing of the state.
Rather, the means of authority, as well as the means
of producing these means, are treated as commodities
that are produced, distributed, exchanged, negotiated
and ultimately consumed by the host of state and
inter-state agencies, commercial enterprises and non-
pro?t organizations that comprise the ‘market of
authorities’. (Shamir, 2008, p. 7)
As shown by the following extracts, the accounting
industry has largely endorsed this shift in the regulatory
apparatus – a shift that tends to construe disclosure stan-
dards and codes of conduct as objects with unstable nor-
mative contours, adaptable to the conditions of activity
of every company, and therefore constantly renegotiable.
Having presented the general principles and basic norms
that must govern the production of social and environmen-
tal reports, the authors of the scorecard make the following
comment:
We concentrate much more on quality than on quan-
tity, and intend to give guidance on the process of
reporting, on the content of a report and on the format
to make sure that the report is able to communicate
effectively. We do not specify or require information
on speci?c topics, as these will always depend highly
on the circumstances of the reporting organization on
the one hand, and the needs of the report user on the
other. This makes assessment indeed more challenging
than just checking against a given list of impacts or
indicators following a ?xed format. (Deloitte Sustain-
ability Reporting Scorecard, p. 3)
In illustrating their conceptual framework with several
examples, the conceivers of the ‘Accounting for Sustain-
ability’ project are careful to underline that the examples
‘are not intended to provide a template for organizations
to follow, nor to represent a model set of issues, impacts
and actions’:
Instead, it is anticipated that organizations which wish
to adopt connected reporting will be able to use both
the guidance and the examples to help them consider
how to develop a connected approach in the context of
their business. It is hoped that there will be co-
ordination between organizations in the same industry
group to agree a common approach to connected report-
ing in their sector. [. . .] It is important that this work is
co-ordinated internationally to create the cohesion and
consistency in reporting that is needed, while retaining
?exibility for an organization to adopt the approach that
is speci?c to its business. (Accounting for sustainability,
Connected reporting: practical guide with worked
examples)
These extracts illustrate the mediating role of a ?exible
and unrestrictive regulatory framework. By replacing the
rigidity of the law and the state, the new framework offers
a vast array of moral instruments (reporting framework,
rating devices, auditing techniques, etc.) that businesses
can use according to the speci?c situation in which they
?nd themselves and in line with the market principle of
?exible and dynamic adaptation. Accordingly, morality is
implicitly de?ned in terms of a ‘preferential freedom-
of-choice model’ (Shamir, 2008), thus facilitating the
Fig. 1. A market-based approach to sustainability.
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 159
rejection of morally prescriptive regulation exerted from
above (e.g. by regional, national or supra-national regula-
tors). In return, this competitive and fragmented moral uni-
verse provides the accounting profession with ideal
conditions for offering moral advice to organizations:
The development of voluntary codes has taken place in a
largely unstructured way, resulting in a wide range of
principles designed to achieve worthy objectives and
offering, or appearing to offer, competitive bene?ts.
Accountants maybe involvedinidentifyinga code appro-
priate to the business or in integrating operation of the
code with an existing management information system.
(Sustainability: the role of accountants, ICAEW, 2004)
The deployment of a ?exible and dynamic market
morality is also facilitated by recognition of the principle
of stakeholder consultation as a cornerstone of socially
responsible practices. Among the criteria used in the Del-
oitte scorecard, three are directly related to the identi?ca-
tion of and interaction with stakeholders. To justify the
importance of these criteria, the authors argue that the rel-
evance of the information that needs to be disclosed is
dependent on the ‘needs and expectations’ expressed by
stakeholders:
In order to make reporting and communication effec-
tive management instruments, it is important that
reporting organizations – ?rst and foremost – identify
the target audiences of their communication and con-
sult these audiences about their actual information
needs and expectations. It might also be important to
know what the relevant problems and concerns of these
stakeholders are. (Deloitte Sustainability Reporting
Scorecard, p. 2)
The argument appears to be a sensible and convincing
one, but is not without consequence. By de?nition, every
stakeholder group directly involved in the issues and chal-
lenges of its environment bases its claims on criteria
(whether social, economic or ethical) that are speci?c to
it. Since criteria vary from one group to another, stake-
holder claims will vary from one group or situation to an-
other. In this sense, a universal and unilateral regulation of
the social responsibility information to be disclosed is at
best pointless and at worst counterproductive. As shown
by the following de?nition provided by the authors of
the scorecard, consulting and engaging with stakeholders
also implies discussions and negotiations aimed (at least
in appearance) at reaching a satisfactory compromise:
Stakeholder Dialogue or multistakeholder dialogue is a
dedicated interaction with one or a group of multiple
stakeholders on a particular subject, program or
towards a particular goal of achieving understanding,
consensus or progress. (Deloitte Sustainability Report-
ing Scorecard, p. 38)
Fig. 2. Deloitte sustainability reporting scorecard: The 30 criteria.
160 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
Far from any kind of abstract universalism, the ideal of
stakeholder consultation thus implicitly fosters the emer-
gence of an ‘à la carte’ morality. Given their proximity to
the ?eld, it is up to stakeholders to promote recognition
of the key issues that concern them and to devise solutions
on a collaborative basis. In other words, rather than an
ordering activity, the adoption of socially responsible prac-
tices primarily becomes a shared problem-solving process
– expressed by notions such as ‘multi-party cooperation’,
‘constructive dialogue’, ‘multistakeholder consultation’,
and ‘democratic participation’ – facilitating creative, ?exi-
ble and ef?cient solutions that leave ‘the greatest possible
amount of control in the hands of those closest to the prob-
lems’ (Lobel, 2004, p. 362). The systematic mobilization of
stakeholders is thus not merely designed to serve a sym-
bolic and illusory goal of ‘[legitimizing] existing manage-
ment decisions through symbolic consultation processes’
(Archel et al., 2010, p. 14), but is also a means of further
undermining the historical monopoly of the state and
elected representatives (relegated, as shown by criterion
19, to the status of mere stakeholders) over the de?nition
and resolution of social problems.
Responsibilizing stakeholders
Deresponsibilizing the state implies responsibilizing
stakeholders. A transfer of responsibility is possible pro-
vided it enables stakeholders to take charge of their eco-
nomic and moral destiny, but also to accept the positive
and negative consequences of their decisions (Lemke,
2001). Accordingly, multiple sources of authority, includ-
ing non-governmental organizations, international institu-
tions, professional service ?rms and commercial
enterprises, are currently in the process of responsibilizing
their relevant audience ‘to adjust to the harsh realities of
the free market by adopting a certain entrepreneurial form
of practical relationship to themselves’ (Shamir, 2008, p. 8)
as a condition of their effectiveness and as evidence of their
re?exive moral capacities.
This is precisely the meaning of criteria 13 and 14 used
in the scorecard designed by Deloitte, which establish the
description of management systems, and in particular the
description of risk management systems, as a key element
of disclosure for demonstrating the social responsibility
commitment of the organization. As noted by Power
(2007, p. 40), ‘internal control [and risk management] sys-
tems embody both potentials of greater ef?ciency and
coordination on the one hand, and of greater sensitivity
to social responsibility on the other’. Therefore, by high-
lighting their internal responsibilization processes while
improving the management of their economic ef?ciency,
internal control and risk management systems provide
organizations with an ideal technological support for the
economicization of social responsibility issues.
As a preamble to criterion 14, the authors indicate ‘that
the report should describe and demonstrate how signi?-
cant risks and opportunities are managed proactively’.
Therefore, the disclosure of such information should con-
tribute to informing stakeholders of the capacity of the
organization to recognize its failings and to remedy them,
but also to identify opportunities for economic develop-
ment. The term ‘proactively’ is signi?cant since it indicates
the intention of the organization to identify problems but
also to anticipate them without waiting for the potential
imposition of a regulatory restriction from outside the
organization. In other words, the promotion of disclosure
criteria relating to risk management and internal control
systems implies a rede?nition of organizations as autono-
mous and responsible social agents capable of self-
governance.
The instrumental bene?t of risk management systems is
not merely that they enable organizations to combine a
demonstration of their responsibility with a demonstration
of their economic ef?ciency. They also provide a technol-
ogy capable of reformulating social responsibility issues
in purely managerial terms. In a presentation of their vi-
sion of sustainable development at an annual meeting of
the ‘Global Accounting Alliance’
10
, the representatives of
the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants concluded
their intervention in the following terms:
While we acknowledge there can be time delays before
an organization realizes that some activities that may
be pro?table in the short run are unsustainable and
therefore indefensible in the longer term, we would
argue that this is a problem of short-termism (to be
resolved through better information and risk manage-
ment practices) rather than a problem of environmental
or social irresponsibility (to be resolved somehow by
encouraging enterprises to behave in a more ‘moral’
way [. . .] through appeal to altruism or fear). (Pollard
and Stephen, 2008)
By reducing the social responsibility agenda of organiza-
tions to an information disclosure issue, risk management
systems are more than mere instruments of control. On
the one hand, they imply a conception of corporate social
responsibility as a management issue rather than as a fun-
damentally social or political matter. On the other hand,
they operate as a Trojan horse of the market agenda in orga-
nizations. Indeed, the notion of information is central in the
practices of ?nancial market participants characterized by a
constant search for relevant information – a search which,
according to ?nancial economics, shapes their decisions
and is re?ected in the dynamics of transactions and securi-
ties prices (Vollmer, Mennicken, & Preda, 2009). In this
sense, there is only one step from de?ning information dis-
closure as a major criterion of corporate responsibilization
in the name of a certain ideal of democratic transparency
(Drori, 2006) to establishing the market as the ultimate
judge of the process of responsibilization based on a logic
of information communication to market participants. As
shown in the following extract, this step is easily – and even
enthusiastically – taken:
Good governance is not just a matter of morality. The
business case for sustainable development is also very
strong. Research conducted by the PwC shows, for
example, that more than half of institutional investors
and analysts think evidence of compliance with
10
The Global Accounting Alliance is made up of 11 of the world’s leading
accounting bodies brought together to promote quality services, share
information and collaborate on important international issues.
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 161
environmental protocols and compliance with health
and safety regulations are critical indicators of a com-
pany’s value, regardless of the sector in which it oper-
ates. They also believe that communicating more
effectively with the ?nancial markets improves a com-
pany’s access to new capital, lowers its cost of capital
and boosts its share price. In short, good governance
and disclosure of information about sustainability can
have a tangible impact on a company’s ?nancial perfor-
mance. (Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, manage-
ment and value – How PwC can help, 2009)
The disclosure of quality information from ef?cient risk
management systems is thus critical, not only in terms of
its effects on the way stakeholders may perceive, organize
and justify their activities and their decisions relating to an
organization, but also, and ultimately, in terms of its effects
on the variation of the company’s market price. Therefore,
independently of their content and methodology, the score-
cards and certi?cation procedures developed by accounting
?rms toenable organizations toprovide evidence of their so-
cial responsibility agenda play an extremely powerful medi-
ating role by placing organizations under the disciplinary
authority of the market and its quest for information.
I suggested previously that the adoption of internal con-
trol and risk management systems was seen as a sign of
moral self-regulation on the part of organizations. Yet the
two panelists from the Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants and the extract from the document published
by PwC appear by contrast to promote risk management
systems to the detriment of morality – the former, quite
straightforwardly and in a similar way to Milton Friedman,
by rejecting any humanistic and altruistic sensitivity that
might justify the adoption of socially responsible practices,
and the latter by carefully distinguishing between moral
action and the action of the markets. But let us not be de-
ceived. The moral action that is rejected here is a particular
kind of moral action. In Latourian terms, we might say that
what is rejected is a human kind of morality. Serving as
ef?cient instruments of this rejection, internal control
and risk management systems operate on the basis of a dif-
ferent moral framework – i.e. market morality founded on
the imperatives of economic rationality, adaptable to a lo-
gic of dissemination and reception of information, and
?rmly based on the capacity of social actors for self-
determination and self-regulation.
Ultimately, the mediating role of the accounting indus-
try in incorporating the rationality of the market into cor-
porate social responsibility practices is structured around
three main foci. The ?rst implies the production of codes
of conduct and standards enabling organizations to adopt
a pragmatic morality to suit a particular context. The sec-
ond involves the systematic introduction of stakeholder
consultation procedures enabling the responsibilization
and moral self-regulation of stakeholders in general and
of corporations in particular. Finally, the third is based on
the adoption of risk management and internal control sys-
tems viewed as a means of promoting responsibilization
and which rede?ne social responsibility as a matter of
information to be collected and communicated to the
market.
At the beginning of my analysis, I highlighted how pro-
fessional associations and accounting ?rms conceptualize
an economicized representation of corporate social and
environmental responsibility. I then showed how the
accounting industry performs an ef?cient mediating role
in applying and deploying the rationality of the market
within the social responsibility practices of organizations.
In Latourian terms, this mediating role is fundamentally
political since it contributes to actualizing the ‘constitu-
tional’ power imbalance between the world of objects
(the market) and the social and political world inhabited
by human organizations.
As a symbol of signi?cant political power, this involve-
ment and imbalance are also, according to Latour (2004),
symptomatic of the neutralization of the democratic appa-
ratus by experts. The underlying political dimension of the
expertise of professional bodies and accounting ?rms
therefore raises two key questions: (1) How is the vitality
of the democratic environment affected by the dissemina-
tion of the moral rationality of the market in organiza-
tions?, and (2) How can we rebalance the distribution of
power between humans and non-humans, and what place
should be given to experts in this process? Or to put it in
terms more in line with the speci?c focus of this paper:
How can CSR be made to become a more human issue
and what place should be given to experts and the
accounting industry in this humanizing process?
Discussion
Democracy via the market
In practice, the alignment of the criteria of social and
environmental responsibility with the rationality of the
market implies a utilitarian and instrumental vision of
business morality. At a political level, this alignment is
made possible by a ?exible regulatory framework based
on the capacity of organizations and individuals for self-
regulation, enabling the responsibility of judgment and
moral action to be delegated away from the central power
of the state.
In some sense, the transfer of responsibility from the
state to stakeholders may appear to be a positive outcome
at a democratic level. Democratic activity is not merely a
matter of electoral representation, but is also a matter of
participation. As noted by Arendt (1979, p. 218), ‘‘a free cit-
izen is a citizen who participates actively in the handling of
human affairs’’. The application of the principle of stake-
holder consultation thus represents the fundamental back-
bone of a deliberative democracy in which the main issue
is the de?nition of and compliance with an ethics of delib-
eration (Yuthas, Rogers, & Dillard, 2002). However, among
its major pitfalls, it also implies a possible conversion of
this process of deliberation into a source of legitimization
and maintenance of the dominant order. As noted by
Archel et al. (2011, p. 341):
Social movements often articulate isolated heretic dis-
courses which are all too easily absorbed into the dom-
inant discourse, conferring on the latter the appearance
[and the legitimacy] of broad social endorsement.
162 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
The apparent process of democratization implied by the
transfer of responsibility from the state to stakeholders is
thus constantly haunted by the threat of unequal power
relations between stakeholders required to engage in dia-
logue and to reach a consensus. The conditions of possibility
of this transfer, organizedunder the aegis of the moral ratio-
nality of the market, also contain within themthe seeds of a
signi?cant weakening of the democratic environment.
This weakening is manifested ?rst of all in the rein-
forcement of an individualistic framework of action. Stake-
holder self-regulation goes hand in hand with the almost
universal recognition of the right of individuals and groups
to freely organize their personal or community sphere, to
de?ne the content of their opinions, and more generally
to determine their lifestyles in line with their own partic-
ular interests. In many ways, this recognition represents
a considerable privilege and an advance of civilization.
However, critics argue that the darker side of individualism
also involves a centering on the self, which tends both to
?atten and to narrow our lives, making them poorer in
meaning, less concerned with society and largely unaware
of wider issues (whether social, political, or historical) that
transcend the self (Taylor, 1992). In other words, individu-
alism is not conducive to accepting sacri?ce or renuncia-
tion in favor of a horizon of meaning above the egoistic
self of individuals and/or organizations (Selznick, 2002).
In this respect, stakeholder self-regulation ensures the con-
ditions of exercise of greater freedom, but also causes a
greater fragmentation of the interests of individuals and
organizations to the detriment of the political, social or
ecological interests promoted by the collectivity. Thus, by
positing the capacity of organizations for responsibiliza-
tion, i.e. self-determination, and by de?ning the service
of shareholders’ interests as the ultimate goal of all deci-
sions, the moral rationality of the market limits the adop-
tion of socially responsible practices aimed at reducing or
sacri?cing the appetite for pro?t in the name of a higher
(social, political or historical) ideal.
When the structure of social arrangements and modes
of action are no longer founded on a horizon of meaning
that is external to and above the ego of individuals and
organizations, everything can be reconceived and rede-
?ned more easily according to the search for categorical
advantages. In other words, once the entities composing
the world lose the meaning and place assigned to them
by the collective objectives of a social and political order,
they are more easily converted into means subjected to
private ends. Instrumental reason – i.e. the rationality we
use when assessing the most effective means of achieving
a given end – therefore determines the new dominant
standard, with the associated fear that the decisions which
should be subject to other criteria will only be made in
terms of ef?ciency or cost-bene?t ratio (Taylor, 1992). In
this view, the instrumental foundation of the transfer of
social and environmental responsibility from the state to
corporations represents an additional factor weakening
the democratic apparatus. Faced with a social and political
problem, the moral technologies of corporate responsibili-
zation involve technical solutions such as the development
of risk management systems allowing moral issues to be
converted into information processing and communication
to market participants. The result is to subordinate socio-
moral corporate sensibilities to the calculus of possible
outcomes and to the typically self-interested criteria of
reputational-risk management (Power, 2007). For instance,
by complying with the criteria of the scorecard developed
by Deloitte (Fig. 2), we might easily conclude that arms
dealers accounting for their environmental action to their
shareholders, engaging in discussion with the populations
they trade with, and seeking to take account of the social
and ecological impact of their activities in the warzones
they supply deserve to be awarded the same high level of
social responsibility performance as a company dedicated
to economic solidarity in Sub-Saharan Africa. While some
may ?nd this conclusion absurd, it is perfectly in keeping
with the instrumental rationality of the market, which
makes us seek for technological solutions despite the fact
that the issue is of an altogether different nature.
Ultimately, the use of instrumental reason, combined
with individualism, causes a narrowing of the space of
political freedom. Since they are only too happy to desert
the political arena in order to concentrate on the pursuit
of their own particular interests, individuals and organiza-
tions adapt to the soft despotism of a regulatory apparatus
fragmented into a multitude of authorities prescribing
principles to be followed (i.e. guidelines) rather than rules
to be complied with, and counting on social actors’ poten-
tial for self-determination. The only defense against this,
Tocqueville argued, was an energetic political culture in
which citizen participation is greatly valued. In other
words, the force that might contain the galloping hege-
mony of instrumental reason is democratic initiative. In
this sense, modern democratic societies, with their pro-
tests and free initiatives, are still far from the soft despo-
tism portrayed by Tocqueville. Yet this apparent
democratic vitality conceals something that may pose a
far more serious threat than the fear of despotic control,
something that Charles Taylor designates as fragmentation
– implying people and organizations increasingly less
capable of forming a common purpose and of pursuing it
successfully. Fragmentation occurs when people ‘come to
see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise
put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in com-
mon projects and allegiances’ (Taylor, 1992, p. 112).
According to this view, what tends to emerge is a fear that
most social protests and challenges to authority come
more from stakeholders – ethnic minorities, followers of
certain religions or ideologies, the promoters of certain
speci?c interests – than from society as a whole. As a result
of such fragmentation, people and organizations struggle
to identify with their political society as a community. This
lack of identi?cation may re?ect an atomistic way of think-
ing in which organizations come to see society in purely
instrumental terms. Conversely, it may also foster atomism
since the absence of effective common action only serves
to throw organizations back on themselves.
Humanizing expertise
The construction of the market as an ‘obligatory passage
point’ of socially responsible action is the result of a
signi?cant effort of rationalization aimed at justifying the
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 163
emergence of a social and moral conscience in the business
world in the name not of altruistic feelings or political con-
victions, but of an economic and objecti?ed logic of pro?t-
ability, to which it would be unreasonable and
counterproductive for businesses not to adhere.
For Latour, the process of rationalization is the liberal
inheritor of a political modernity founded on a distinction
between facts, i.e. the world of non-humans and science,
and values, i.e. the world of politics and humans (Latour,
2004). This distinction is questionable since the anthropol-
ogy of laboratories has shown that it is not reason that
guarantees the triumph of a scienti?c truth. Rather, it is be-
cause and in spite of the fact that one is socially or politi-
cally victorious that one is imputed with an excess of
reason over one’s rivals (Latour, 1987). However, it is also
harmful at a democratic level since it implies placing con-
siderable power in the hands of experts entrusted with the
task of making the world of objects speak in order to deter-
mine the arrangement of economic, social or political rela-
tions accordingly. When this arrangement is organized on
the basis of the individualizing and instrumental rational-
ity of the market, democratic activity is also negatively
affected.
If one agrees with Latour, any reformof the way systems
of expertiseoperate implies rebalancingthe relationshipbe-
tween the world of humans and the world of non-humans
by resisting the excessive rationalization of the political
worldand explicitly politicizing the use of reasonin the pro-
duction and manipulation of non-human objects. In other
words, unless we adhere to an epistemologically ?ctitious
representation of the distinction between facts and values,
the need for political representation must apply equally to
humans and objects: ‘I only ask for a tiny concession: that
the question of democracy [and political representation]
be extended to non-humans’ (Latour, 2004, p. 294).
It is from this perspective that we need to view Latour’s
suggestion of bringing together the representatives of hu-
mans and non-humans within the same assembly or col-
lective and on an equal footing. Latour’s proposed
assembly has two ‘houses’. The ?rst, aimed at answering
the question ‘How many of us are there?’, is entrusted with
the task of listing the entire range of human or non-human
external realities peopling the world and that are con-
stantly emerging, transforming or disappearing as a result
of scienti?c and technical advances. The demand for exter-
nal reality, enabling non-humans to be made visible, im-
plies drawing up a long list of relevant representatives
authorized to speak on behalf of humans or non-humans.
The task of the second house, aimed at answering the ques-
tion ‘How can we live together?’, is to organize and develop
a hierarchy by taking account of the evolution of non-
humans and their different attachments or the type of rela-
tionships between each of the realities identi?ed in the
?rst house. Within the two houses, Latour de?nes the right
of experts to sit in the assembly based not only on their
technical or scienti?c competence in relation to the objects
of experience but also on their capacity to consider the hu-
mans attached to these objects.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to do justice to the
complexity of Latour’s political project – a project which
seems at any rate unlikely to result in an institutional
reform in the short or medium term. In addressing con-
temporary issues, the main contribution of Latour’s work
is not to be sought in the implementation of a radically
new and relatively complex institutional system. Its chief
contribution is its critique of the arbitrary rationalization
of political action and its effects on democratic systems.
This critique represents a signi?cant change of direction
in the ?eld of corporate social responsibility – a ?eld that
remains heavily marked by the Habermasian ideal of a hy-
per-rational dialogue among stakeholders (Archel et al.,
2011; Scherer and Palazzo, 2007) and which has the gen-
eral effect of relocating the management of this communi-
cation in the hands of all-powerful experts (in particular
the accounting industry) and of disqualifying or discredit-
ing anything that escapes this logic of rationalization, i.e.
choices or claims based on subjective human values rooted
in a moral, cultural, historical or even spiritual sense.
Politicizing the production and implementation of a so-
cially responsible business framework therefore implies
emphasizing two directions. First, to restore the political
dimension of the corporate social responsibility agenda,
it is important to ensure that it can be discussed within
an explicitly political arena by explicitly politicized stake-
holders. Until the Latourian project of agreeing on the def-
inition and assignment of a political status to experts (and
to accountants in particular) is realized, it will be up to the
elected members of national parliaments to regain control
of the responsibilization of the business world. Second, it is
impossible to conceive a political discussion without the
object of the discussion also being political. This presup-
poses (particularly for the accounting industry) a radical
revision of the moral technologies offered to ?rms by
addressing social responsibility issues more or at least as
much in terms of human values as in terms of instrumental
ef?ciency and information quality.
There are, of course, good reasons to view these sugges-
tions with pessimism. Faced with the globalized power of
expert ?rms, states are not currently in the healthiest con-
dition (Suddaby et al., 2007), while the instrumental ratio-
nality of the market has perhaps never been so in?uential
(Williams, 2010). However, the philosopher Charles Taylor
(1992) provides some cause for hope. Taylor reminds us
that at the beginning of the seventeenth century (at the
dawn of modernity), the scienti?c community was intent
on criticizing traditional Aristotelian science for failing to
contribute anything to the improvement of the human
condition. An alternative form of science was posited in
which the criterion of truth would be instrumental ef?-
ciency: ‘you have discovered something when you can
intervene to change things’. Therefore, the impulse toward
instrumental reason was not only epistemological, but also
moral – in the name of a principle of benevolent
responsibility toward others and society. Instrumental
reason implies its own moral foundations (Malsch &
Guénin-Paracini, 2012) and is not merely driven by an
excessive libido dominandi. However, captured by the spirit
of the market, it betrays its initial moral constitution by
appearing increasingly to serve the private ends of a great-
er control over, and a greater economicization of, nature
and the environment. Despite this historical tendency,
‘the return to richer moral principles that constitute its
164 B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168
foundation may show that there is no fatalism in this’ (Tay-
lor, 1992, p. 131).
Conclusion
Having reached the end of this paper, I am now in a po-
sition to provide some answers to the question ‘set aside’
by Power in his 1997 essay:
I have attempted to set aside questions of whether the
involvement of accountants [in social and environmen-
tal audit] is a good thing.
First, in considering the history of the accounting pro-
fession and its development, it is hardly surprising to ?nd
that professional associations and large ?rms have also be-
come involved in the effort to produce new information
disclosure standards and new assurance and certi?cation
services (Malsch & Gendron, 2013). Even if they are moti-
vated by commercial considerations, there is nothing ille-
gitimate about ?nancial audit experts wanting to transfer
part of their expertise into the sphere of social or environ-
mental auditing. In this sense, the interest and involve-
ment of the accounting industry in the construction of a
socially responsible ?eld of business is not problematic
or reprehensible as such. What is politically questionable
are the effects of the deployment of this expertise.
From this perspective, I showed that the accounting
industry plays an important role as a political mediator
by regulating the socially responsible practices of organi-
zations based on a rational and instrumental market logic
and by sidelining the moral dimension of human values
such as altruism and benevolence as a justi?cation for so-
cially responsible action. As a symbol of genuine political
power, the mediating role of the accounting industry is
conducive to the deployment of an individualistic and
instrumental moral rationality, reinforcing the fragmenta-
tion of the social body into a multitude of stakeholders and
undermining the prospect of a collective agreement on the
de?nition and protection of a common good such as the
preservation of natural resources or the maintenance of so-
cial protection for the most vulnerable groups in society.
At an institutional level, the main victim of this political
process of depoliticization and of the logic of regulation
and discipline is, without doubt, the state (Roberts,
2010). As noted by Sahlin-Andersson (2006, p. 567), ‘‘the
demand for socially responsible operations and the moni-
toring of these operations has increasingly been channeled
through organizations other than states, and the emphasis
favors a high proportion of self-regulation’’. As a result, we
have seen the emergence of corporate ‘‘soft law’’, encom-
passing voluntary codes of conduct and elaborate ranking
schemes and reporting initiatives (Knill & Lehmkuhl,
2002; Moran, 2002; Mörth, 2004). Soft law – which in-
volves little restriction and signi?cant self-regulation –
also prevails in international relations
11
, shaping the
architecture of major international treaties (Abbott & Snidal,
2000; Kirton & Trebilcock, 2004), whether it be a matter of
resolving armed con?icts, regulating global ?nance or pro-
ducing international accounting standards (Arnold, 2012).
From this point of view, the value of this paper extends
beyond the simple question of the involvement of the
accounting industry in the ?eld of social responsibility. All
the regulatory literature on soft law and the search for
foundations of normative action outside the state can
(potentially) be included in the stakeholder and political cri-
tique of my essay.
One of the essential conditions of the democratization
of expertise is the desacralization of the word of experts
in favor of an explicit reassertion of the intrinsically polit-
ical and human nature of the activity of knowledge pro-
duction. However, though necessary, this movement is
double-edged. The ideal of rationality is also an ideal of
freedom and autonomous thought in relation to cultural,
social or economic contingencies. It is easy to see the ben-
e?t that certain ‘obscurantists’ (groups or ideologies)
might derive from a signi?cant weakening of Reason as
an analytical and decision-making tool (Taylor, 1992).
The process of deconstructing the power of experts and
of ‘re-enchanting’ the social world requires much discern-
ment and presents many dangers.
Based on the epistemological model of the natural sci-
ences, critical sociology tends to study what society makes
of man (Bourdieu, 2004). By contrast, the originality of
pragmatic sociology – to which the work of Latour (Béna-
touïl, 1999) has belonged from the outset – involves refo-
cusing sociology on what man does and on what man
makes of himself and others, i.e. the actions undertaken
and performed by man and the discourses used and sup-
ported by man (Latour & Woolgar, 1979). In his political
analysis, Latour shows how political action is forced to ex-
press itself in the legitimate language of modernity (specif-
ically the language of market rationality), which tends to
marginalize those whose interests are expressed more in
terms of subjective human values and feelings. In calling
for a wider space of political representation, Latour’s impli-
cit aim is to help those whose social and political impo-
tence excludes them from of?cial debates. In this sense,
there is a clear critical dimension to Latour’s political pro-
ject – a project aimed at rooting out a structure of political
domination founded on the epistemological and liberal
heritage of modernity. The use of Latourian sociology is
not monolithic, and potential meeting-points with critical
sociology merit further development.
Ironically, far from merely colonizing the political
world, the scienti?c world has also become a victim of its
own veneration of the world of objects and of a style of ra-
tionalist research aimed exclusively at the production of
tangible and veri?able facts, discrediting the realm of
imagination with some degree of contempt (Clegg, 2006).
As noted by Morgan (1980, p. 610), ‘[m]etaphor is often re-
garded as no more than a literary and descriptive device for
embellishment, but more fundamentally is a creative form
which produces its effects through a crossing of images’.
Alvesson and Sandberg (2011, p. 257) picked up this line
of thought, arguing that it is possible to carve out assump-
tions by looking at the metaphors behind the metaphors
11
In the ?eld of international relations, soft law can be described as ‘‘a
self-contained regime of obligations that emerges out of the occasional
preference of states to reach nonbinding agreements and to model their
relations in ways that exclude the application of treaty or customary law’’
(Shamir, 2004, p. 645).
B. Malsch/ Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 149–168 165
used. ‘For example, behind the metaphor that conceptual-
izes organization as a political arena, one could imagine
different views of this arena, one being a parliamentary
democracy (with rules of the game) and another being
more like a jungle, where the political battles are less dem-
ocratic and rule bound’. Therefore, the metaphor of the
‘modern constitution’ used by Latour to describe the sepa-
ration of powers between the world of humans and the
world of non-humans should not be interpreted as the sign
of a poetic or romantic vision of reality. On the contrary, by
liberating itself from the constraints imposed on the col-
lective imagination by liberal modernity, it can act as a
potentially fertile source of counter-narratives, ‘as part of
a multiple and plural expression of sustainability in organ-
isations’ (Gray, 2010, p. 59).
Though a formidable enterprise that must go beyond
utopian naivety and the pragmatic status quo (Rorty,
1989), the normative position of this essay inevitably
raises the following question: What might a world in
which accounting expertise is more politicized look like?
In other words, the liberation of the imagination would
not be complete if I remained con?ned to the domain of
critique without seeking to outline some avenues for insti-
tutional reform (Clegg, 2006). While I recognize that the
three following propositions will not be realized in the
immediate (or near) future, I would argue, nevertheless,
that they are suf?ciently realistic and suf?ciently provoca-
tive to be worthy of political debate. The ?rst proposition
would involve requiring large accounting ?rms to be
accountable before a parliamentary committee on an an-
nual basis, during public hearings, for their involvement
(whether ?nancial, intellectual or professional) in the pro-
duction of ‘soft law’, the new regulatory framework of cor-
porate social responsibility actions. In addition to
accountability, a second avenue for reform would involve
requiring the various actors of the accounting industry to
produce a motion stating their vision of a socially respon-
sible business world by clearly outlining their conception
of the common good and of the means of achieving it.
These motions would be debated in parliament and would
be the object of a vote of con?dence, resulting in delega-
tions of power being granted to (or withheld from) profes-
sional orders or ?rms to act in the area of social and
environmental responsibility. Lastly, the politicization of
accounting expertise cannot be envisaged without consid-
ering how to transform the habitus of those exercising
such power (Malsch & Gendron, 2013). This process might
involve introducing political subjects in professional exam-
inations. The aim would be to promote awareness of the
political nature of accounting among future accountants.
Thus, instead of only testing technical knowledge, exams
would also include questions aimed at assessing the ability
of candidates to conduct social and political analyses of the
production and content of accounting standards.
Ultimately, this essay also suggests the need for further
research on three very contemporary political phenomena.
The ?rst phenomenon is the extraordinary resilience of
capitalism, which, despite the successive crises it has suf-
fered and the many challenges it faces, is only becoming
stronger and more legitimized. The resilience of capitalism
is indicative of its capacity to absorb and reformulate the
criticisms leveled against it in positive terms (Boltanski &
Chiapello, 2006). From this point of view, the mediating
role of the accounting industry in economicizing social
responsibility issues provides a striking illustration of the
absorption of critique and its reformulation.
The second phenomenon relates to the in?uence of the
instrumental rationality of the market, which represents a
challenge to the political authority of states, but may also
undermine some of their democratic foundations. At ?rst
sight, this might seem at odds with ‘‘the widely accepted
view that the era of liberalization was also one of democ-
ratization’’ (Roberts, 2010, p. 6). However, it is particularly
disturbing to see how easily the structures of the market
economy appear to adapt to the political structures of cer-
tain authoritarian regimes (Roy, 1994; Xu & Xu, 2008).
Fukuyama (1992, pp. 60–61) saw Robert Scalapino’s model
of ‘‘soft authoritarianism’’ (Scalapino, 1986) and its capac-
ity to combine a market-oriented economic system with ‘‘a
kind of paternalistic authoritarianism’’ as an increasingly
popular ‘‘potential competitor to Western liberal democ-
racy’’. In line with my argument, the apparent compatibil-
ity of marketization and non-democratic governance raises
the provocative question of whether trade or the large
accounting ?rms are a vehicle for democratic reform or
its opposite.
The third phenomenon is the emergence of a general
opposition to feelings such as benevolence and moral
sense in the study and management of economic behaviors
(Sen, 1987). In this sense, the only criterion to be followed
is the criterion of utility. At the beginning of his famous es-
say on the relations between morality and economics, the
Nobel prize-winning economist Sen (1987, p. 6) expressed
concern over this tendency:
It is hard to believe that real people could be completely
unaffected by the reach of the [moral] self-examination
induced by the Socratic question ‘how should one live?’
[. . .] It is possible that the people the economy studies
are truly unmoved by this penetrating question and
exclusively follow the rudimentary rigid line of reason-
ing that the modern economy attributes to them.
For accounting research, the challenge of utilitarianism
is therefore twofold. We need to resist the pressure to con-
duct exclusively useful research (i.e. research that is exclu-
sively ef?cient and economically pro?table) (Malsch &
Guénin-Paracini, 2012), but we also need to document
the effects of instrumental reason in contemporary society
and the role of the accounting industry and accountability
systems in its maintenance and diffusion.
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