Description
Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these
days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. Specifically,
it is often suggested that extant financial and management accounting practices embody a
rather restricted form of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities as
more than economic subjects. Against this backdrop, this paper raises the question of
whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable from an ethical point
of view. It does so by inquiring into the limits that the accountable self faces when giving
an account. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler, the paper describes the
accountable self as an opaque, exposed, and mediated self that is inherently limited in
its ability to give an account of itself. Because of these limits, we cannot expect demands
for accountability always to be fully met. The paper points to the ethical importance of recognizing
this limited nature of accountability and outlines possible ramifications of this
fact for practice.
The limits of accountability
Martin Messner
Department of Accounting and Management Control, HEC School of Management, 1, Rue de la Libération, F-78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France
a b s t r a c t
Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these
days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. Speci?cally,
it is often suggested that extant ?nancial and management accounting practices embody a
rather restricted form of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities as
more than economic subjects. Against this backdrop, this paper raises the question of
whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable from an ethical point
of view. It does so by inquiring into the limits that the accountable self faces when giving
an account. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler, the paper describes the
accountable self as an opaque, exposed, and mediated self that is inherently limited in
its ability to give an account of itself. Because of these limits, we cannot expect demands
for accountability always to be fully met. The paper points to the ethical importance of rec-
ognizing this limited nature of accountability and outlines possible rami?cations of this
fact for practice.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Calls for greater accountability from managers and cor-
porations are regularly voiced these days, both in the aca-
demic literature and in public discussions more generally.
To say that someone should be accountable for particular
events or actions is to hold certain expectations about
what this person or organization should be able and ob-
liged to explain, justify and take responsibility for (Cooper
& Owen, 2007). While discussions on accountability are of-
ten dominated by a concern for shareholders, in other in-
stances, demands for greater public accountability have
been framed more widely also to include stakeholders such
as employees, customers, or future generations. Further-
more, the demand for greater public accountability often
translates into a perceived need for tighter managerial con-
trols within ?rms. Recent corporate scandals seem to sug-
gest that managers should be subject to heightened
managerial accountability vis-à-vis their peers and
superiors.
In this paper, I raise the question of whether more
accountability is always and unambiguously desirable. De-
spite the widely shared calls for increased public and man-
agerial accountability, I will suggest that demands for
accountability may become so great as to be ethically
problematic for the person or organization that is expected
to give an account. There are, in other words, certain limits
to accountability that need to be acknowledged in order to
prevent accountability from turning into what Judith But-
ler calls ‘‘ethical violence” (Butler, 2005). This rather strong
and emotive expression refers to a form of accountability
that, in the name of ethics, forces the accountable self to
account for something which is very dif?cult or even
impossible to justify and which, in this respect, does ‘‘vio-
lence” to the accountable self.
Putting forward such an argument implies extending
and even challenging some of the positions set out in the
existing accounting literature. In accounting research, con-
cern for more accountability has been shared by those who
have criticized extant ?nancial and management account-
ing practices for contributing to what they see as a very
limited understanding of accountability (e.g. Gray, 2002;
McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nelson, 1993; Roberts,
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.07.003
E-mail address: [email protected]
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
1991, 1996, 2001, 2003; Schweiker, 1993; Shearer, 2002;
Young, 2006). A main tenet of this literature is that the
conventional language of accounting portrays human
beings as purely economic agents who relate to each other
through their self-interests alone. As a consequence,
accounting promotes a style of accountability that falls
short of our mutual responsibilities and our identities as
more than just economic subjects. This literature thus ech-
oes concern for the restrictive nature of contemporary
management and ?nancial accounting practice and for
the partial form of accountability relations that these prac-
tices imply. As a remedy, several authors have suggested
the introduction of more encompassing forms of account-
ability, as may be achieved through social and environ-
mental reporting practices (e.g. Gray, 2002; Shearer,
2002; Unerman & Bennett, 2004). It has also been proposed
that disembodied forms of accounting need to be comple-
mented with a situation-speci?c sensitivity for the ‘‘partic-
ular other” whose interests and values cannot be
appropriately accounted for by a system of general rules
or principles (e.g. Lehman, 1999; Roberts, 2003; Shearer,
2002). Overall, the main argument has been that account-
ing ‘‘needs to get beyond the constraints that have been
imposed on its language” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004,
p. 345), if it is to allow individuals and organizations to en-
gage in a less restricted, i.e. more comprehensive, way to
account to and for each other.
This paper does not deny that, in many situations, it is
reasonable to demand more accountability. It does, how-
ever, remind us that accountability itself may become a
problematic practice, if it does not acknowledge its own
inherent limits as an ethical practice. These limits are con-
stituted by the burden that accountability may place on
the accountable self who is expected to provide a convinc-
ing account even in situations where this is extremely dif-
?cult or even impossible.
Examples for how these limits to accountability work
upon the accountable self may be found in various con-
texts and they may assume different forms, depending on
what it is that constrains the ability to account for oneself.
Sometimes, the reasons why somebody has taken a partic-
ular course of action are not entirely clear to this person
herself, such as when a manager makes a decision in a
rather intuitive way. In such a case, accountability is lim-
ited by the opaque nature of a person’s experiences and
practical engagements. To which extent is it then ethically
justi?ed to compel the manager to provide a full account
for what she is not fully conscious of? In other cases, peo-
ple ?nd themselves exposed to situations of accountability
that they cannot easily argue away. If someone is subject to
a permanent need for justi?cation, then this can turn into a
burden that is ethically problematic insofar as the concern
for accountability ends up ‘‘colonizing” the conduct of the
accountable self. Finally, there are cases in which multiple
accountabilities act upon a manager or organization. If dif-
ferent stakeholders raise con?icting demands, then this re-
quires the accountable self to speak in ‘‘several languages
at the same time”. While a person’s failure to meet some
of the demands may be regarded as unethical, expecting
that person to measure up to multiple and con?icting
accountabilities is itself ethically questionable.
In cases like these, the demand for accountability is
likely to be experienced as something problematic. This
problematic nature also becomes evident in Sinclair’s
(1995) illuminating investigation into public sector man-
agers’ experiences of accountability. Sinclair shows that
the managers’ narratives on accountability feature two
types of discourses, which she calls ‘‘structural” and ‘‘per-
sonal”. While she speaks of ‘‘accountability” in both cases,
the ‘‘personal” notion of accountability actually seems to
point to the limits of accountability insofar as it re?ects
the experience of the dif?culties in measuring up to one’s
accountability:
‘‘Accountability in the structural discourse is spoken of
as the technical property of a role or contract, structure
or system. Territories are clear and demarcated, accoun-
tabilities uncontested [. . .]. In contrast, the personal dis-
course is con?dential and anecdotal. In this discourse,
accountability is ambiguous, with the potential to be
something that is feared or uplifting [. . .]. The personal
discourse functions to admit the risks and failures,
exposure and invasiveness with which accountability
is experienced” (Sinclair, 1995, p. 224).
While Sinclair provides interesting empirical material
on the experience of accountability, she does not really
theorize the reasons and consequences of this problematic
experience. Why are demands for accountability at times
perceived as invasive and ambiguous? And what does this im-
ply with respect to the ethical value of accountability? In this
paper, I set out to provide an answer to these questions.
Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler (2001,
2004, 2005), I argue that the accountable self is vulnerable
to accountability insofar as it is an opaque self that cannot
account for everything it has lived through; an exposed self
that experiences accountability as an intrusion into its own
practice; and a mediated self whose accounts have to rely
on a medium that is not of its own making. The vulnerabil-
ity of the accountable self implies that there are limits to
accountability as an ethical practice – in the sense that
too much accountability can become an ethically problem-
atic burden for the accountable self.
My analysis resonates to a large extent with Roberts’
(2009) recent inquiry into the ‘‘limits of transparency”.
Roberts also refers to Butler’s work, which he mobilizes
to critically re?ect upon the adequacy of transparency as
a form of accountability. He calls for an ‘‘intelligent” form
of accountability that does not exclusively rely on the
power to make things transparent, but acknowledges the
‘‘impossibility of this ideal of a self that is fully transparent
to itself and others” (p. 2). The main difference between
the present paper and Roberts’ (2009) work lies in its
scope. Whereas Roberts puts forward managerial and eth-
ical concerns over too much transparency, I inquire more
broadly into the problematic nature of too much account-
ability. I suggest that while the practice of giving and
demanding accounts contributes signi?cantly to our self-
understanding as morally responsible subjects (Schweiker,
1993), there is a need to be aware of the limits of account-
ability when compelling others to give justi?cation for
their behavior.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 919
The ideas put forward in this paper imply a new per-
spective on accountability and, as such, are directly rele-
vant to our understanding of the ethical dimension of
?nancial and management accounting practices. These
practices are a major means through which public and
managerial accountability is achieved in contemporary
organizations, and if one argues that accountability has
its ethical limits, then it follows that ?nancial and manage-
ment accounting practices equally need to be re?ected
upon in this respect.
This paper’s argument unfolds in the following way. The
following section describes how accountability, accounting
and ethics are fundamentally related to each other. The
subsequent section provides an overview of the critical lit-
erature on accountability, as outlined above, and explains
the main thrust of arguments put forward in this literature.
The blind spot identi?ed in this literature underpins the
main section of the paper, in which I theoretically elabo-
rate the idea of the limited nature of accountability and de-
scribe the accountable self as an opaque, exposed and
mediated self. In each case, examples are provided to illus-
trate the arguments. The ?nal section discusses how these
ideas may be used to inform practice in a way that
acknowledges both the need for accountability and its
inherent limitations.
2. Accounting, accountability and ethics
The notion of accountability is regularly drawn upon in
the accounting literature. While there are various disci-
pline-speci?c uses of this notion (Sinclair, 1995, p. 221),
the generic sociological meaning of accountability seems
to provide a common ground for most of them. Sociologi-
cally speaking, accountability denotes the exchange of rea-
sons for conduct. To give an account means to provide
reasons for one’s behavior, to explain and justify what
one did or did not do. Such accounts are provided in order
to render behavior intelligible and to ‘‘prevent con?icts
from arising by verbally bridging the gap between action
and expectation” (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p. 46). Social com-
munities feature norms which de?ne who is expected to
account for what, to whom and in which manner. The
sum of these implicit or explicit expectations regarding
the provision of accounts is usually referred to as ‘‘account-
ability” (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Accountability is a mor-
ally signi?cant practice, since to demand an account from
someone is to ask this person to enact discursively the
responsibility for her behavior.
This generic meaning of accountability underlies the
use of the notion in both the ?nancial and management
accounting literature. In the former, the focus is on ac-
counts that are disclosed to external shareholders and
the public. This can take various forms, such as pro?t and
loss statements, earnings announcements, or press state-
ments by the CEO. Instead of ?nancial accountability, it is
probably more appropriate to talk about ‘‘public account-
ability” (Sinclair, 1995), since the important characteristic
of these accounts is not their ?nancial nature but the fact
that their addressees are located outside the organization.
In management accounting, in contrast, the exchange of
accounts takes place within the organization or between
the organization and some of its contractual stakeholders
(e.g. customers, suppliers), often by means of reporting
and control routines in which costs, pro?ts, returns or
other management-related information are communicated
(see Ahrens, 1996; Roberts & Scapens, 1985). This is the
domain of ‘‘managerial accountability” (Sinclair, 1995).
In both cases, the focus may be more on the content of
accountability or on the social practice of giving and
demanding accounts.
1
Considering both the content and
the practice of accountability seems important when it
comes to understanding the ethical dimension of account-
ability. This is because ethical questions may not only
emerge with respect to the ‘‘what” of accountability, but also
with regards to the ‘‘how”. The ethics of accountability is not
only about the types of demands that the accountable self is
subject to; it is also about the way in which, and the extent
to which, such demands are raised.
An ethical question can emerge from the relationship
between an actor and someone else, and in its most basic
form, it takes the form of: ‘‘How should I act in this partic-
ular situation I am situated in?” (see Francis, 1990). Who is
directly affected by what I do, here and now? And who is
indirectly concerned, somewhere else and/or at some other
time? In other words, the ethical question relates to the tri-
angular relationship between oneself, particular others
(those who are present), and generalized others (those
who are absent). Like Adorno (2001), one may say that
the fundamental problem of ethics is ‘‘the problem of
how the general interest and the particular interests relate
to each other in the course of human interaction” (pp. 18–
19).
Ethical questions, in this sense, are closely related to so-
cio-political ones (see Parker, 2003). The latter are about
the way in which social relationships should be organized
more generally. Ethical questions mirror this general con-
cern, but do so in the context of a particular situation in
which one ?nds oneself in interaction with ‘‘concrete oth-
ers”. This implies that, whereas ethics is also about socio-
political questions, the same is not true the other way
round.
2
Ethical issues may get lost if one abstracts from
the concrete implication of individual persons or collective
actors.
It is important to note that the distinction between eth-
ical and socio-political questions does not mean that the
former only apply to individuals, while the latter concern
organizations (or societies). I agree with those who have
argued that organizations can be considered moral agents
and as such can be confronted with ethical questions.
3
In
this respect, the discussion of the ethics of accountability
presented below is relevant to both individual and collective
actors. Ultimately, however, I maintain that ‘‘responsibility
1
Similar to the way in which, for example, strategy may be looked at
from a perspective of content or of practice (see Chua, 2007).
2
The close connection between ethics and socio-political concerns
becomes clear in Section 5, in which I discuss how one may react to the
ethical challenges inherent in accountability.
3
There has been considerable debate on this issue, with some authors
arguing that organizations can and should be considered moral agents,
whereas others have denied this (see, e.g. Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006;
Donaldson, 1982; Soares, 2003).
920 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
must be assumed by the individuals within the corporation
in order for it to mean anything and for change to take place
if it is necessary” (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006, p. 238).
3. Critical perspectives on accountability
3.1. Socio-political and ethical perspectives
Several authors of accounting literature have consid-
ered accountability from what could be called a ‘‘critical”
perspective, highlighting the perceived socio-political
and/or ethical problems that particular forms of account-
ability may bring about. Two broad research streams may
be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the literature
on social and environmental accounting that emerged in
the 1960s in line with increased concern for the social
and ecological impacts of the capitalist economic system.
Three main themes have shaped the development of this
literature (Gray, 2002): the exploration and interpretation
of new, more widespread forms of accounting, such as so-
cial disclosures or environmental impact reports; the
examination of particular innovations and experiments in
social and environmental accounting; and the practical
engagement with organizations to encourage the creation
of new accountings.
The perspective on accountability taken in this litera-
ture largely re?ects the socio-political view outlined above.
Accountability has primarily been discussed in the context
of broader socio-political concern rather than as an ethical
practice. In line with this paper’s interest in ethical ques-
tions, I therefore do not discuss the literature on social
and environmental accounting in greater detail here, ex-
cept for one contribution to this literature that has been
heavily informed by ethical arguments (Shearer, 2002)
and, as such, has established a link to the second stream
of research. This second stream has emerged from a pri-
marily sociological concern for the nature of accounting
practice, of which Roberts and Scapens’ (1985) work was
one of the ?rst systematic expressions. Their main interest
was in ‘‘the intended and actual impact that the use of
accounting information has in shaping and maintaining
particular patterns of accountability within organisations”
(Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 448). More speci?cally, they
argued that accounting systems enable or even foster
‘‘more distanced forms of accountability” and a style of
management that rests upon control at a distance (Roberts
& Scapens, 1985, p. 451). As face-to-face contact becomes
less important, the possibility of negotiating the meaning
of accounts also withers. Since the image of organizations
produced by contemporary accounting practice can only
be a ‘‘partial, selective and potentially distorted re?ection
of the ?ow of events and practices that constitute organisa-
tional life” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 454), there is a risk
that this one-dimensional information comes to be taken
for the only relevant reality, while the ‘‘underlying physical
processes and social relationships are seen merely as a
means for realising” them (Roberts & Scapens, 1985,
p. 452).
In subsequent writings, other authors have elaborated
on, and in some respects challenged, the critical perspec-
tive inherent in this early work (e.g. Boland & Schultze,
1996; Laughlin, 1996; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nel-
son, 1993; Roberts, 1991, 2003; Shearer, 2002). Where
they concur is in their criticism of what they see as the
restrictive nature of extant accounting practice: the ‘‘privi-
leging of numbers and quanti?cation” and its domination
‘‘by the economic and in particular by the categories of
neoclassical economics” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004,
p. 342). Hence, arguments for how to make accounting bet-
ter measure up to our mutual responsibilities have focused
either on the content of accounts or on the procedure by
which accounts are produced.
3.2. Broadening the content of accounts
As to the content of accounts, there is, today, a rich lit-
erature on social and environmental accounting that has
suggested that external accounting should be extended to
cover more than just the economic output of the organiza-
tion (see Gray, 2002). Such a suggestion has also been put
forward by Shearer (2002) whose approach is of particular
interest for the purpose of this paper, as it is one of the few
contributions to the social accounting literature that is
explicitly rooted in ethics.
Shearer (2002) draws upon the work of Schweiker
(1993) and the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
in order to argue that accounting should move from an
‘‘accounting for-the-self” to an ‘‘accounting for-the-
other”. She adopts Levinas’ (1998) claim that our rela-
tionship to others, and thus our moral obligation to oth-
ers, comes before any ontological sense of having a
distinct identity as an autonomous self. Put another
way, ethics must always precede ontology, if we are to
take seriously the fact that we are always already ex-
posed to others and their demands before we can ac-
tively manage this relationship on the basis of our own
interests and demands. As a consequence, any concep-
tion of accountability needs to acknowledge this priority
of the other, because the ‘‘motive for being accountable
is never simple, unadorned self-interest. It entails a con-
stitutive relation to others beyond simple contractual
relations” (Schweiker, 1993, p. 245). To be accountable
means to be accountable to someone else, and to reduce
the notion of accountability to the justi?cation of one’s
own actions for one’s own sake is to misconstrue
accountability. But according to Shearer, this is precisely
what is happening today:
‘‘The constitutive impact of economic theory is thus to
construct identity such that it is obligated to no one
other than itself [. . .]. It is so because economic theory
constructs subjectivity and intersubjectivity such that
the moral obligation to others always already reduces
to the obligation to oneself” (Shearer, 2002, p. 558).
Thus, Shearer (2002) claims that economic discourse is
an inadequate basis for an ethics of accounting since,
broadly speaking, it portrays individuals as guided purely
by their self-interests and as being unaccountable to a
more comprehensive (social) good. Moreover, the discur-
sive description of accounting is constitutive of accounting
practice, as individuals come to internalize the model of
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 921
economic man and regard themselves and their relation-
ships to others in the restrictive terms of this model alone:
‘‘The problem is that the more the rationale of econom-
ics pervades our sense of ourselves as human subjects,
the more we begin to see ourselves, and our rights
and obligations in relation to others, in economic terms.
This in turn leads to a lack of demand for accountability,
except where one’s rights to ownership and free
exchange are at stake, and it serves to ensure that
where accountability is sought, the economics of self-
interested trade will be suf?cient to its discharge”
(Shearer, 2002, p. 565).
Shearer’s call for broader accountability rests on the
idea that accountability should start with the other rather
than with the self. The ultimate aim of accountability is to
measure up to the demands of the other, and this ethical
requirement should guide the reconstruction of formal sys-
tems of accounting. Here, Shearer points to various forms
of social, environmental and emancipatory accounting as
suggested in the literature. She concedes ‘‘there clearly is
no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled re-
sponse to the other that forms the genuine relation to
the other”, such that formal accounting systems will never
reach the ideal of an ethics of the other. ‘‘Yet accountants
can help to make our economic institutions more respon-
sive to the other, by seeking an accountability that formally
recognizes the obligation to the other – even if it does not
and cannot re?ect the originary relationship from which
this obligation derives” (Shearer, 2002, p. 570).
It is worthwhile to compare Shearer’s perspective with
the arguments put forward by Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001,
2003) and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). While these
scholars largely agree with Shearer’s critique of account-
ing, they are skeptical of the idea of establishing broader
standards or principles for accounting, which might com-
prise, for example, social and environmental reporting du-
ties. What they suggest is not so much a speci?c content of
accounts, but rather a different procedure of how accounts
should be produced and exchanged.
3.3. Enriching the procedure of accounting
Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001, 2003) has followed up on his
earlier work with Scapens (Roberts & Scapens, 1985) by
exploring in greater depth two ideal-types of accountabil-
ity, which he names hierarchical and socializing forms of
accountability. He argues that conventional accounting
practice produces a sense of the self that is detrimental
to our moral attitude towards each other. He associates
accounting with a hierarchical form of accountability, in
which individuals take it for granted that their value and
worth depends upon their position within the organiza-
tional hierarchy and upon the ful?llment of imposed targets.
In striving for acceptance and recognition, individuals are
drawn ‘‘further and further into conformity with the stan-
dards of utility upon which ‘success’ depends” (Roberts,
1991, p. 360). Internalizing these standards, the individual
comes to see herself as solitary and singular, being depen-
dent in her self-esteem on impersonal principles and rules.
‘‘These standards are ‘taken over’ and become the lens
through which we judge ourselves, and compare ourselves
with others” (Roberts, 1991, p. 362). Hierarchical forms of
accountability have an individualizing character, since they
promote a sense of the self that is preoccupied with achiev-
ing certain norms and standards and, at the same time,
induce the self to relate to others through the lens of these
categories alone. The concepts provided by accounting –
costs, pro?ts, returns, etc. – become the focal point for
individual efforts and for structuring relationships with
others. They become the reality on the basis of which
communication and organizational life is built.
Drawing upon Habermas’ (1987) distinction between
instrumental and communicative action, Roberts contrasts
the individualizing form of accountability with the more
socializing forms that cultivate dialogue and openness in-
stead of calculation and instrumental reason. A socializing
relation to others is characterized by a quest for mutual
understanding which goes beyond the giving and demand-
ing of accounts through formal categories, as provided by
accounting. Roberts argues that such socializing talk will
be possible in the relative absence of asymmetries of
power and in the context of face-to-face contact between
the persons involved. In these circumstances, people can
relate to each other informally, openly and without the
need to rush to a speci?c result. Socializing forms of
accountability thus foster a recognition of the self and of
others that is free from distortion by any imposed formal
de?nitions of the situation.
By using Habermas’ distinction between communica-
tive and instrumental action, Roberts clearly emphasizes
the procedural dimension of accountability instead of
arguing for a speci?c content of accounts. This emphasis
on procedure corresponds to skepticism regarding any ef-
forts to enforce accountability through ethical codes or so-
cial and environmental reports. According to Roberts, such
forms of stakeholder dialogue are often established in such
a way that they simply mirror established systems of
?nancial accountability (Roberts, 2003, p. 256). In other
words, they simply re?ect the narcissistic concerns of the
corporation to appear responsible. For what seems to be a
concern for-the-other is really just a concern ‘‘for how
the other sees the corporation” (Roberts, 2003).
‘‘What the creation of codes and associated reports
achieves, or attempts to achieve, is the repair of the cor-
porate ‘imago’. From this perspective the embrace of
ethics can be taken as an expression of corporate ego-
ism: a demand to be seen to be not only powerful but
also good” (Roberts, 2003).
Moreover, Roberts calls into question extant practices of
social and environmental reporting because they trump
concerns for local moral sensibility due to the incentive
‘‘to conform with distant interests, even if these now claim
to be ethical interests” (Roberts, 2003, p. 259). These dis-
tant interests are, in turn, already prefabricated and
accommodated to the available technologies of calculation
and measurement:
‘‘The problem with ethical disciplinary mechanisms –
for a new ‘triple bottom line’ accountability – is that
922 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
we will only ever discover here what we think to look
for, and even then we will only be able to ‘see’ with such
technologies in the way of seeing that they make possi-
ble. So only what is amenable to quanti?cation can be
seen; I have to identify and then count and measure
what can only ever be proxies for what I am looking for”
(Roberts, 2003, p. 261).
As an alternative approach to achieving corporate social
responsibility, Roberts points to the importance of the per-
sonal encounter with the other, with the face and voice of
‘‘those most vulnerable to the effects of corporate conduct”
(Roberts, 2003, p. 263). Only on the basis of close proximity
may the relationship to others be enacted in a responsible
way.
McKernan and MacLullich (2004) have taken a similar
approach and have stressed the procedural aspect of
accountability by arguing that the moral claims of account-
ing must be grounded mainly in communicative reason.
Like Roberts, they assume a rather critical position with re-
gard to ready-made solutions of ethical codes or social and
environmental reporting:
‘‘By articulating the nature of our obligation to the
other, that demand is domesticated and rendered in
our terms. In the case of social accounting this render-
ing of the other into sameness occurs even before any
demand is heard. Such new accountings will capture
only what they look for and, in general, what they can
quantify” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, pp. 343–344).
Where they depart from Roberts’ view is with respect to
the possibilities and limits of communicative reason as
envisaged by Habermas. Although McKernan and MacLul-
lich acknowledge the emancipatory potential of a rational
discourse, they also point to the limitations of discourse
ethics as a basis for recovering the moral dimension of
accounting. They diagnose a rational bias in Habermas’
conception of communicative reason and criticize the ab-
sence of any reference to the role that affection, emotion,
and situated judgment (should) play in social life. McKer-
nan and MacLullich (2004) suggest enriching the language
of accounting with ‘‘the creative potential of poetry and
emotion” (p. 345), and add that ‘‘[w]e must even allow
the excessive language of love to be introduced into ac-
counts and into the narrative constitution of corporate
agents” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004). What this can
mean in practice remains somewhat unclear, however.
These scholars seem to be arguing that people and corpo-
rations should have more discretion and freedom in the
way they narrativize themselves, but the elaboration of
this proposition also remains rather vague:
‘‘Firms must be given a degree of freedom to de?ne
their own identities and consequently their responsibil-
ities. They must be allowed to be co-authors of them-
selves, in complex temporal relations with others.
Only in the nexus of creative language and action can
corporate entities come to write the histories within
which they feature both as agent and sufferer, subject
and object, and through which they may ultimately
emerge as responsible agents” (McKernan & MacLullich,
2004, p. 344).
Despite important differences in their arguments, as
discussed below, there is a basic similarity between the
perspectives adopted by Shearer (2002), Roberts (1991,
2003), and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). All three ap-
proaches seem to be motivated by the idea that the most
responsible way to account for each other, and thus the
ethically best form of accountability, would be one in
which there were no constraints in accounting for each
other’s demands. Each scholar argues that accounting
needs to be freed from the constraints that have been im-
posed on its language, and each mobilizes the ?gure of
‘‘the other” and its demands for accountability in order
to support this argument. In the case of Shearer (2002),
the obligation to the other translates into a call for ‘‘an
enhanced social reporting for employee groups, custom-
ers, suppliers, and other parties” (Shearer, 2002, p. 568).
Roberts (1991, 2003) and McKernan and MacLullich
(2004) go even further by suggesting that alternative
forms of accounting, such as social and environmental
reportings, are themselves insuf?cient and problematic
insofar as they are distant and standardized forms of
accountability that cannot really capture the demands of
those addressed.
This latter point, I believe, illustrates some of the dif?-
culties that overemphasis on the demands of ‘‘the other”
ultimately entails. While Shearer (2002) starts out from
an idealistic philosophical position that champions the ?g-
ure of ‘‘the other”, she actually concludes her paper by tak-
ing a rather pragmatic perspective – calling for an increased
use and importance of social and environmental reporting
that would provide more than just economic accountabil-
ity. In contrast to what Roberts and McKernan and MacLul-
lich suggest, I would argue that this pragmatic shift should
not be seen as a weakness but rather as a strength in her
approach. Why?
First, it seems to me that the idea of accounting having
to ful?ll the ‘‘absolute obligation to the other” (McKernan
& MacLullich, 2004, p. 356) must necessarily remain ideal-
istic. How could such an idea, for example, be enacted in
the context of widely dispersed stakeholders (‘‘others”)?
Can one reasonably expect organizations to talk and listen
to all the others out there? Shearer’s call for more social
and environmental reporting is certainly more realistic in
this respect and, thus, more explicit in terms of the practi-
cal consequences that follow from her theoretical analysis.
Second, problematizing a pragmatic form of accounting as
being ‘‘an expression of corporate egoism” (Roberts, 2003,
p. 256) or as an unjusti?able reduction ‘‘of the other into
sameness” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 344) seems
to me questionable. Standardization and quanti?cation
are not intrinsically problematic in ethical terms; rather,
they are necessary forms of complexity reduction without
which little could be achieved in practice. They may be-
come problematic, but likewise, they can be very effective
forms of accounting for different interests. Similarly, there
is no essential relationship between social and environ-
mental forms of accounting, on the one hand, and corpora-
tions’ impression management, on the other hand: it may
be the case that some corporations just act out of egoism
when voluntarily extending their reporting duties; but to
turn this into a general critique of such forms of accounting
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 923
seems unjusti?ed. Finally, and most importantly for this
paper, the focus on the demands of the ‘‘other” ultimately
suggests that the ethical dimension of accountability is re-
garded in one direction alone, namely with respect to the
person or group to be accounted to. The ethical signi?cance
of demanding an account is thereby ignored, although the
‘‘demand side” is as constitutive of the performance in-
volved in accountability as the ‘‘supply side”. Can we safely
assume that all kinds of demands for accountability are
ethically justi?ed? Or do we need to allow for the possibil-
ity that some demands may put too much burden on the
one expected to give an account? By proposing to free
accountability fromits constraints, the above scholars have
not considered whether there are any limits to account-
ability that may be necessary because they have ethical
value for the subject that is accountable. Shearer’s prag-
matic approach is, in this respect, the most advanced
one, because it explicitly takes into account the need for
a practical solution that can be implemented in practice.
What I think should be added to this is the ethical dimen-
sion of such a realistic solution. Demanding something
that is unrealistic is also ethically problematic. It is for this
reason that I now take a closer look at the limits of
accountability.
4. The limits of accountability
4.1. Narrative capacity and its constraints
My elaboration on the limits of accountability builds
upon the work of Judith Butler, which so far has not in?u-
enced critical accounting research to the same extent as
the writings of other philosophers (see Roberts, 2009). In
one of her recent books, however, which is dedicated to
the practice of giving an account, Butler (2005) herself
draws upon ‘‘various philosophers and critical theorists”
(p. 21), some of which, such as Levinas or Foucault, have
featured quite prominently in the accounting literature.
4
Although Butler does not claim to synthesize the ideas of
the scholars she draws upon, she maintains that ‘‘each the-
ory suggests something of ethical importance that follows
from the limits that condition any effort one might make
to give an account of oneself” (Butler, 2005).
Butler acknowledges that the practice of giving an ac-
count is a major means of enacting one’s responsibility
(see Schweiker, 1993). An account is a type of narrative
and, as such, it ‘‘depends upon the ability to relay a set of
sequential events with plausible transitions” and ‘‘draws
upon narrative voice and authority, being directed toward
an audience with the aim of persuasion” (Butler, 2005, p.
12). Therefore, ‘‘narrative capacity constitutes a precondi-
tion for giving an account” (Butler, 2005). Can we expect,
however, that one’s conduct can always be fairly repre-
sented and justi?ed in narrative form? Here, Butler takes
a skeptical position by arguing that ‘‘there is a limit to what
the ‘I’ can actually recount” (2005, p. 66). In other words,
we cannot reasonably expect that we can always know
and speak the truth, since ‘‘the ‘mineness’ of a life is not
necessarily its story form” (Butler, 2005, p. 52). As a conse-
quence, if moral judgments rely on howwell we can render
our behavior intelligible through language, then a failure in
our ability to account for ourselves may not only be due to
a lack of responsibility; it may equally stem from our
incomplete understanding of ourselves for which we are
not necessarily responsible.
Moreover, the ‘‘success” of a narrative is not simply a
matter of an individual’s ability to know oneself. Rather,
a narrative has to be addressed to someone who has to
acknowledge it, and it needs to follow some rules that
make it understandable as a narrative. Besides the narra-
tive capacity of the narrator, there are thus two further fac-
tors that in?uence the giving of an account:
‘‘An account of oneself is always given to another,
whether conjured or existing, and this other establishes
the scene of address as a more primary ethical relation
than a re?exive effort to give an account of oneself.
Moreover, the very terms by which we give an account,
by which we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves
and to others, are not of our making. They are social
in character, and they establish social norms, a domain
of unfreedom and substitutability within which our
‘singular’ stories are told” (Butler, 2005, p. 21).
The existence of an addressee and of some social norms
regulating recognition implies that the act of recognition is
equally an act of transformation for the self. ‘‘One is com-
pelled and comported outside oneself” (Butler, 2005, p.
28) and cannot but build upon the structure of the address
and the norms mediating this address in order to make
oneself comprehensible and recognizable. It is this need
to go beyond oneself in accounting for oneself that Schwe-
iker (1993) refers to when talking about the ‘‘doubleness in
identity” (p. 240). In his re?ection on the moral signi?-
cance of accounting, Schweiker argues that, in the act of
giving an account, we experience a movement away from
ourselves that, somewhat paradoxically, simultaneously
brings us closer to ourselves. When we account for our ac-
tions and beliefs, we take the position of a third person
and, in so doing, enact a distance between ourselves as
‘accountants’ and ourselves as the object of our accounts.
Therefore, in the moment of accounting for ourselves, we
may experience a gap between who we are and what we
do, and the discursive portrayal thereof – a gap that may
evoke feelings of otherness, such as manifested in
estrangement, pride or shame. This gap not only derives
from the fact that we talk about ourselves, but also from
the social conditions which structure such talk: the norms
to which we subscribe, and the exposure to some other
person whom we are to address.
If both the presence of an addressee and the existence
of social norms mediating this address impact the act of
giving an account, the question needs to be raised of
whether the person accounting for him or herself can be
expected to do so in an ‘autonomous’ way. To what extent
is the account that one gives one’s own account, and to
what extent does it rely on the role of the addressee and
on the social norms mediating the scene of address? Again,
as in the case of a limited understanding of oneself, these
4
The book is an extension of an earlier published paper (Butler, 2001).
924 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
conditions seem to point to several limits to accountability
that result from the very nature of the act of giving an ac-
count. If there are indeed such limits, then it seems that
accountability cannot easily be regarded as the ultimate
expression of responsibility. Although Butler does not
explicitly say so, I think that three different limits to
accountability that feature in her text can be identi?ed.
These are located (1) in one’s own opacity to oneself, (2)
in the inevitable exposure to an addressee, and (3) in the
modes of rationality mediating the address.
4.2. Opaque selves
The ?rst constraint upon every account of oneself is
grounded in those areas of the self and its conduct that re-
main foreign to the self. This foreignness marks a limit to
every effort to know oneself and therefore restricts one’s
ability to tell a full story of oneself. Butler (2005, p. 20)
speaks of an ‘‘opacity” that lies at the heart of every indi-
vidual and that escapes knowledge and narration. It is part
of ourselves, of our experience and our behavior, but we
cannot fully account for it, because it is at the same time
not part of ourselves. Therefore, I cannot explain every-
thing I have done, and I cannot tell a coherent story of
who I am and what I have experienced because my experi-
ence and conduct have not been motivated exclusively by
my conscious efforts and deliberations and because the
minutiae and complexity of what happens will often ex-
ceed my recognition and memory.
Butler resorts to psychoanalysis and, more speci?cally,
to the dif?cult task within transference of bringing to the
fore the unconscious. While one may argue that ‘‘the nor-
mative goal of psychoanalysis is to permit the client to tell
a single and coherent story about herself that will satisfy
the wish to know herself” (Butler, 2005, p. 51), Butler is
critical of such a view. She maintains that the unconscious
cannot be narrated and turned into conscious knowledge.
The idea that the unconscious can be transformed into
re?ective articulation is ‘‘an impossible ideal, and one that
undercuts one of the most important tenets of psychoanal-
ysis” (Butler, 2005, p. 58). Therefore, fully articulate
expression of one’s experiences cannot be the ultimate
goal of psychoanalytic work, and the analyst must ?nd
other ways to help the client master the unconscious than
by narrative reconstruction. This is not to say that narra-
tives do not play an important role in making sense of
one’s life, but to warn against the idea of some ‘‘hyper-
mastery” of oneself through narration (Butler, 2005, p.
52). ‘‘In any event, it does not follow that, if a life needs
some narrative structure, then all of life must be rendered
in narrative form” (Butler, 2005).
Contemporary social theory offers a related but some-
what different way of framing this issue. Here, opacity
about one’s actions emerges in the form of ‘‘tacit knowl-
edge” (Polanyi, 1983) or ‘‘practical consciousness” (Gid-
dens, 1984), i.e. a component of agency that cannot really
be expressed discursively and therefore exceeds the do-
main of discursive rationalization or accountability. As
Wittgenstein (1975, §217) puts it, there is a limit to justi-
fying a given practice, such that at one point, one will be
inclined to say: ‘‘This is just how I act”. Going even further,
phenomenologists and actor-network theorists have sug-
gested that what actors do can only partly be explained
by recourse to their intentions or will (Latour, 2005;
Rachel, 1994). To a considerable degree, action is moti-
vated by something that is external to the individual actor.
As Latour (2005, p. 50) says, ‘‘the most powerful insight of
social sciences is that other agencies over which we have
no control make us do things”. In other words, my own ini-
tiative ‘‘is in a certain way not my initiative” (Waldenfels,
1995, p. 121), and this foreignness at the heart of agency
raises doubts about the demand to account for one’s con-
duct as if this conduct were solely the product of one’s
own making.
5
Yet, the active component of agency, in the form of a
decision or a judgment, is likewise subject to limits of ratio-
nalization that challenge the possibilities of accountability.
A decision or judgment, Derrida (1992, 2007) argues, al-
ways happens when calculative logic comes to its end. A
decision is decisive insofar as it cannot be derived from
any knowledge. It may be based on knowledge (and often
should), but at one point, there will be the need to go be-
yond this knowledge and to take the risk of making a deci-
sion. A decision is like a leap into the dark in this respect. It
must ‘‘go through the ordeal of the undecidable”, for other-
wise ‘‘it would not be a free decision, it would only be the
programmable application or unfolding of a calculable pro-
cess” (Derrida, 1992, p. 24).
Whether an action is grounded in tacit knowledge, in an
incalculable decision, or in intuition and impulse,
6
the con-
sequences for accountability are similar. These forms of
opacity introduce a limit to what can be accounted for by
means of rational argumentation. If there is a gap between
‘‘life” and the account of this life, the practice of accounting
for one’s life cannot measure up to what is accounted for.
This, in turn, means that if one extends the sphere of
accountability beyond such limits, this will result in an
‘‘ethical burden” for the subject, insofar as the latter will
5
Of course, we must not confuse sensitivity towards this opacity with
the much stronger claim that nobody can be held accountable for what
he or she does. We are confronted here with the dif?cult but important
distinction between ‘causes’ and ‘conditions’ of action. In a very careful
re?ection on the public debate in the US after 9/11, Butler (2004) points
out that we must try to understand the conditions for terrorism without
simply justifying terrorist acts through these conditions. The insight that
people act under the in?uence of conditions does not free them from
their individual responsibilities; but inquiring into the conditions
remains the only way to in?uence individual behavior in a non-violent
way.
6
See Adorno (2001, p. 7) for the example of moral impulses. A moral
impulse, Adorno says, ‘‘introduces something alien into moral philosophy,
something that does not quite ?t” when measured against the ideal of
argumentative reasoning (Adorno, 2001, p. 8). These limits of theory are the
limits to justi?cation of one’s actions and decisions by means of rational
argumentation. Interestingly, the problem of theorizing is also re?ected in
the social accounting literature. As Gray (2002) has pointed out, there is a
relative absence of papers that report on practical engagements in the ?eld
and that offer theoretical underpinnings for particular types of accountings.
One explanation that Gray offers is the dif?culty of ?nding a substantial
justi?cation for new forms of accounting which are often deemed
important simply on the basis of a conviction or moral impulse. ‘‘How
might one write up such things? How can one provide some justi?cation
for ad hoc, pragmatic and, at times, entirely intuitive choices?” (Gray, 2002,
p. 702.)
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 925
be obliged to account for something that is dif?cult or
impossible to rationalize.
To be sure, there are procedures in organizations
through which decisions or judgments are linked to calcu-
lative practices and thereby become more amenable to
accountability. Burchell, Clubb, Hopwood, Hughes, and
Nahapiet (1980, p. 15) refer to this as the ‘‘extension of
computational practice into the realms of the judgemental
domain”:
‘‘To a large extent, computational practices have been
developed which can complement, if not replace, the
exercise of human judgement. Accounting has been
implicated in the design and implementation of many
of these changes in management practice. The increas-
ing formalization of investment appraisals and planning
processes has increased the sphere and extent of ?nan-
cial calculation. On occasions the ?nancial risks and
uncertainties which were important foci for managerial
judgement are now being quanti?ed, with the decisions
taking more of a computational form” (Burchell et al.,
1980, pp. 15–16).
But even the most ‘‘truthful” NPV analysis does not
free a manager from the responsibility to make a decision,
since ‘‘[t]he burden of decision making always exceeds in
complexity whatever guidelines we develop” (Schweiker,
1993, p. 249). Granted, such analysis can help a manager
defend her choices when being questioned, and having
estimated costs and bene?ts is certainly better in such a
case than not having them. But do we not also assume
that ‘‘exceptional managers” or ‘‘leaders” should not
blindly rely on such forms of calculation? To critically re-
?ect upon them and be prepared to question their valid-
ity? Or even to act contrary to what the calculations say?
In an interesting paper on the ethics of entrepreneurship,
Brenkert (2009) observes that entrepreneurs (and entre-
preneurial managers) are supposed to be ‘‘rule breakers”
that act contrary to conventional wisdom. At the same
time, he observes, they are often blamed for (moral) mis-
conduct if things go wrong. Brenkert suggests that since
rule breaking is a constitutive element of entrepreneur-
ship, there must be some ‘‘moral leeway” when judging
the behavior of entrepreneurs. He gives the example of
a manager not having her superior’s permission to con-
tinue working on a particular project, but nevertheless
does so, because she ‘‘thinks that the project has great va-
lue and that her supervisor simply does not see its
potential” (p. 7). In such a case, moral forgiveness may
be warranted, given that there is an expectation that
the manager behaves in an ‘‘entrepreneurial” manner.
Brenkert concludes that
‘‘one of the features of entrepreneurs that enables them
to become successful is their commitment to and
enthusiasm for their projects. This colors their judg-
ments with strongly positive, and often times exagger-
ated, representations of their businesses and projects.
Such representations frequently play an important role
in their persuasion of others to go along. Far from any
attempt to arrive at an objective, rational account of
their project, they are committed to and enthusiasti-
cally biased on behalf of their projects. In fact, these
projects may only succeed due to such commitment”
(p. 11).
‘‘Commitment” and ‘‘enthusiasm” are things that are
dif?cult to rationalize and thus cannot easily inform an
account that one has to give. At the same time, they seem
accepted or even demanded, even more so in a competitive
context in which ‘‘abnormal” or ‘‘excess” returns have be-
come the norm. Are not such excess returns only achiev-
able if one goes beyond the conventional mechanisms of
calculating and protecting against uncertainty? If one ‘‘?rst
breaks all the rules”, as Buckingham and Coffman (1999)
suggest in their bestselling book?
In this respect, it is noteworthy that there are differ-
ences in how opacity is taken into consideration in prac-
tice. Requirements as to how to account for one’s action
tend to differ according to whether the outcome of the
action is positive or negative. Managers of successful
organizations, for example, are often held in high esteem,
even if they cannot really account in detail for the actions
they took in order to steer their organizations along the
road to success. Quite regularly, notions such as ‘intui-
tion’ or ‘feeling’ are used to make sense of what the man-
ager herself cannot suf?ciently explain. In contrast, there
is usually less understanding of such opacity in cases of
failure. When things go wrong, somebody tends to be
made accountable and reference to one’s feelings or
intentions usually does not help justify the negative
outcome.
7
There are other contexts in which opacity arguably
plays a less dramatic but still relevant role. Anderson-
Gough, Grey, and Robson (2001) describe the socialization
of junior auditors in audit ?rms and, more speci?cally, the
way in which the auditors learn to become concerned
about using their time productively. Audit ?rms use time
sheets to record how employees spend their working
hours. The scholars explain that trainees and managers
in their case companies had to ‘‘account for every six
minutes of the day” and would spend some time each
morning ?lling in the minutes recorded for the previous
day (p. 113). Not surprisingly, trainees often had prob-
lems accounting for their time in such a detailed way.
Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) quote one junior auditor
as saying:
‘‘I usually do it every morning. I write my diary, what
I’ve done, it’s just automatic now, some days it just
doesn’t add up. I know I’ve been in from 8 o’clock until
7
This observation seems to be supported by ?ndings from experimental
and archival studies in decision-making and accounting, respectively. In an
experimental setting, Tan and Lipe (1997), for example, ?nd that experi-
enced subjects do not pay attention to controllability of outcomes in the
case of a positive outcome, while they do so in the case of a negative
outcome. In other words, when the outcome is positive, whether the
outcome was controllable is not viewed as important; in contrast, when the
outcome is negative, appropriate justi?cation becomes crucial. Bettman
and Weitz (1983), in their analysis of Letters to Shareholders, point in a
similar direction when they ?nd that causes for unfavorable company
performance are likely to be explained in more depth than causes for
favorable performance. Here, shareholder demands for justi?cation of
negative performance are anticipated by the management.
926 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
6 o’clock and I haven’t even got seven and a half hours
to charge and I don’t know where it’s gone” (p. 113).
If time ‘‘doesn’t add up” and one doesn’t ‘‘know where
it’s gone”, then there is a problem of accountability.
Granted, this is perhaps an extreme example in the sense
of a very detailed demand for accountability, and it is a
case where ‘‘making up” the records is probably, to some
extent, tolerated. However, extreme cases often serve well
to convey an idea that can be of broader relevance (see Fly-
vbjerg, 2001). The salient point here is that detailed de-
mands for accountability, which ignore the opaque
nature of the self, may easily induce ‘‘creative” forms of
accounting. They confront the subject with a dilemma:
either to suffer criticism for not meeting the demand for
accountability or to make up a story to provide an accept-
able account.
8
The way in which companies such as GE ex-
celled in the past at managing their earnings (see Macintosh,
2002, p. 71) is an example of the second option: trying to ap-
pear consistent and in full control of one’s business, even if
this actually means being very creative. From there, it is only
a small step to more manipulative, or even fraudulent, acts
(see Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2008). This is not
to say that such acts are always and necessarily linked to
an overbearing demand for accountability – in many cases
they are motivated simply by greed or other unethical atti-
tudes. Nonetheless, it remains important to acknowledge
that obliging someone to provide a consistent and convinc-
ing account may be unhelpful when seeking to induce more
responsible behavior.
4.3. Exposed selves
Opacity is grounded in what remains ‘‘foreign” to the
self and, as such, limits the ability of the self to provide a
full account of its being in the world. Another type of for-
eignness explains why the accountable self should also
be regarded as an exposed self. This kind of foreignness
originates in the part that the addressee plays in the
accountability relationship. It has often been pointed out
that, in narrating my story to someone else, I not only com-
municate information to this person, but the narration also
has a constitutive quality for me since it serves to construct
an intelligible identity as an accountable person (Hines,
1988; Schweiker, 1993). As Butler puts it:
‘‘I do not merely communicate something about my
past, though that is doubtless part of what I do. I also
enact the self I am trying to describe; the narrative ‘I’
is reconstituted at every moment it is invoked in the
narrative itself. That invocation is, paradoxically, a per-
formative and non-narrative act, even as it functions as
the fulcrum for narrative itself. I am, in other words,
doing something with that ‘I’ – elaborating and posi-
tioning it in relation to a real or imagined audience –
which is something other than telling a story about it,
even though ‘telling’ remains part of what I do” (Butler,
2005, p. 66).
The act of accounting for oneself thereby co-constitutes
the self, rather than merely communicating information
about the self. Such identity shaping begins from the mo-
ment a demand for accountability is formulated, a demand
to which the accountable self is expected to answer. As an
accountable self, I always ?nd myself already in a situation
in which a demand has been formulated. And once I start
to give an account, I have accepted the situation I am in
as a legitimate one and cannot reasonably question it as I
go on. I cannot claim to account and at the same time argue
that there is no need to account. Once I account, I have en-
tered the logic of accountability, implicitly agreeing that
there is a legitimate need to give an account. My narrative
performance builds upon an exposure to somebody else
and I cannot account for this exposure within my narra-
tion. My narration
‘‘is an action in the direction of an other, as well as an
action that requires an other, in which an other is pre-
supposed. The other is thus within the action of my tell-
ing; it is not simply a question of imparting information
to an other who is over there, beyond me, waiting to
know. On the contrary, the telling performs an action
that presupposes an Other, posits and elaborates the
other, is given to the other, or by virtue of the other,
prior to the giving of any information” (Butler, 2005,
pp. 81–82).
Of course, I can interrupt my narration and try to
negotiate the terms that de?ne my duties to account.
But I cannot go back behind my original exposure to the
situation. Even if I deny giving any account, my exposure
to the addressee means that my denial to give an account
may be interpreted as an account. In other words, I can-
not not account, once I am exposed to a situation in
which somebody demands that I account. The situation
confronts me with a demand ‘‘to which I cannot but
respond”. For even ‘‘[n]ot to respond is to respond”
(Waldenfels, 1995, p. 121).
In fact, this is precisely what Levinas has in mind when
arguing that ‘‘even if I deny my primordial responsibility
to the other by af?rming my own freedom as primary, I
can never escape the fact that the Other has demanded
a response from me before I af?rm my freedom not to re-
spond to this demand” (1986, p. 27; quoted in Shearer,
2002, p. 560). Like Butler, both Shearer (2002) and Roberts
(2003) build upon Levinas’ notion of a ‘‘passivity before
passivity” which re?ects the unintentional exposure of
the self to others. However, they draw a somewhat differ-
ent conclusion than what seems to be implied in Butler’s
arguments.
Shearer and Roberts focus on the idea that the primary
exposure to the other requires us to account to this person,
instead of accounting simply for ourselves. Accordingly,
our responsibility for-the-other goes beyond our contrac-
tual obligations, which are based upon our self-interest.
While Shearer (2002, p. 570) admits that ‘‘there clearly is
no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled re-
sponse to the other that forms the genuine ethical relation
to the other”, she still maintains that we can at least try to
improve our formal systems of accountability to better
measure up to our mutual responsibility.
8
A third option is to negotiate away the demand. I discuss this further in
a later section.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 927
Butler (2005) is in line with Shearer and Roberts when
she argues, ‘‘responsibility is not a matter of cultivating a
will, but of making use of an unwilled susceptibility as a
resource for becoming responsive to the Other” (p. 91).
However, she also argues that since the self is exposed to
the other, one cannot expect the self to account fully for
this exposure. While the self is responsible because of the
exposure, it cannot really account for this exposure. In a
sense, the responsibility that the self has to assume when
being confronted with the other is a ‘burden’ that the self
cannot negotiate away. If the self decides to account prop-
erly to the other, we therefore need to have in mind that it
was in some respect forced to do so.
For illustration, consider a meeting in which a manager
is supposed to comment on her performance. She is subject
to a situation in which she cannot ‘not’ give an account.
Even if she refuses to comment on her performance, she
would quite probably be judged on the basis of this
(non-)account. In this sense, not accounting for something
is also a form of accounting. As the manager is part of a
group to which she is expected to account, she cannot eas-
ily separate herself from this group. If she tries to do so
(e.g. by refusing to account), this behavior will be judged
from the situation of the meeting in which she is taking
part and cannot ‘escape’. In France, the suicide in 2003 of
Bernard Loiseau, a famous restaurant chef, led to a public
debate about the value of restaurant criticism. Loiseau
committed suicide shortly after his restaurant had been
downgraded in the latest GaultMillau guide, and there were
several voices in the public debate that claimed that the
two events were directly linked. The famous French chef
Paul Bocuse even openly attacked employees at GaultMil-
lau and accused them of being partly responsible for the
death of his colleague. Although the debate soon died
down, several restaurant chefs later declared publicly that
they were no longer willing to endure the pressure of being
evaluated by the gourmet guides. They announced that
they were going to return their ‘stars’ or ‘toques’ to those
who had awarded them. What is interesting, however, is
that one cannot simply return these awards and choose
not to be evaluated. In fact, the reaction of the Guide Mich-
elin to one such declaration is quite telling: ‘‘The stars are
meant to inform the readers of the guide and can only be-
long to the guide that presents them. Restaurateurs just
cannot return them like a gift”.
9
Restaurateurs are, in other
words, exposed to this type of evaluation without being able
to opt in or opt out. They become accountable without nec-
essarily being conscious of this accountability, since they are
subject to a form of judgment that is automatic and compul-
sory, quite similar to the law. To be sure, they are still able to
account for themselves, by justifying their particular style of
cooking and arguing as to why they think they have been
inappropriately evaluated in the guide, for instance. The
very fact of being judged in the ?rst place, however, is some-
thing that they cannot undo with their account. They are al-
ways already within a cycle of accountability that is imposed
on them by others such that any account they may give will
come ‘later’ with respect to this a priori visibility.
10
In this
sense, the exposure to a demand for accountability can be
seen as a limitation to account-ability. It shapes the way in
which the response to the demand is perceived, very much
like the question dictating whether the answer is appropri-
ate or not. But if the response is judged in light of the ques-
tion, then it is no longer an account on its own; it is a re-
action which is motivated, and shaped in terms of its per-
ception, by something other than itself.
One may contend, of course, that this is simply due to
accountability being a social phenomenon, rather than an
individual one, and that this is necessarily so, because
otherwise, the concept of accountability would loose its
substance (see Schweiker, 1993). This is certainly true.
But what I seek to emphasize here is that demands for
accountability can shape (the perception of) practice sim-
ply by virtue of being issued as demands. This is because
demands precede the account to be given and, as such,
are constitutive of the social situation even before any an-
swer is provided. A person may, of course, simply ignore all
demands for accountability – but this will hardly shed a
favorable light on that person. One may negotiate away
such demands or attempt to answer them truthfully –
but the more one is exposed to such demands, the more
one’s life and conduct become preoccupied with somehow
dealing with them.
As Roberts (1991) and Shearer (2002) have rightly
noted, accountability shapes identity. The way in which a
demand for accountability is framed impacts the individ-
ual’s self-understanding as an accountable subject.
Whereas Shearer focuses on bringing to light the particular
characteristics, and problematic consequences, of the eco-
nomic discourse of accountability, my intention here is to
broaden the argument to demands for accountability in
general. If a particular type of discourse assumes a domi-
nant position in the sense that it determines what kind
of accountability is available and/or acceptable, then this
discourse has power effects. But power operates not only
through the relative dominance of a particular type of dis-
course. It is also a function of the absolute extent to which
9
Quoted in Senderens Renounces Michelin Laurels (http://www.gay-
ot.com/restaurants/features/alainsenderens.html).
10
In this context, it is worth mentioning again Judith Butler’s re?ections
upon the situation in the US after 9/11. Butler (2004) refers to the ‘‘state of
alarm” that was repeatedly proclaimed by the US government after 9/11
and points to the abstract nature of these warnings which did not specify
any concrete danger but rather demanded people to exhibit increased
‘‘vigilance”. ‘‘This objectless panic translates too quickly into suspicion of all
dark-skinned peoples, especially those who are Arab, or appear to look so
[. . .]. Although ‘deeming’ someone dangerous is considered a state prerog-
ative in these discussions, it is also a potential license for prejudicial
perception and a virtual mandate to heighten racialized ways of looking
and judging in the name of national security [. . .]. What kind of public
culture is being created when a certain ‘inde?nite containment’ takes place
outside the prison walls, on the subway, in the airports, on the street, in the
workplace? A falafel restaurant run by Lebanese Christians that does not
exhibit the American ?ag becomes immediately suspect, as if the failure to
?y the ?ag in the months following September 11, 2001 were a sign of
sympathy with al-Qaeda, a deduction that has no justi?cation, but which
nevertheless ruled public culture – and business interests – at that time”
(Butler, 2004, p. 76-7). In other words, people are exposed to an
accountability that they cannot negotiate away. They become suspect
without doing anything, and even if they did account for themselves in an
appropriate way, their accounts would appear incomplete: they cannot
undo the general skepticism to which they have already been exposed.
928 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
demands for accountability shape practice, i.e. the extent
to which a practice is problematized in discourse and to
which this problematization feeds back into practice. Here,
the question is not so much what particular type of dis-
course an individual is subject to (although this always re-
mains important); rather, it is the absolute amount of
accountability, i.e. the extent to which demands for
accountability pervade practice, which is of concern.
11
While not explicitly framed in terms of an ‘‘exposure” to
accountability, evidence provided in existing accounting
research shows how demands for accountability can be-
come so dominant as to ‘‘invade” organizational practice
and individuals’ understanding of this practice. Hopwood
(1972), in his seminal study on budgeting, examines the ef-
fects of different management styles on job-related ten-
sion. He ?nds that a budget-constrained management
style is more likely to bring about job-related tension, anx-
iety and manipulative behavior than a pro?t-conscious or
non-accounting management style. While one may be in-
clined to interpret this as stemming from certain intrinsic
qualities of budgets as systems of accountability, it seems
more appropriate to link it to the ways in which budgets
tend to be enacted in accountability relationships (see also
Ahrens, 1996, p. 154). Indeed, Hopwood concludes that
‘‘the Budget Constrained style is one in which the eval-
uation of performance is of primary importance, in?u-
encing all aspects of the supervisor’s and the cost
center head’s behavior. Evaluation is not viewed as an
ongoing part of the managerial process, interrelated
with other important aspects of the job, and just one
aspect of the process of in?uence. Rather, it is seen as
a distinct and dominant activity, and the primary
source of in?uence and control, overshadowing other
vital elements of the process” (p. 175).
In other words, concern for accountability (evaluation)
may become so dominant that concern for the underlying
practice is moved to the back burner. Clearly, the degree
of such exposure to accountability is linked to the time-
horizon: if budgets are enacted in a short-term manner,
they create an almost permanent need to justify one’s ac-
tions. In a management style oriented towards the long-
er-term, such a continuous demand for accountability is
less pressing. However, the degree of exposure is not only
a function of time, but also of space. The more areas of
one’s life or conduct are subject to accountability, the more
pervasive the preoccupation with accountability becomes.
This is closely linked to the existence of opacity, as dis-
cussed above, but it addresses a somewhat different
dimension. For the opaque self, the burden is one of
accounting for something that is dif?cult to explain or jus-
tify. For the exposed self, it is the relative space that con-
cern for accountability occupies that constitutes a
burden. Insofar as the auditors described by Anderson-
Gough et al. (2001) are forced to account for parts of their
working day that remain opaque to them, they bear the
burden of the opaque self. In contrast, in their roles as ex-
posed selves, they internalize the demand for accountabil-
ity in such a way that it comes to shape their practice. As
Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) explain, the ‘‘trainees ac-
quired the practice of looking for tasks which are ‘charge-
able’” (p. 113) and, at any point in time, would try to
‘‘appear busy” doing something. They were, in other words,
constantly concerned with justifying that they were doing
something ‘‘valuable”. Note that this exposure to account-
ability, and the corresponding burden for the individual
auditor, does not primarily depend on what ‘‘doing some-
thing valuable” means in a concrete sense, or how it is mea-
sured. It is certainly true that being forced to account in a
particular way creates an additional burden, and I return
to this point below when discussing the burden of the
mediated self. Here, however, the focus is on the absolute
amount of demands and the extent to which these de-
mands pervade practice. Whether the formulation of these
demands relies on accounting concepts, bureaucratic rules,
moral standards, or other types of arguments, is another
issue.
The way in which organizational space is rendered
knowable and governable (see Miller & O’Leary, 1987),
and thus made subject to accountability, is nicely illus-
trated in Vaivio’s (2006) case study of meetings at ABB
Industry/Finland. Vaivio shows how dissatisfaction with
meetings leads to a transformation of these meetings, from
‘‘un-systematized, spontaneous and even messy” spaces
into spaces of accountability (p. 736). The message behind
this has broader relevance:
‘‘No longer can we presume that actors within ?uid
spaces remain at a short but safe, ‘arm’s length’ distance
fromthe aspirations that seek to make them susceptible
to formal monitoring, comparison and evaluation. And
no longer can we take for granted that such knowledge
is not being produced that pinpoints inef?ciency or sub-
standard performance within ?uid space” (p. 737).
It is through such rationalization of hitherto ‘‘unrationa-
lised local domains” (p. 756) or ‘‘almost private spaces of
organizational action” (p. 735) that the self becomes an ex-
posed self – exposed to visibility, ‘‘of?cial recognition and
mapping” (p. 737).
To be sure, such initiatives to increase accountability
are not necessarily perceived as a burden. Indeed, in the
case reported by Vaivio (2006), demands for more account-
ability were voiced unanimously and were democratically
decided upon. In cases where more accountability is wel-
comed, it seems dif?cult to maintain the argument that
exposure to accountability actually poses an ethical bur-
den. However, one should bear in mind that there is a ?ne
line between the ‘‘free decision” to create new accountabil-
ities for oneself, on the one hand, and the way in which
programmatic ideals suggest such accountabilities as
11
I use the notion of ‘‘problematization‘‘ here in the sense that Foucault
gives it in his genealogical analyses. Foucault looks at how, historically,
various types of practices and discourses (in the form of moral norms,
scienti?c knowledge, political analysis etc.) problematized such phenom-
ena as madness and illness, crime and delinquency, or sexuality. He is thus
critical of particular types of discourses and, consequently, their relative
dominance at a given point in time, as well as of the increasing amount of
problematization in modern society more generally, which he aptly
summarized with the notion of a ‘‘will to knowledge” (Foucault, 1998; see
also Deacon, 2000). In practice, these two power effects will often go hand
in hand and may thus be hard to distinguish. For a similar understanding of
problematization, see Miller and Rose (1990).
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 929
desirable and thereby render their realization more ‘‘prob-
able”. Foucault’s point about subjectivation being more
powerful if people subject themselves to a regime of truth,
rather than being forced to do so, is worth keeping in mind
here. Also, there is a difference between the decision to in-
crease accountability at one point, and the subsequent
power effects of its ongoing realization. Once a ‘‘sophisti-
cated” system is in place, it may be hard to see through
it. Or, it may be hard to change it, even if change were then
desired.
Accountability is often realized through accounting
technologies, but other technologies can bring about simi-
lar effects of exposure to demands of accountability. Orli-
kowski (2007) offers a good example of this when
discussing the introduction of BlackBerry mobile commu-
nication devices in a private equity ?rm. Orlikowski shows
how the particular functionalities of the BlackBerry hand-
sets signi?cantly changed the norms of communication
in the organization, ‘‘altering expectations of availability
and accountability, rede?ning the boundaries of the work-
day, and extending and intensifying interactions” (Orli-
kowski, 2007, p. 1444). Organizational actors experienced
‘‘a strong obligation to check incoming messages” (p.
1442) and would take a rather critical stance to this form
of accountability, as some of their remarks exemplify:
‘‘Once the audience that you interface with all the time
knows that you’re a [BlackBerry] junkie – they honestly
do this – if I don’t respond to an email in an hour people
start to wonder ‘What’s wrong with Gary?’ I mean it’s
that bad” (p. 1442).
‘‘You’re sort of constantly tied. (. . .) Yeah, it’s that sort of
addictive” (p. 1443).
‘‘That’s the worry part of it, that once you’ve created an
expectation that you’re always reachable, do you there-
fore then always have to be reachable?” (p. 1444).
If ‘‘individual desires to disconnect” from social pres-
sures enter into con?ict with the collective demands for
continuous accountability (Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1444),
then an ethical dilemma emerges. To what extent should
demands for accountability be accepted and to what extent
should the individual’s privacy and ‘‘freedom not to an-
swer” be protected? The examples in this section suggest
that when re?ecting upon the ethics of accountability,
one should not only focus on the responsibility inherent
in accounting for-the-other (Shearer, 2002), although this
focus remains important. It seems that there is also a
responsibility to be assumed by the one who is to be ac-
counted to, a responsibility that pertains to the ‘‘burden”
we place on someone when subjecting her to a situation
of accountability.
4.4. Mediated selves
Finally, the accountable self is limited in its accountabil-
ity, in so far as the scene of the address is mediated by a set
of norms that are not of the self’s own making. As has been
noted in symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934) or social
constructivism (Berger & Luckman, 1967), the identity as
a self emerges out of the relationship between the individ-
ual and various signi?cant others. The self only becomes a
self by taking over the perspective of others and subjecting
oneself to social categories or roles that are provided to it
externally. Similarly, Butler (2005, p. 115) speaks of an
‘‘ec-static movement, one that moves me outside of myself
into a sphere in which I am dispossessed of myself and
constituted as a subject at the same time”. She thereby re-
fers to the work of Foucault and to his main idea that ‘‘a
subject can recognize itself, and others, only within a spe-
ci?c regime of truth” (Butler, 2005, p. 116). Although quite
heterogeneous throughout its different stages, Foucault’s
works have clearly been shaped by the relationship be-
tween the subject and certain modes of rationality. His
overall objective ‘‘has been to create a history of the differ-
ent modes by which, in our culture, human beings are
made subjects” (Foucault, 1982, p. 208). What Foucault
most strikingly exposed in his writings is the contingency
of these regimes of truth. Discourses and practices assume
a central role in society as they enable individuals to regard
themselves, and be regarded, as subjects; but at the same
time, they also exclude certain possibilities for subject for-
mation. This is why Foucault keeps his distance from a
‘‘self-satis?ed form of constructivism” (Butler, 2005, p.
121) that settles for simply stating that everything could
be otherwise:
‘‘He is making clear that we are not simply the effects of
discourses, but that any discourse, any regime of intel-
ligibility, constitutes us at a cost. Our capacity to re?ect
upon ourselves, to tell the truth about ourselves, is cor-
respondingly limited by what the discourse, the regime,
cannot allow into speakability” (Butler, 2005).
The ‘‘forms of rationality by which we make ourselves
intelligible, by which we know ourselves and offer our-
selves to others, are established historically, and at a price”
(Butler, 2005). The price to pay is the unconditional accep-
tance of the modes of rationality that are offered to us.
These modes have to be accepted if someone wants to be-
come a rational and accountable member of society, a sub-
ject ‘that counts’ (see Rancière, 1998).
‘‘Insofar as we do tell the truth, we conform to a crite-
rion of truth, and we accept that criterion as binding
upon us. To accept that criterion as binding is to assume
as primary or unquestionable the form of rationality
within which one lives. So telling the truth about one-
self comes at a price, and the price of that telling is
the suspension of a critical relation to the truth regime
in which one lives” (Butler, 2005, pp. 121–122).
When a discourse de?nes ‘‘what can be said and what
cannot” (Foucault, 1981), then those who are subject to
this discourse are subject to power effects. Having to ac-
count in a particular way in order to be considered a legit-
imate member of a community means that other ways of
justifying one’s behavior are marginalized. This is what
Roberts and Shearer criticize in their analyses of ?nancial
and management accounting practices. Both point to the
contingency of the prevailing rules of accounting and argue
that the accountable self, who is subject to these rules of
accountability, adopts and internalizes the prescribed
930 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
mode of rationality, such that economic calculation and
the pursuit of self-interest become the dominating forces
in one’s relationship to others. For Shearer (2002), this
poses mainly a problem for those who demand different
types of accounts and for whom forms other than eco-
nomic accountability are relevant. In addition, Roberts re-
fers to the ethical burden that the accountable self has to
bear when it is forced to account in a particular way and
when other forms of justi?cation are not legitimate. The
solution suggested by both scholars is to extend the possi-
bilities of accountability towards a practice of accounting
that knows multiple accountabilities.
But what does a multiplicity of accountability imply for
the subject who is made accountable? Does it release the
accountable self from the ethical burden that the domi-
nance of a particular regime of truth would impose? I sup-
pose that this depends on how multiplicity is put into
practice. If multiplicity means that the accountable self
has several alternatives of how to give an account, then
the act of accountability will clearly be less ethically
demanding than in the case of there being only one avail-
able regime of truth. If, however, multiplicity translates
into multiple demands for accountability – legitimate de-
mands to which the accountable self is expected to con-
form – then the ethical burden will actually be greater
than if accounts have to be provided in one form and to
one audience alone. This is because the accountable self
will have to deal with possible con?icts between various
demands and, in a sense, will have to speak ‘‘several lan-
guages at the same time”.
The difference between these two conceptions of multi-
plicity can be illustrated with the example of stockholders’
demands, on the one hand, and social and environmental
concerns, on the other hand. If a company could justify a
particular course of action on the basis of either its
accountability to stockholders or its accountability for so-
cial and environmental sustainability, then it would face
less pressure than if its accounts only had to conform,
say, to the economic regime of truth. Such a case would,
however, require that the company be able to survive
and ?nd a sustainable identity within either of the regimes
of truth. It would need to have the possibility to compro-
mise one of the demands for accountability actively with-
out suffering in terms of its long-term viability as an
organization. But stockholders are hardly indifferent to a
company’s actions and are unlikely to approve actions that
are justi?ed only on the basis of social and environmental
concerns. This is why subjecting companies to additional
accountabilities places a burden on them that is dif?cult
to bear insofar as compromising their primary accountabil-
ity relationship would imply considerable costs and risks
for the company. Demanding an extension of accountabil-
ity is not without problems, because it means that the
accountable self would have to challenge or criticize a re-
gime of truth on which its identity and viability is built.
In broader terms, critique is a risky practice insofar as it
puts the critical subject in an ontologically insecure posi-
tion the moment this subject distances itself from the ac-
cepted regime of truth (Butler, 2002; Foucault, 1997b).
Evidence for con?icts between different forms of
accountability can also be found in the accounting litera-
ture. Cäker (2007) provides an interesting example of con-
?icting accountabilities within a business unit of a Swedish
manufacturing organization. The business unit acts as a
supplier for advanced technology to both external custom-
ers (‘‘new customers”) and to an internal customer within
the same division (the ‘‘old customer”), which was previ-
ously part of the same business unit. The managers of
the supplier business unit have a hierarchical accountabil-
ity for ?nancial results. But in addition to this, Cäker (2007)
observes that they also have a strong ‘‘lateral” accountabil-
ity relationship to the old customer. The latter would often
demand ‘‘special treatment”, such as preferential delivery
times or product speci?cations. And managers of the sup-
plier business unit would often feel the need to meet these
demands, not least because of the historical bonds be-
tween the two units. ‘‘When the one who asks is an old col-
league or someone that the operator meets in the common
lunchroom almost every day, it is considered hard to say
no” (Cäker, 2007, p. 156). As Cäker argues, con?icts arise
because the lateral accountability relationship is not inte-
grated in the formal accounting system, which re?ects
hierarchical accountability for ?nancial results. He there-
fore makes an interesting distinction between accounting
for the customer and accounting to the customer.
‘‘To account for customer-related aspects can be done
both to managers and to customers, and through hierar-
chical/formal channels and through informal channels,
that is, lateral accountability. To account for the cus-
tomer does not necessarily have anything to do with
to account to the customer” (Cäker, 2007, p. 149).
In other words, it makes a difference whether the needs
of the customer are recognized as part of one’s hierarchical
(?nancial) accountability relationship within the company
or whether they are recognized as ends in themselves, for
which one is accountable to the customer, above and be-
yond one’s internal accountability for the customer. Cäker’s
(2007) point is to argue that such a con?ict of accountabil-
ities is dysfunctional from a managerialist perspective and
should be resolved through appropriate systems of
accountability (see also Lillis, 2002). Such reconciliation
is possible in many cases, but it may prove more challeng-
ing or even impossible in others. If different accountabili-
ties refer to con?icting ends, managers are faced with the
question of how to prioritize these ends. This is not always
without its problems, as can be seen, for example, in the
?eld of educational institutions that are increasingly sub-
ject to market notions of accountability. As Ezzamel, Rob-
son, Stapleton, and McLean (2007) show in their study of
British schools, traditional forms of ‘‘folk accountability”
(which are de?ned around professional norms) can enter
into con?ict with new forms of accountability that are
championed as part of neo-liberal reforms in the public
sector. In their examination of school employees’ dis-
courses on accountability, the scholars observe consider-
able ‘‘tensions between new forms of regulatory ?nancial
accountability, imposed in the name of greater ef?ciency
and effectiveness, and folk accountability” (p. 168). The
way in which these tensions are dealt with appears to be
left to the staff responsible for bearing the burden of carry-
ing out these trade-offs.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 931
One may, of course, contend that it is the very substance
of management to deal with such trade-offs, to ?nd a bal-
ance among different objectives, and ultimately to make
dif?cult decisions (which go beyond simple ‘‘calculations”,
as explained above). Although this is certainly true, my
point here is to argue that this challenge can easily turn
into a burden if different regimes of truth turn out to be dif-
?cult or impossible to reconcile while, at the same time,
such reconciliation is expected by relevant stakeholders.
In such a case, one must raise the question as to whether
expecting organizations and managers to meet different
demands for accountability is, after all, a fair and realistic
demand.
Johansen (2008) offers a good example of how employ-
ees can suffer from being expected to ‘‘self-manage” the
various problems and tensions that they face in their
everyday work. In his case study of a Danish Savings Bank,
Johansen describes the bank’s initiative of ‘‘self-manage-
ment” which is supposed to increase ‘‘leadership” and
‘‘entrepreneurial behavior” among employees. The com-
pany de?nes self-management in the following terms:
‘‘Self-management is about each employee being able
to manage themselves within the boundaries of his/
her ?eld of responsibility. This means that the employee
can make decisions at any time without asking for per-
mission” (p. 551).
Yet, what looks like an increase in employees’ discretion
turns out to be, at the same time, an additional burden.
Self-management, Johansen (2008, p. 558) observes, is
‘‘simultaneously more rewarding and more demanding”
(Knights & McCabe, 2003, p. 1614) because it makes the
employee feel responsible for autonomously managing all
tensions and dilemmas that arise within her ?eld of work.
Rather than asking for help or alleviation, employees as-
sume full responsibility for dealing with dif?cult situations
and blame themselves when they do not succeed. From the
perspective of ‘‘the others” (in Johansen’s case, upper man-
agement), self-management seems like an attractive idea,
since it assigns responsibility for dealing with tensions to
employees (or managers).
To be sure, managers at higher levels of the corporate
hierarchy can be expected to deal with such challenges
more ably than lower-level managers or employees (Si-
mons, 2005). But even for senior managers, con?icting re-
gimes of truth may be dif?cult to manage, especially if they
are linked to legitimate accountabilities. If con?icting de-
mands for accountability are raised vis-à-vis an organiza-
tion or its managers, asking managers to ‘‘self-manage”
these demands may be an attractive solution for politics
or society at large, but less so for the managers in question.
Indeed, it seems that discourses on business ethics or
stakeholder accountability are often rather silent on what
exactly businesses or managers are supposed to do in case
of a con?ict among different objectives. There seems to be
an expectation that businesses should be managed
‘‘responsibly” – paying attention to the interests not only
of capital providers, but also of other stakeholders. But
how this is actually achieved is hardly ever speci?ed.
In a sense, this can relate to the critique of stakeholder
theory as formulated from a managerialist perspective.
Jensen (2001), for example, criticizes stakeholder ap-
proaches for failing to specify how different objectives
should be traded off:
‘‘takeholder theory should not be viewed as a legiti-
mate contender to value maximization because it fails
to provide a complete speci?cation of the corporate pur-
pose or objective function. To put the matter more con-
cretely, whereas value maximization provides
corporate managers with a single objective, stakeholder
theory directs corporate managers to serve ‘‘many mas-
ters.” And, to paraphrase the old adage, when there are
many masters, all end up being shortchanged. Without
the clarity of mission provided by a single-valued objec-
tive function, companies embracing stakeholder theory
will experience managerial confusion, con?ict, inef?-
ciency, and perhaps even competitive failure” (Jensen,
2001, p. 9).
Caution is required when evaluating such statements
from an ethical perspective. On the one hand, it should
be rather obvious that completely releasing managers
from the task of making responsible decisions cannot be
a responsible solution in itself. Eliminating any need to
re?ect upon trade-offs and various stakeholders would
turn management into a purely ‘‘calculative practice”
and would suggest that there is no need to re?ect criti-
cally upon a prede?ned objective such as value maximi-
zation.
12
On the other hand, Jensen’s (2001) point can, to
some extent, also be defended from an ethical perspective.
Not specifying at all how different objectives and stake-
holders’ demands should be balanced is likely to put too
much responsibility into the hands of the manager –
responsibility that becomes an ethical burden. If society
at large does not know the extent to which shareholders’
goals should be traded off against social and environmental
commitments, why should we expect individual managers
to do so? Since the accountable self is mediated by a set
of norms, the possibilities of accountability are limited by
what these norms allow into speakability. Criticizing these
norms may be possible – but to put this burden entirely on
the individual organization or manager is to ignore the
need for a more comprehensive socio-political re?ection
upon con?icts of accountability.
5. Rethinking the possibilities of accountability
5.1. Synthesis
In the above discussion, I have argued that the account-
able self is subject to three main limitations that imply that
any account must remain imperfect in terms of its ability
to ‘ground’ the responsibility of the person.
There is, ?rst, one’s opacity to oneself, which implies
that the accountable self cannot fully recall the situations
in which she has been involved and she cannot fully justify
her decisions and judgments, which go beyond the realm
of the calculable. Extending accountability into what
12
See my elaboration in Section 5.3.
932 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
remains opaque can thus result in an ethical burden for the
subject insofar as she is obliged to account for something
that is dif?cult or impossible to rationalize.
Second, the accountable self is exposed to an addressee
to whom an account is provided. Here, the limit to one’s
authorship of an account arises from the exposure to a de-
mand that is, in a sense, always already there before an an-
swer is provided. Extending accountability can therefore
result in an ethical burden for the subject if the demands
become invasive, if they colonize the underlying practice,
such that a constant concern with accountability ulti-
mately dominates the concern with the underlying
practice.
Third, the accountable self is mediated by a set of social
norms that structure the scene of the address. The subject
becomes an accountable subject only when submitting to a
regime of truth that cannot be questioned if one wants to
give an account. Extending accountability into different re-
gimes of truth can result in an ethical burden for the sub-
ject if several of these accountabilities have to be met at
the same time, without knowing how they should be bal-
anced or traded off.
An ethics that acknowledges these limits to account-
ability should not embrace the ideal of an all-encompass-
ing accountability. For such an ideal can easily demand
too much of the individual who is expected to provide an
account. Given that the accountable self cannot be made
entirely accountable, an ‘‘imperfect” accountability may,
from an ethical perspective, actually be preferable to a
‘‘perfect” one. As Butler (2005, p. 42) puts it, ‘‘any effort
‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to
approach being true”. What this means is that one must
continue to demand and give accounts, but at the same
time be willing to accept that the accountable self may give
an answer that does not fully satisfy:
‘‘By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the ques-
tion remain open, even enduring, we let the other live,
since life might be understood as precisely that which
exceeds any account we may try to give of it. If letting
the other live is part of any ethical de?nition of recogni-
tion, then this version of recognition will be based less
on knowledge than on an apprehension of epistemic
limits” (Butler, 2005, p. 42).
This perspective on accountability acknowledges the
important arguments offered in the extant literature, such
as those put forward by Shearer (2002) and Roberts (1991,
1996, 2001, 2003). To explore new and more comprehen-
sive possibilities for accountability, as suggested by these
authors, is a pivotal task for critical accounting research.
This involves identifying stakeholders whose interests are
not given suf?cient attention in the existing systems of
accountability. It also involves identifying barriers to
accountability that prevent a transparent and open dia-
logue from taking place. However, it seems equally impor-
tant to recognize that human subjects are limited in their
capacity to give a comprehensive and satisfactory account
and that acknowledging these limits should be part of an
ethics of accountability. In this respect, the perspective of-
fered in this paper goes beyond the existing literature by
moving away from the latter’s one-sided focus on the giv-
ing of accounts and by also drawing attention to the ethical
dimension of demanding an account.
Accepting the idea that there are limits to accountabil-
ity raises two important questions. First, how can one
identify these limits in practice? In other words, when
does a demand for accountability become too burden-
some for the accountable self and when is it still accept-
able? Second, if one agrees that there are limits to
accountability, does this not imply that one must compro-
mise some of the demands for accountability? And would
this not be ethically problematic with respect to those
who regard themselves as legitimate stakeholders with
a right to obtain an account? Let me address these ques-
tions in turn.
5.2. A limit attitude
To speak of limits is to suggest that such limits are real
in the sense that they can be identi?ed. But how can one
decide whether a demand for accountability becomes too
great to be ethically warranted vis-à-vis the accountable
self? What signals that an ethical limit has been reached
when a particular demand for accountability is being
raised?
To start with, an ethical ‘‘limit” should not be viewed in
the same way as a spatial or temporal limit. It is not ?xed
in the sense of being located at exact coordinates and it
does not emerge as a single point in time or space. Rather,
it presents itself as a continuum, an extended space within
which a tension or dilemma can be experienced. In a sense,
it is less a limit than a ‘‘liminal space” (see Czarniawska &
Mazza, 2003), i.e. an area in which things appear problem-
atic, ambiguous, and laden with tensions. Accordingly, one
cannot identify a limit, but can only experience being with-
in a liminal space, in which the de?nition of what is right
or wrong has become problematic.
Experiencing this liminality is, as a consequence, not so
much a question of knowledge or evidence, but rather
more one of sensitivity. Individuals may be more or less
sensitized to recognizing ethical tensions and to acknowl-
edging that things do not always run smoothly. To be sure,
some knowledge is necessary for such sensitivity to
emerge in the ?rst place. I must be aware of different de-
mands for accountability, of the interests of particular
groups of stakeholders, and of the rights and duties of
the parties involved, if I am experiencing any dif?culties
with accountability. But this knowledge in itself does not
suf?ce to ground my experience of the limits of account-
ability. I must at the same time be willing to have this
knowledge challenged by an impulse that emerges in the
situation of giving or demanding an account. I must be sen-
sitive to the possibility that things are not as clear as I
thought they were when I initially raised my demand for
accountability or when I was about to meet such a
demand.
When Butler (2005, p. 42) states that ‘‘any effort ‘to give
an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to approach
being true”, she is alluding to this sensitivity. To see an ac-
count fail, to recognize its imperfection and to interpret
this imperfection as an indicator of some deeper and more
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 933
complex ‘‘truth” is to be sensitive for the ethical limits of
accountability.
13
Such a ‘‘limit attitude” (Healy, 2001) is,
in itself, a form of responsibility. It is tied to an experience
of the problematic nature of accountability. The examples
of opacity, exposure and mediation provided earlier were
designed to illustrate the singular character of such an expe-
rience. What the testimonies provided by Anderson-Gough
et al. (2001), Hopwood (1972), Cäker (2007), Johansen
(2008), and Orlikowski (2007) share is that they take an
emic perspective (Pike, 1967) on accountability, theorizing
on accountability on the basis of organizational actors’ expe-
riences with the giving and demanding of accounts. One can
look out for opacity, exposure and mediation in general; but
the extent to which a demand for accountability is problem-
atic cannot be determined theoretically or a priori. The
responsibility to be sensitive to these limits is something
that escapes theoretical determination (see Derrida, 1995,
p. 26). Whereas we can argue that responsibility with re-
spect to the limits of accountability is necessary, we cannot
specify in advance what this responsibility entails and what
form it takes. For what appears problematic, disturbing, or
ambiguous in the particular situation at hand can only be
grasped in that very situation.
At the same time, however, this very private, almost se-
cret form of responsibility (Derrida, 1995) is not entirely
foreign to generalization. There is something to be learned
from the individual experience of the limits of accountabil-
ity and it is part of one’s responsibility to allow such a
learning process to take place. This is why Butler contends
that ‘‘ethical deliberation is bound up with the operation of
critique” (2005, p. 8). She emphasizes that a disturbing
experience with a regime of truth in a given situation al-
lows us to ‘‘raise the question whether a good life can be
conducted within a bad one, and whether we might, in rec-
rafting ourselves with and for another, participate in the
remaking of social conditions” (Butler, 2005, pp. 134–
135). Thus, for example, when we experience a con?ict be-
tween different demands for accountability, one step is to
?nd a ‘‘local” solution to this problem, i.e. to acknowledge
the different demands, to deal with them responsibly, and
ultimately to make a decision in which some of the de-
mands are given more importance than others. Another
step, however, is to recognize that such a con?ict may
reappear in other, similar situations and that a responsible
reaction to the particular situation also involves a broader
re?ection upon the different demands of accountability per
se. Likewise, when there is a gap between the expectations
for accountability, on the one hand, and what is offered in
terms of providing accounts, on the other hand, a responsi-
ble solution includes more than just a re?ection upon the
possibilities and limits of accountability in the particular
case. Individual experiences and ‘‘anecdotal evidence”
should also contribute to a wider discussion of the validity
of the demands in question.
This latter point brings me to the question of how to
deal with a situation in which the demands for account-
ability obviously do not match the willingness or ability
of the accountable self to meet these demands – a situation
that may be described as an ‘‘ethical gap”.
5.3. The ethical gap
The idea that there are limits to accountability suggests
that escaping or resisting accountability is not necessarily
an unethical act. It may be an understandable reaction to
a situation in which demands for accountability have be-
come an ethical burden for the accountable self. One may
even argue that resistance to accountability is, to some ex-
tent, a normal feature of everyday organizational life. In-
deed, from time to time, discussions or debates have to
be avoided and critical questions have to be ignored in or-
der to move forward and to ‘‘get things done”. Of course,
often not everyone will share the same perspective in such
a situation, which ultimately raises the question of the rel-
ative importance of different demands and positions.
Although avoiding accountability may not be unethical
from the perspective of the accountable self, it can still
be unsatisfactory for those who expect to obtain an expla-
nation. In such a case, an ‘‘ethical gap” emerges and the
question of how such a gap can or should be dealt with
must be addressed. Different solutions seem possible in
this respect.
One solution to the problem of con?icting accountabili-
ties is to de?ne accountability in a narrow way. Ultimately,
this means reducing accountability to the demands of one
group of stakeholders alone. Such an approach to account-
ability is visible in accounting standards, which de?ne the
users of ?nancial reports and, by that, the addressees of
accountability. As Young (2006) has shown in great detail,
since the 1960s, standard setters in the U.S. have stressed
the signi?cance of ‘‘the user” and his decision making
needs for the design and interpretation of accounting stan-
dards. Until then, accounting had been seen as a practice in
its own sake, with no clearly de?ned target group. The ir-
ony of the new, user-centered approach, however, was that
‘‘little was known about the very users towards which
standard-setting efforts were now to be directed” (Young,
2006, p. 589). In an effort to learn more about actual user
needs, standard setters realized that there are different
types of users with potentially con?icting interests. These
con?icting demands would obviously make the standard-
setting process a much more challenging task. But:
‘‘Rather than attempting to reconcile these possibly
con?icting differences, each report chose a similar strat-
egy – to stress the presumed similarities of readers of
?nancial statements while suppressing their possible
differences (. . .). In effacing the differences between
these possible readers, the standard-setting process
was distanced from the unruly and con?icting readers
of ?nancial statements and became focused upon users
who were like investors and creditors and would
thereby require similar information” (Young, 2006, p.
590).
This approach to dealing with possibly con?icting
accountabilities has basically remained the same until to-
day, as can be seen from the recent exposure draft of the
13
Adorno (2001, p. 169) also makes a case for such a limit attitude by
suggesting that ethical convictions need to be problematized. ‘‘[T]rue
injustice is always to be found at the precise point where you put yourself
in the right and other people in the wrong”.
934 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
joint improved conceptual framework of the IASB and
FASB. In a section entitled ‘‘Primary user group”, the draft
reads:
‘‘Both the FASB’s and the IASB’s existing frameworks
identify a particular group of primary users. Informa-
tion that satis?es the needs of that particular group of
users is likely to meet most of the needs of other users”
(IASCF, 2008, chaps. 1 and 2, p. 27).
There is much to discuss about the pros and cons of
explicitly considering other users and their needs in
accounting standards, and it certainly goes beyond the
scope of this paper to make a balanced evaluation of this
issue. But what seems clear is that merging different users
into one seemingly homogeneous category is a way of
arguing away different types of accountability. It is not
that such demands are considered illegitimate or less
important – rather, they are not even recognized as distinct
demands in the ?rst place (see Rancière, 1998). In such a
case, an ‘‘ethical gap” does not emerge and so there is
seemingly nothing to be concerned about here.
In line with the approach taken by accounting standard
setters is the argumentation of advocates of shareholder
value-based management, who also argue for an unambig-
uous de?nition of managerial accountability. In this case,
the existence of potentially con?icting accountabilities is
often openly acknowledged and then used as an argument
in favor of a one-dimensional de?nition of accountability.
The earlier quoted text of Jensen (2001) is typical of such
a position. As seen above, Jensen (2001) criticizes stake-
holder approaches to management for not providing a sin-
gle objective to be maximized, thereby failing to provide
clarity for management. While I have stressed above that
such a position may be defended in view of the burden
on the ‘‘mediated self” to trade off different accountabili-
ties, such an interpretation must be supplemented by a
more critical reading: the argumentation of Jensen (2001)
and other advocates of this perspective ultimately does
not engage with the problem of con?icting accountabili-
ties, because such con?icts are argued away by the claim
that rational management is only possible if one goal is
singled out for maximization. For the individual manager,
this is clearly good news, as it relieves her from the respon-
sibility of trading off different objectives and stakeholder
interests. However, with respect to a broader socio-politi-
cal context, this position leads to a collective neglect of
con?icts of accountability that actually exist. Instead of
re?ecting upon different possible purposes of a business,
and the corresponding accountabilities (see, for example,
Handy, 2002), the ‘‘maximization argument” settles for a
normative model of how businesses should be managed.
Yet, what other possibilities are available that would
enable the ‘‘ethical gap” to be dealt with in such a way that
neither the interests of the accountable self are compro-
mised nor those of some of its stakeholders simply ig-
nored? How can responsible behavior be enabled without
subjecting the accountable self to a demand for account-
ability that would be too dif?cult to meet in practice?
One possibility of dealing with con?icting accountabili-
ties that differs from simply negotiating away the interests
of some stakeholders is to attempt to align these interests
in the ?rst place. In such a case, con?icts of accountability
could be reduced and, as a consequence, the accountable
self would be somewhat released from the burden of trad-
ing off different interests. The question of auditor indepen-
dence is a case in point. The spectacular cases of
accounting fraud that we have recently witnessed have in-
creased awareness of the close commercial ties between
auditing ?rms and their clients (e.g. Frankel, Johnson, &
Nelson, 2002; Myers, Myers, & Omer, 2003). The underly-
ing problem is one of con?icts of interest, as audit ?rms
have economic incentives that may entice them to avoid
negative audit opinions. Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, and Bazer-
man (2006) speak accordingly of a ‘‘moral seduction” of
auditors and point to the need for ?nding institutional
solutions through which such con?icts would be reduced:
‘‘[E]ven when institutional arrangements create con-
?icts of interest, we too often seek a corrupt person to
punish, rather than examine the ?aws in the system
or ?ght against those who lobby to keep the broken sys-
tem in place” (Moore et al., 2006, p. 19).
Examining the ‘‘?aws in the system” means looking for
ways to reduce con?icts of interest. Reducing such con?icts
of interest is to reduce con?icting accountabilities. And
this, in turn, would make it easier for the auditors to make
the ‘‘right decisions” when carrying out their work.
What is true for the case of con?icts in auditing is, in a
similar way, true for the relationship between corpora-
tions’ striving for ?nancial success, on the one hand, and
their social and environmental initiatives, on the other
hand. Often, these goals will con?ict and saying that, in
the end, the invisible hand of the market will enable sus-
tainable solutions to survive seems rather optimistic. In
most cases, there is a considerable ?rst mover disadvan-
tage when it comes to the adoption of social or environ-
mental policies that go beyond current industry
standards. This is why resolving such con?icts of interest
should be considered a political task. It will be easier for
?rms to act responsibly if such behavior does not con?ict
head-on with their economic interests.
A second way in which the problem of the ethical gap
can be approached relates to the distinction between the
accountable self and the addressees or stakeholders. As
Mulgan (2000, p. 555) explains, accountability denotes an
‘‘exchange, in that one side, that calling for the account,
seeks answers and recti?cation while the other side, that
being held accountable, responds and accepts sanctions”.
The need for accountability arises when there is a division
of labor whereby the actions and decisions of one group of
people affect those of others. The division of labor and the
resulting accountability relationships are, of course, the
building blocks of modern organizations and societies,
and there is little to suggest that any alternatives would
be more bene?cial. In some cases, however, these account-
ability relationships may be enacted in such a way that
they cause a heavy burden for the accountable self and,
ultimately, perhaps also a high cost for the organization.
As Johansen (2008) has shown, the burden of having to de-
cide for oneself can be heavy, and sharing this burden may
well be in the interests of both the accountable self and rel-
evant stakeholders. In such situations, one alternative to
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 935
accountability would be to involve the addressees of an
account in the process of decision making from the outset,
such that they do not have to rely on ex post accounts of
why certain courses of action where taken and others
not. Direct participation in decision making can reduce
the need for accountability, since the various actors are al-
ready heard as important decisions are being made. For the
case of accountability within organizations, Simons (2005)
suggests that, if responsibility for decision making is
shared among several people, not only is this likely to in-
crease the information content of the decision made, but
it also strengthens the commitment of each person to the
decided course of action. Shared responsibilities may, how-
ever, be dif?cult to implement if the culture of the organi-
zation is one of individual accountability and blame:
‘‘Some managers take pride in their ability to inject fear
of the consequences of poor performance. Such a shoot-
the-messenger environment makes it dangerous for
individuals to stick their necks out to become associ-
ated with any activities outside their span of control
and accountability (. . .). If senior executives are con-
stantly criticizing each other or creating a culture of rid-
icule and blame, employees in these units are unlikely
to take seriously any responsibility to step outside their
units to help others” (Simons, 2005, p. 184).
Although Simons’ perspective is managerial in nature
and does not explore the ethical dimension of shared
responsibilities, his critical stance towards an individualis-
tic culture resonates with Butler’s (2005) ethical concerns
about accountability. ‘‘Condemnation, denunciation, and
excoriation work as quick ways to posit an ontological dif-
ference between judge and judged, even to purge oneself of
another” (Butler, 2005, p. 46). In other words, making peo-
ple accountable may easily turn into a blame game that
can effectively impede us from assuming our collective
responsibility for problems that affect us all. I would say
that this holds not only for organizations internally, as Si-
mons argues, but also for issues that transcend organiza-
tional borders. The existing literature has pointed to the
importance of stakeholder dialogue in order to enact a
broader accountability relationship (e.g. Unerman & Ben-
nett, 2004). In light of the limits of accountability as devel-
oped in this paper, one should add that such dialogue
ideally does not turn into a one-way street, where the full
burden of making trade-offs between different interests
eventually rests on the focal organization. Rather, the po-
tential of dialogue is to include others in the decision mak-
ing process and to share the responsibility for outcomes. Of
course, matters are more complex in such a case than in
the intra-organizational setting, not only in terms of the
de?nition of ‘‘relevant stakeholders”, but also with respect
to the degree to which it is feasible and desirable to include
these stakeholders in decision making. It goes without say-
ing that not each and every decision can or should be made
on such a basis. However, in extraordinary circumstances,
where stakes are particularly high, an inclusion of stake-
holders may well be the best way forward. To some extent,
this was the case in the ?nancial crisis in late 2008 when
governments not only shared responsibility for collective
action across states, but also took an active stance towards
?rms’ decisions, such as in the case of the merger between
the British banks Lloyds and HBOS, in which both the Trea-
sury and the Financial Services Authority were heavily
involved.
Although the two paths outlined above, i.e. the reduc-
tion of con?icts of interest and the sharing of responsibil-
ity, will reduce the ‘‘ethical gap”, they cannot eliminate
it. There will always be cases in which interests collide
and in which the accountable self will be faced with a
tough decision for which it will eventually be made
accountable. Ultimately, the existence of such situations
is the very condition of responsibility: it is only when we
recognize that nothing is totally right or totally wrong, nei-
ther entirely justi?ed nor unjusti?ed, that we feel the need
to act responsibly, to do the right thing even if we know
that there is no one right thing to do. The question of
responsibility arises at the precise moment that knowledge
or mastery comes to an end (Derrida, 1995, p. 6).
‘‘[T]he responsibility of what remains to be decided (in
actuality) cannot consist in following, applying, or car-
rying out a norm or rule. Wherever I have at my dis-
posal a determinable rule, I know what must be done,
and as soon as such knowledge dictates the law, action
follows knowledge as a calculable consequence: one
knows what path to take, one no longer hesitates. The
decision then no longer decides anything but is made
in advance and is thus in advance annulled. It is simply
deployed, without delay, presently, with the automa-
tism attributed to machines. There is no longer any
place for justice or responsibility (whether juridical,
political, or ethical)” (Derrida, 2005, pp. 84–85).
Of course, this does not imply that less knowledge
makes people more responsible, but it does mean that rec-
ognition of the limits to one’s knowledge may do so. When
we do not attempt to master a situation completely, we
may be more willing to see contradictions, dilemmas and
con?icts that call for deliberation and dialogue. A third
path to dealing with the ethical gap is therefore to foster
sensitivity to con?icts and ambiguities and one way to do
this is to acknowledge that there are things that may not
be easily manageable. This, however, is easier said than
done. At least, it seems to be somewhat at odds with the
common understanding of management and with the
way in which future managers are taught in business
schools. Despite research that suggests otherwise, manage-
ment education tends to champion modernist ideas of con-
trol and masculine ideas of mastery (Czarniawska, 2003).
Managers are, after all, expected to ‘‘manage” (a synonym
for ‘‘master”) rather than to acknowledge the limits of their
managerial capabilities. Bringing more responsibility into
management, it seems to me, is thus also about de-limiting
management, about accepting the limits of what can be
managed, and about recognizing that there are things that
exceed calculation, knowledge, and mastery.
6. Conclusion
I have argued in this paper that a consideration of the
limits of accountability is crucial if we want to understand
936 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
the full ethical dimension of the practice of exchanging ac-
counts. Rather than taking the empirical route, I have cho-
sen to go for a theoretical inquiry into the limits of
accountability. Such an approach is necessarily formulated
in rather abstract terms and in a language that allows it to
be related to philosophical concepts that I consider critical
to build upon. And yet, as I have tried to show with exam-
ples borrowed from the accounting literature, such an ap-
proach is not foreign to empirical experience. Findings
from the existing literature can be positioned so as to illu-
minate the practical meaning of the theoretical concepts
developed in the paper. As outlined in the previous section,
there are practical implications that may be drawn from
my analysis. These are motivated by the theoretical discus-
sion of the limits of accountability and the ‘‘ethical gap”
that these limits create. Of course, they do not follow
deductively from this analysis. After all, this is part of the
message of my analysis: that a practical decision cannot
fully be deduced from any knowledge or theoretical analy-
sis. It must remain a question of judgment and responsibil-
ity. My intention in this paper has been to highlight the
problematic dimension of accountability; certainly not in
the sense that accountability is bad, but – borrowing from
Foucault (1997a, p. 256) – that it is dangerous. And if it is
dangerous, ‘‘then we always have something to do”
(p. 256).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well
as Thomas Ahrens, Albrecht Becker, David Bevan, Hans
Englund, Jonas Gerdin, Anthony Hopwood, Silvia Jordan,
Cédric Lesage, Bernadette Loacker, Nicolas Mangin and Jef-
frey Unerman for their helpful comments on previous
drafts of this paper. Matthew Langsley provided help with
the language. They are, of course, not accountable for the
contents of the paper.
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938 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
doc_803828829.pdf
Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these
days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. Specifically,
it is often suggested that extant financial and management accounting practices embody a
rather restricted form of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities as
more than economic subjects. Against this backdrop, this paper raises the question of
whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable from an ethical point
of view. It does so by inquiring into the limits that the accountable self faces when giving
an account. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler, the paper describes the
accountable self as an opaque, exposed, and mediated self that is inherently limited in
its ability to give an account of itself. Because of these limits, we cannot expect demands
for accountability always to be fully met. The paper points to the ethical importance of recognizing
this limited nature of accountability and outlines possible ramifications of this
fact for practice.
The limits of accountability
Martin Messner
Department of Accounting and Management Control, HEC School of Management, 1, Rue de la Libération, F-78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France
a b s t r a c t
Calls for greater accountability from managers and corporations are regularly voiced these
days, both in the academic literature and in public discussions more generally. Speci?cally,
it is often suggested that extant ?nancial and management accounting practices embody a
rather restricted form of accountability that falls short of our mutual responsibilities as
more than economic subjects. Against this backdrop, this paper raises the question of
whether more accountability is always and unambiguously desirable from an ethical point
of view. It does so by inquiring into the limits that the accountable self faces when giving
an account. Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler, the paper describes the
accountable self as an opaque, exposed, and mediated self that is inherently limited in
its ability to give an account of itself. Because of these limits, we cannot expect demands
for accountability always to be fully met. The paper points to the ethical importance of rec-
ognizing this limited nature of accountability and outlines possible rami?cations of this
fact for practice.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Calls for greater accountability from managers and cor-
porations are regularly voiced these days, both in the aca-
demic literature and in public discussions more generally.
To say that someone should be accountable for particular
events or actions is to hold certain expectations about
what this person or organization should be able and ob-
liged to explain, justify and take responsibility for (Cooper
& Owen, 2007). While discussions on accountability are of-
ten dominated by a concern for shareholders, in other in-
stances, demands for greater public accountability have
been framed more widely also to include stakeholders such
as employees, customers, or future generations. Further-
more, the demand for greater public accountability often
translates into a perceived need for tighter managerial con-
trols within ?rms. Recent corporate scandals seem to sug-
gest that managers should be subject to heightened
managerial accountability vis-à-vis their peers and
superiors.
In this paper, I raise the question of whether more
accountability is always and unambiguously desirable. De-
spite the widely shared calls for increased public and man-
agerial accountability, I will suggest that demands for
accountability may become so great as to be ethically
problematic for the person or organization that is expected
to give an account. There are, in other words, certain limits
to accountability that need to be acknowledged in order to
prevent accountability from turning into what Judith But-
ler calls ‘‘ethical violence” (Butler, 2005). This rather strong
and emotive expression refers to a form of accountability
that, in the name of ethics, forces the accountable self to
account for something which is very dif?cult or even
impossible to justify and which, in this respect, does ‘‘vio-
lence” to the accountable self.
Putting forward such an argument implies extending
and even challenging some of the positions set out in the
existing accounting literature. In accounting research, con-
cern for more accountability has been shared by those who
have criticized extant ?nancial and management account-
ing practices for contributing to what they see as a very
limited understanding of accountability (e.g. Gray, 2002;
McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nelson, 1993; Roberts,
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.07.003
E-mail address: [email protected]
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
1991, 1996, 2001, 2003; Schweiker, 1993; Shearer, 2002;
Young, 2006). A main tenet of this literature is that the
conventional language of accounting portrays human
beings as purely economic agents who relate to each other
through their self-interests alone. As a consequence,
accounting promotes a style of accountability that falls
short of our mutual responsibilities and our identities as
more than just economic subjects. This literature thus ech-
oes concern for the restrictive nature of contemporary
management and ?nancial accounting practice and for
the partial form of accountability relations that these prac-
tices imply. As a remedy, several authors have suggested
the introduction of more encompassing forms of account-
ability, as may be achieved through social and environ-
mental reporting practices (e.g. Gray, 2002; Shearer,
2002; Unerman & Bennett, 2004). It has also been proposed
that disembodied forms of accounting need to be comple-
mented with a situation-speci?c sensitivity for the ‘‘partic-
ular other” whose interests and values cannot be
appropriately accounted for by a system of general rules
or principles (e.g. Lehman, 1999; Roberts, 2003; Shearer,
2002). Overall, the main argument has been that account-
ing ‘‘needs to get beyond the constraints that have been
imposed on its language” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004,
p. 345), if it is to allow individuals and organizations to en-
gage in a less restricted, i.e. more comprehensive, way to
account to and for each other.
This paper does not deny that, in many situations, it is
reasonable to demand more accountability. It does, how-
ever, remind us that accountability itself may become a
problematic practice, if it does not acknowledge its own
inherent limits as an ethical practice. These limits are con-
stituted by the burden that accountability may place on
the accountable self who is expected to provide a convinc-
ing account even in situations where this is extremely dif-
?cult or even impossible.
Examples for how these limits to accountability work
upon the accountable self may be found in various con-
texts and they may assume different forms, depending on
what it is that constrains the ability to account for oneself.
Sometimes, the reasons why somebody has taken a partic-
ular course of action are not entirely clear to this person
herself, such as when a manager makes a decision in a
rather intuitive way. In such a case, accountability is lim-
ited by the opaque nature of a person’s experiences and
practical engagements. To which extent is it then ethically
justi?ed to compel the manager to provide a full account
for what she is not fully conscious of? In other cases, peo-
ple ?nd themselves exposed to situations of accountability
that they cannot easily argue away. If someone is subject to
a permanent need for justi?cation, then this can turn into a
burden that is ethically problematic insofar as the concern
for accountability ends up ‘‘colonizing” the conduct of the
accountable self. Finally, there are cases in which multiple
accountabilities act upon a manager or organization. If dif-
ferent stakeholders raise con?icting demands, then this re-
quires the accountable self to speak in ‘‘several languages
at the same time”. While a person’s failure to meet some
of the demands may be regarded as unethical, expecting
that person to measure up to multiple and con?icting
accountabilities is itself ethically questionable.
In cases like these, the demand for accountability is
likely to be experienced as something problematic. This
problematic nature also becomes evident in Sinclair’s
(1995) illuminating investigation into public sector man-
agers’ experiences of accountability. Sinclair shows that
the managers’ narratives on accountability feature two
types of discourses, which she calls ‘‘structural” and ‘‘per-
sonal”. While she speaks of ‘‘accountability” in both cases,
the ‘‘personal” notion of accountability actually seems to
point to the limits of accountability insofar as it re?ects
the experience of the dif?culties in measuring up to one’s
accountability:
‘‘Accountability in the structural discourse is spoken of
as the technical property of a role or contract, structure
or system. Territories are clear and demarcated, accoun-
tabilities uncontested [. . .]. In contrast, the personal dis-
course is con?dential and anecdotal. In this discourse,
accountability is ambiguous, with the potential to be
something that is feared or uplifting [. . .]. The personal
discourse functions to admit the risks and failures,
exposure and invasiveness with which accountability
is experienced” (Sinclair, 1995, p. 224).
While Sinclair provides interesting empirical material
on the experience of accountability, she does not really
theorize the reasons and consequences of this problematic
experience. Why are demands for accountability at times
perceived as invasive and ambiguous? And what does this im-
ply with respect to the ethical value of accountability? In this
paper, I set out to provide an answer to these questions.
Building upon the recent work of Judith Butler (2001,
2004, 2005), I argue that the accountable self is vulnerable
to accountability insofar as it is an opaque self that cannot
account for everything it has lived through; an exposed self
that experiences accountability as an intrusion into its own
practice; and a mediated self whose accounts have to rely
on a medium that is not of its own making. The vulnerabil-
ity of the accountable self implies that there are limits to
accountability as an ethical practice – in the sense that
too much accountability can become an ethically problem-
atic burden for the accountable self.
My analysis resonates to a large extent with Roberts’
(2009) recent inquiry into the ‘‘limits of transparency”.
Roberts also refers to Butler’s work, which he mobilizes
to critically re?ect upon the adequacy of transparency as
a form of accountability. He calls for an ‘‘intelligent” form
of accountability that does not exclusively rely on the
power to make things transparent, but acknowledges the
‘‘impossibility of this ideal of a self that is fully transparent
to itself and others” (p. 2). The main difference between
the present paper and Roberts’ (2009) work lies in its
scope. Whereas Roberts puts forward managerial and eth-
ical concerns over too much transparency, I inquire more
broadly into the problematic nature of too much account-
ability. I suggest that while the practice of giving and
demanding accounts contributes signi?cantly to our self-
understanding as morally responsible subjects (Schweiker,
1993), there is a need to be aware of the limits of account-
ability when compelling others to give justi?cation for
their behavior.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 919
The ideas put forward in this paper imply a new per-
spective on accountability and, as such, are directly rele-
vant to our understanding of the ethical dimension of
?nancial and management accounting practices. These
practices are a major means through which public and
managerial accountability is achieved in contemporary
organizations, and if one argues that accountability has
its ethical limits, then it follows that ?nancial and manage-
ment accounting practices equally need to be re?ected
upon in this respect.
This paper’s argument unfolds in the following way. The
following section describes how accountability, accounting
and ethics are fundamentally related to each other. The
subsequent section provides an overview of the critical lit-
erature on accountability, as outlined above, and explains
the main thrust of arguments put forward in this literature.
The blind spot identi?ed in this literature underpins the
main section of the paper, in which I theoretically elabo-
rate the idea of the limited nature of accountability and de-
scribe the accountable self as an opaque, exposed and
mediated self. In each case, examples are provided to illus-
trate the arguments. The ?nal section discusses how these
ideas may be used to inform practice in a way that
acknowledges both the need for accountability and its
inherent limitations.
2. Accounting, accountability and ethics
The notion of accountability is regularly drawn upon in
the accounting literature. While there are various disci-
pline-speci?c uses of this notion (Sinclair, 1995, p. 221),
the generic sociological meaning of accountability seems
to provide a common ground for most of them. Sociologi-
cally speaking, accountability denotes the exchange of rea-
sons for conduct. To give an account means to provide
reasons for one’s behavior, to explain and justify what
one did or did not do. Such accounts are provided in order
to render behavior intelligible and to ‘‘prevent con?icts
from arising by verbally bridging the gap between action
and expectation” (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p. 46). Social com-
munities feature norms which de?ne who is expected to
account for what, to whom and in which manner. The
sum of these implicit or explicit expectations regarding
the provision of accounts is usually referred to as ‘‘account-
ability” (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Accountability is a mor-
ally signi?cant practice, since to demand an account from
someone is to ask this person to enact discursively the
responsibility for her behavior.
This generic meaning of accountability underlies the
use of the notion in both the ?nancial and management
accounting literature. In the former, the focus is on ac-
counts that are disclosed to external shareholders and
the public. This can take various forms, such as pro?t and
loss statements, earnings announcements, or press state-
ments by the CEO. Instead of ?nancial accountability, it is
probably more appropriate to talk about ‘‘public account-
ability” (Sinclair, 1995), since the important characteristic
of these accounts is not their ?nancial nature but the fact
that their addressees are located outside the organization.
In management accounting, in contrast, the exchange of
accounts takes place within the organization or between
the organization and some of its contractual stakeholders
(e.g. customers, suppliers), often by means of reporting
and control routines in which costs, pro?ts, returns or
other management-related information are communicated
(see Ahrens, 1996; Roberts & Scapens, 1985). This is the
domain of ‘‘managerial accountability” (Sinclair, 1995).
In both cases, the focus may be more on the content of
accountability or on the social practice of giving and
demanding accounts.
1
Considering both the content and
the practice of accountability seems important when it
comes to understanding the ethical dimension of account-
ability. This is because ethical questions may not only
emerge with respect to the ‘‘what” of accountability, but also
with regards to the ‘‘how”. The ethics of accountability is not
only about the types of demands that the accountable self is
subject to; it is also about the way in which, and the extent
to which, such demands are raised.
An ethical question can emerge from the relationship
between an actor and someone else, and in its most basic
form, it takes the form of: ‘‘How should I act in this partic-
ular situation I am situated in?” (see Francis, 1990). Who is
directly affected by what I do, here and now? And who is
indirectly concerned, somewhere else and/or at some other
time? In other words, the ethical question relates to the tri-
angular relationship between oneself, particular others
(those who are present), and generalized others (those
who are absent). Like Adorno (2001), one may say that
the fundamental problem of ethics is ‘‘the problem of
how the general interest and the particular interests relate
to each other in the course of human interaction” (pp. 18–
19).
Ethical questions, in this sense, are closely related to so-
cio-political ones (see Parker, 2003). The latter are about
the way in which social relationships should be organized
more generally. Ethical questions mirror this general con-
cern, but do so in the context of a particular situation in
which one ?nds oneself in interaction with ‘‘concrete oth-
ers”. This implies that, whereas ethics is also about socio-
political questions, the same is not true the other way
round.
2
Ethical issues may get lost if one abstracts from
the concrete implication of individual persons or collective
actors.
It is important to note that the distinction between eth-
ical and socio-political questions does not mean that the
former only apply to individuals, while the latter concern
organizations (or societies). I agree with those who have
argued that organizations can be considered moral agents
and as such can be confronted with ethical questions.
3
In
this respect, the discussion of the ethics of accountability
presented below is relevant to both individual and collective
actors. Ultimately, however, I maintain that ‘‘responsibility
1
Similar to the way in which, for example, strategy may be looked at
from a perspective of content or of practice (see Chua, 2007).
2
The close connection between ethics and socio-political concerns
becomes clear in Section 5, in which I discuss how one may react to the
ethical challenges inherent in accountability.
3
There has been considerable debate on this issue, with some authors
arguing that organizations can and should be considered moral agents,
whereas others have denied this (see, e.g. Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006;
Donaldson, 1982; Soares, 2003).
920 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
must be assumed by the individuals within the corporation
in order for it to mean anything and for change to take place
if it is necessary” (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2006, p. 238).
3. Critical perspectives on accountability
3.1. Socio-political and ethical perspectives
Several authors of accounting literature have consid-
ered accountability from what could be called a ‘‘critical”
perspective, highlighting the perceived socio-political
and/or ethical problems that particular forms of account-
ability may bring about. Two broad research streams may
be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the literature
on social and environmental accounting that emerged in
the 1960s in line with increased concern for the social
and ecological impacts of the capitalist economic system.
Three main themes have shaped the development of this
literature (Gray, 2002): the exploration and interpretation
of new, more widespread forms of accounting, such as so-
cial disclosures or environmental impact reports; the
examination of particular innovations and experiments in
social and environmental accounting; and the practical
engagement with organizations to encourage the creation
of new accountings.
The perspective on accountability taken in this litera-
ture largely re?ects the socio-political view outlined above.
Accountability has primarily been discussed in the context
of broader socio-political concern rather than as an ethical
practice. In line with this paper’s interest in ethical ques-
tions, I therefore do not discuss the literature on social
and environmental accounting in greater detail here, ex-
cept for one contribution to this literature that has been
heavily informed by ethical arguments (Shearer, 2002)
and, as such, has established a link to the second stream
of research. This second stream has emerged from a pri-
marily sociological concern for the nature of accounting
practice, of which Roberts and Scapens’ (1985) work was
one of the ?rst systematic expressions. Their main interest
was in ‘‘the intended and actual impact that the use of
accounting information has in shaping and maintaining
particular patterns of accountability within organisations”
(Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 448). More speci?cally, they
argued that accounting systems enable or even foster
‘‘more distanced forms of accountability” and a style of
management that rests upon control at a distance (Roberts
& Scapens, 1985, p. 451). As face-to-face contact becomes
less important, the possibility of negotiating the meaning
of accounts also withers. Since the image of organizations
produced by contemporary accounting practice can only
be a ‘‘partial, selective and potentially distorted re?ection
of the ?ow of events and practices that constitute organisa-
tional life” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 454), there is a risk
that this one-dimensional information comes to be taken
for the only relevant reality, while the ‘‘underlying physical
processes and social relationships are seen merely as a
means for realising” them (Roberts & Scapens, 1985,
p. 452).
In subsequent writings, other authors have elaborated
on, and in some respects challenged, the critical perspec-
tive inherent in this early work (e.g. Boland & Schultze,
1996; Laughlin, 1996; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Nel-
son, 1993; Roberts, 1991, 2003; Shearer, 2002). Where
they concur is in their criticism of what they see as the
restrictive nature of extant accounting practice: the ‘‘privi-
leging of numbers and quanti?cation” and its domination
‘‘by the economic and in particular by the categories of
neoclassical economics” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004,
p. 342). Hence, arguments for how to make accounting bet-
ter measure up to our mutual responsibilities have focused
either on the content of accounts or on the procedure by
which accounts are produced.
3.2. Broadening the content of accounts
As to the content of accounts, there is, today, a rich lit-
erature on social and environmental accounting that has
suggested that external accounting should be extended to
cover more than just the economic output of the organiza-
tion (see Gray, 2002). Such a suggestion has also been put
forward by Shearer (2002) whose approach is of particular
interest for the purpose of this paper, as it is one of the few
contributions to the social accounting literature that is
explicitly rooted in ethics.
Shearer (2002) draws upon the work of Schweiker
(1993) and the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
in order to argue that accounting should move from an
‘‘accounting for-the-self” to an ‘‘accounting for-the-
other”. She adopts Levinas’ (1998) claim that our rela-
tionship to others, and thus our moral obligation to oth-
ers, comes before any ontological sense of having a
distinct identity as an autonomous self. Put another
way, ethics must always precede ontology, if we are to
take seriously the fact that we are always already ex-
posed to others and their demands before we can ac-
tively manage this relationship on the basis of our own
interests and demands. As a consequence, any concep-
tion of accountability needs to acknowledge this priority
of the other, because the ‘‘motive for being accountable
is never simple, unadorned self-interest. It entails a con-
stitutive relation to others beyond simple contractual
relations” (Schweiker, 1993, p. 245). To be accountable
means to be accountable to someone else, and to reduce
the notion of accountability to the justi?cation of one’s
own actions for one’s own sake is to misconstrue
accountability. But according to Shearer, this is precisely
what is happening today:
‘‘The constitutive impact of economic theory is thus to
construct identity such that it is obligated to no one
other than itself [. . .]. It is so because economic theory
constructs subjectivity and intersubjectivity such that
the moral obligation to others always already reduces
to the obligation to oneself” (Shearer, 2002, p. 558).
Thus, Shearer (2002) claims that economic discourse is
an inadequate basis for an ethics of accounting since,
broadly speaking, it portrays individuals as guided purely
by their self-interests and as being unaccountable to a
more comprehensive (social) good. Moreover, the discur-
sive description of accounting is constitutive of accounting
practice, as individuals come to internalize the model of
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 921
economic man and regard themselves and their relation-
ships to others in the restrictive terms of this model alone:
‘‘The problem is that the more the rationale of econom-
ics pervades our sense of ourselves as human subjects,
the more we begin to see ourselves, and our rights
and obligations in relation to others, in economic terms.
This in turn leads to a lack of demand for accountability,
except where one’s rights to ownership and free
exchange are at stake, and it serves to ensure that
where accountability is sought, the economics of self-
interested trade will be suf?cient to its discharge”
(Shearer, 2002, p. 565).
Shearer’s call for broader accountability rests on the
idea that accountability should start with the other rather
than with the self. The ultimate aim of accountability is to
measure up to the demands of the other, and this ethical
requirement should guide the reconstruction of formal sys-
tems of accounting. Here, Shearer points to various forms
of social, environmental and emancipatory accounting as
suggested in the literature. She concedes ‘‘there clearly is
no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled re-
sponse to the other that forms the genuine relation to
the other”, such that formal accounting systems will never
reach the ideal of an ethics of the other. ‘‘Yet accountants
can help to make our economic institutions more respon-
sive to the other, by seeking an accountability that formally
recognizes the obligation to the other – even if it does not
and cannot re?ect the originary relationship from which
this obligation derives” (Shearer, 2002, p. 570).
It is worthwhile to compare Shearer’s perspective with
the arguments put forward by Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001,
2003) and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). While these
scholars largely agree with Shearer’s critique of account-
ing, they are skeptical of the idea of establishing broader
standards or principles for accounting, which might com-
prise, for example, social and environmental reporting du-
ties. What they suggest is not so much a speci?c content of
accounts, but rather a different procedure of how accounts
should be produced and exchanged.
3.3. Enriching the procedure of accounting
Roberts (1991, 1996, 2001, 2003) has followed up on his
earlier work with Scapens (Roberts & Scapens, 1985) by
exploring in greater depth two ideal-types of accountabil-
ity, which he names hierarchical and socializing forms of
accountability. He argues that conventional accounting
practice produces a sense of the self that is detrimental
to our moral attitude towards each other. He associates
accounting with a hierarchical form of accountability, in
which individuals take it for granted that their value and
worth depends upon their position within the organiza-
tional hierarchy and upon the ful?llment of imposed targets.
In striving for acceptance and recognition, individuals are
drawn ‘‘further and further into conformity with the stan-
dards of utility upon which ‘success’ depends” (Roberts,
1991, p. 360). Internalizing these standards, the individual
comes to see herself as solitary and singular, being depen-
dent in her self-esteem on impersonal principles and rules.
‘‘These standards are ‘taken over’ and become the lens
through which we judge ourselves, and compare ourselves
with others” (Roberts, 1991, p. 362). Hierarchical forms of
accountability have an individualizing character, since they
promote a sense of the self that is preoccupied with achiev-
ing certain norms and standards and, at the same time,
induce the self to relate to others through the lens of these
categories alone. The concepts provided by accounting –
costs, pro?ts, returns, etc. – become the focal point for
individual efforts and for structuring relationships with
others. They become the reality on the basis of which
communication and organizational life is built.
Drawing upon Habermas’ (1987) distinction between
instrumental and communicative action, Roberts contrasts
the individualizing form of accountability with the more
socializing forms that cultivate dialogue and openness in-
stead of calculation and instrumental reason. A socializing
relation to others is characterized by a quest for mutual
understanding which goes beyond the giving and demand-
ing of accounts through formal categories, as provided by
accounting. Roberts argues that such socializing talk will
be possible in the relative absence of asymmetries of
power and in the context of face-to-face contact between
the persons involved. In these circumstances, people can
relate to each other informally, openly and without the
need to rush to a speci?c result. Socializing forms of
accountability thus foster a recognition of the self and of
others that is free from distortion by any imposed formal
de?nitions of the situation.
By using Habermas’ distinction between communica-
tive and instrumental action, Roberts clearly emphasizes
the procedural dimension of accountability instead of
arguing for a speci?c content of accounts. This emphasis
on procedure corresponds to skepticism regarding any ef-
forts to enforce accountability through ethical codes or so-
cial and environmental reports. According to Roberts, such
forms of stakeholder dialogue are often established in such
a way that they simply mirror established systems of
?nancial accountability (Roberts, 2003, p. 256). In other
words, they simply re?ect the narcissistic concerns of the
corporation to appear responsible. For what seems to be a
concern for-the-other is really just a concern ‘‘for how
the other sees the corporation” (Roberts, 2003).
‘‘What the creation of codes and associated reports
achieves, or attempts to achieve, is the repair of the cor-
porate ‘imago’. From this perspective the embrace of
ethics can be taken as an expression of corporate ego-
ism: a demand to be seen to be not only powerful but
also good” (Roberts, 2003).
Moreover, Roberts calls into question extant practices of
social and environmental reporting because they trump
concerns for local moral sensibility due to the incentive
‘‘to conform with distant interests, even if these now claim
to be ethical interests” (Roberts, 2003, p. 259). These dis-
tant interests are, in turn, already prefabricated and
accommodated to the available technologies of calculation
and measurement:
‘‘The problem with ethical disciplinary mechanisms –
for a new ‘triple bottom line’ accountability – is that
922 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
we will only ever discover here what we think to look
for, and even then we will only be able to ‘see’ with such
technologies in the way of seeing that they make possi-
ble. So only what is amenable to quanti?cation can be
seen; I have to identify and then count and measure
what can only ever be proxies for what I am looking for”
(Roberts, 2003, p. 261).
As an alternative approach to achieving corporate social
responsibility, Roberts points to the importance of the per-
sonal encounter with the other, with the face and voice of
‘‘those most vulnerable to the effects of corporate conduct”
(Roberts, 2003, p. 263). Only on the basis of close proximity
may the relationship to others be enacted in a responsible
way.
McKernan and MacLullich (2004) have taken a similar
approach and have stressed the procedural aspect of
accountability by arguing that the moral claims of account-
ing must be grounded mainly in communicative reason.
Like Roberts, they assume a rather critical position with re-
gard to ready-made solutions of ethical codes or social and
environmental reporting:
‘‘By articulating the nature of our obligation to the
other, that demand is domesticated and rendered in
our terms. In the case of social accounting this render-
ing of the other into sameness occurs even before any
demand is heard. Such new accountings will capture
only what they look for and, in general, what they can
quantify” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, pp. 343–344).
Where they depart from Roberts’ view is with respect to
the possibilities and limits of communicative reason as
envisaged by Habermas. Although McKernan and MacLul-
lich acknowledge the emancipatory potential of a rational
discourse, they also point to the limitations of discourse
ethics as a basis for recovering the moral dimension of
accounting. They diagnose a rational bias in Habermas’
conception of communicative reason and criticize the ab-
sence of any reference to the role that affection, emotion,
and situated judgment (should) play in social life. McKer-
nan and MacLullich (2004) suggest enriching the language
of accounting with ‘‘the creative potential of poetry and
emotion” (p. 345), and add that ‘‘[w]e must even allow
the excessive language of love to be introduced into ac-
counts and into the narrative constitution of corporate
agents” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004). What this can
mean in practice remains somewhat unclear, however.
These scholars seem to be arguing that people and corpo-
rations should have more discretion and freedom in the
way they narrativize themselves, but the elaboration of
this proposition also remains rather vague:
‘‘Firms must be given a degree of freedom to de?ne
their own identities and consequently their responsibil-
ities. They must be allowed to be co-authors of them-
selves, in complex temporal relations with others.
Only in the nexus of creative language and action can
corporate entities come to write the histories within
which they feature both as agent and sufferer, subject
and object, and through which they may ultimately
emerge as responsible agents” (McKernan & MacLullich,
2004, p. 344).
Despite important differences in their arguments, as
discussed below, there is a basic similarity between the
perspectives adopted by Shearer (2002), Roberts (1991,
2003), and McKernan and MacLullich (2004). All three ap-
proaches seem to be motivated by the idea that the most
responsible way to account for each other, and thus the
ethically best form of accountability, would be one in
which there were no constraints in accounting for each
other’s demands. Each scholar argues that accounting
needs to be freed from the constraints that have been im-
posed on its language, and each mobilizes the ?gure of
‘‘the other” and its demands for accountability in order
to support this argument. In the case of Shearer (2002),
the obligation to the other translates into a call for ‘‘an
enhanced social reporting for employee groups, custom-
ers, suppliers, and other parties” (Shearer, 2002, p. 568).
Roberts (1991, 2003) and McKernan and MacLullich
(2004) go even further by suggesting that alternative
forms of accounting, such as social and environmental
reportings, are themselves insuf?cient and problematic
insofar as they are distant and standardized forms of
accountability that cannot really capture the demands of
those addressed.
This latter point, I believe, illustrates some of the dif?-
culties that overemphasis on the demands of ‘‘the other”
ultimately entails. While Shearer (2002) starts out from
an idealistic philosophical position that champions the ?g-
ure of ‘‘the other”, she actually concludes her paper by tak-
ing a rather pragmatic perspective – calling for an increased
use and importance of social and environmental reporting
that would provide more than just economic accountabil-
ity. In contrast to what Roberts and McKernan and MacLul-
lich suggest, I would argue that this pragmatic shift should
not be seen as a weakness but rather as a strength in her
approach. Why?
First, it seems to me that the idea of accounting having
to ful?ll the ‘‘absolute obligation to the other” (McKernan
& MacLullich, 2004, p. 356) must necessarily remain ideal-
istic. How could such an idea, for example, be enacted in
the context of widely dispersed stakeholders (‘‘others”)?
Can one reasonably expect organizations to talk and listen
to all the others out there? Shearer’s call for more social
and environmental reporting is certainly more realistic in
this respect and, thus, more explicit in terms of the practi-
cal consequences that follow from her theoretical analysis.
Second, problematizing a pragmatic form of accounting as
being ‘‘an expression of corporate egoism” (Roberts, 2003,
p. 256) or as an unjusti?able reduction ‘‘of the other into
sameness” (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 344) seems
to me questionable. Standardization and quanti?cation
are not intrinsically problematic in ethical terms; rather,
they are necessary forms of complexity reduction without
which little could be achieved in practice. They may be-
come problematic, but likewise, they can be very effective
forms of accounting for different interests. Similarly, there
is no essential relationship between social and environ-
mental forms of accounting, on the one hand, and corpora-
tions’ impression management, on the other hand: it may
be the case that some corporations just act out of egoism
when voluntarily extending their reporting duties; but to
turn this into a general critique of such forms of accounting
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 923
seems unjusti?ed. Finally, and most importantly for this
paper, the focus on the demands of the ‘‘other” ultimately
suggests that the ethical dimension of accountability is re-
garded in one direction alone, namely with respect to the
person or group to be accounted to. The ethical signi?cance
of demanding an account is thereby ignored, although the
‘‘demand side” is as constitutive of the performance in-
volved in accountability as the ‘‘supply side”. Can we safely
assume that all kinds of demands for accountability are
ethically justi?ed? Or do we need to allow for the possibil-
ity that some demands may put too much burden on the
one expected to give an account? By proposing to free
accountability fromits constraints, the above scholars have
not considered whether there are any limits to account-
ability that may be necessary because they have ethical
value for the subject that is accountable. Shearer’s prag-
matic approach is, in this respect, the most advanced
one, because it explicitly takes into account the need for
a practical solution that can be implemented in practice.
What I think should be added to this is the ethical dimen-
sion of such a realistic solution. Demanding something
that is unrealistic is also ethically problematic. It is for this
reason that I now take a closer look at the limits of
accountability.
4. The limits of accountability
4.1. Narrative capacity and its constraints
My elaboration on the limits of accountability builds
upon the work of Judith Butler, which so far has not in?u-
enced critical accounting research to the same extent as
the writings of other philosophers (see Roberts, 2009). In
one of her recent books, however, which is dedicated to
the practice of giving an account, Butler (2005) herself
draws upon ‘‘various philosophers and critical theorists”
(p. 21), some of which, such as Levinas or Foucault, have
featured quite prominently in the accounting literature.
4
Although Butler does not claim to synthesize the ideas of
the scholars she draws upon, she maintains that ‘‘each the-
ory suggests something of ethical importance that follows
from the limits that condition any effort one might make
to give an account of oneself” (Butler, 2005).
Butler acknowledges that the practice of giving an ac-
count is a major means of enacting one’s responsibility
(see Schweiker, 1993). An account is a type of narrative
and, as such, it ‘‘depends upon the ability to relay a set of
sequential events with plausible transitions” and ‘‘draws
upon narrative voice and authority, being directed toward
an audience with the aim of persuasion” (Butler, 2005, p.
12). Therefore, ‘‘narrative capacity constitutes a precondi-
tion for giving an account” (Butler, 2005). Can we expect,
however, that one’s conduct can always be fairly repre-
sented and justi?ed in narrative form? Here, Butler takes
a skeptical position by arguing that ‘‘there is a limit to what
the ‘I’ can actually recount” (2005, p. 66). In other words,
we cannot reasonably expect that we can always know
and speak the truth, since ‘‘the ‘mineness’ of a life is not
necessarily its story form” (Butler, 2005, p. 52). As a conse-
quence, if moral judgments rely on howwell we can render
our behavior intelligible through language, then a failure in
our ability to account for ourselves may not only be due to
a lack of responsibility; it may equally stem from our
incomplete understanding of ourselves for which we are
not necessarily responsible.
Moreover, the ‘‘success” of a narrative is not simply a
matter of an individual’s ability to know oneself. Rather,
a narrative has to be addressed to someone who has to
acknowledge it, and it needs to follow some rules that
make it understandable as a narrative. Besides the narra-
tive capacity of the narrator, there are thus two further fac-
tors that in?uence the giving of an account:
‘‘An account of oneself is always given to another,
whether conjured or existing, and this other establishes
the scene of address as a more primary ethical relation
than a re?exive effort to give an account of oneself.
Moreover, the very terms by which we give an account,
by which we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves
and to others, are not of our making. They are social
in character, and they establish social norms, a domain
of unfreedom and substitutability within which our
‘singular’ stories are told” (Butler, 2005, p. 21).
The existence of an addressee and of some social norms
regulating recognition implies that the act of recognition is
equally an act of transformation for the self. ‘‘One is com-
pelled and comported outside oneself” (Butler, 2005, p.
28) and cannot but build upon the structure of the address
and the norms mediating this address in order to make
oneself comprehensible and recognizable. It is this need
to go beyond oneself in accounting for oneself that Schwe-
iker (1993) refers to when talking about the ‘‘doubleness in
identity” (p. 240). In his re?ection on the moral signi?-
cance of accounting, Schweiker argues that, in the act of
giving an account, we experience a movement away from
ourselves that, somewhat paradoxically, simultaneously
brings us closer to ourselves. When we account for our ac-
tions and beliefs, we take the position of a third person
and, in so doing, enact a distance between ourselves as
‘accountants’ and ourselves as the object of our accounts.
Therefore, in the moment of accounting for ourselves, we
may experience a gap between who we are and what we
do, and the discursive portrayal thereof – a gap that may
evoke feelings of otherness, such as manifested in
estrangement, pride or shame. This gap not only derives
from the fact that we talk about ourselves, but also from
the social conditions which structure such talk: the norms
to which we subscribe, and the exposure to some other
person whom we are to address.
If both the presence of an addressee and the existence
of social norms mediating this address impact the act of
giving an account, the question needs to be raised of
whether the person accounting for him or herself can be
expected to do so in an ‘autonomous’ way. To what extent
is the account that one gives one’s own account, and to
what extent does it rely on the role of the addressee and
on the social norms mediating the scene of address? Again,
as in the case of a limited understanding of oneself, these
4
The book is an extension of an earlier published paper (Butler, 2001).
924 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
conditions seem to point to several limits to accountability
that result from the very nature of the act of giving an ac-
count. If there are indeed such limits, then it seems that
accountability cannot easily be regarded as the ultimate
expression of responsibility. Although Butler does not
explicitly say so, I think that three different limits to
accountability that feature in her text can be identi?ed.
These are located (1) in one’s own opacity to oneself, (2)
in the inevitable exposure to an addressee, and (3) in the
modes of rationality mediating the address.
4.2. Opaque selves
The ?rst constraint upon every account of oneself is
grounded in those areas of the self and its conduct that re-
main foreign to the self. This foreignness marks a limit to
every effort to know oneself and therefore restricts one’s
ability to tell a full story of oneself. Butler (2005, p. 20)
speaks of an ‘‘opacity” that lies at the heart of every indi-
vidual and that escapes knowledge and narration. It is part
of ourselves, of our experience and our behavior, but we
cannot fully account for it, because it is at the same time
not part of ourselves. Therefore, I cannot explain every-
thing I have done, and I cannot tell a coherent story of
who I am and what I have experienced because my experi-
ence and conduct have not been motivated exclusively by
my conscious efforts and deliberations and because the
minutiae and complexity of what happens will often ex-
ceed my recognition and memory.
Butler resorts to psychoanalysis and, more speci?cally,
to the dif?cult task within transference of bringing to the
fore the unconscious. While one may argue that ‘‘the nor-
mative goal of psychoanalysis is to permit the client to tell
a single and coherent story about herself that will satisfy
the wish to know herself” (Butler, 2005, p. 51), Butler is
critical of such a view. She maintains that the unconscious
cannot be narrated and turned into conscious knowledge.
The idea that the unconscious can be transformed into
re?ective articulation is ‘‘an impossible ideal, and one that
undercuts one of the most important tenets of psychoanal-
ysis” (Butler, 2005, p. 58). Therefore, fully articulate
expression of one’s experiences cannot be the ultimate
goal of psychoanalytic work, and the analyst must ?nd
other ways to help the client master the unconscious than
by narrative reconstruction. This is not to say that narra-
tives do not play an important role in making sense of
one’s life, but to warn against the idea of some ‘‘hyper-
mastery” of oneself through narration (Butler, 2005, p.
52). ‘‘In any event, it does not follow that, if a life needs
some narrative structure, then all of life must be rendered
in narrative form” (Butler, 2005).
Contemporary social theory offers a related but some-
what different way of framing this issue. Here, opacity
about one’s actions emerges in the form of ‘‘tacit knowl-
edge” (Polanyi, 1983) or ‘‘practical consciousness” (Gid-
dens, 1984), i.e. a component of agency that cannot really
be expressed discursively and therefore exceeds the do-
main of discursive rationalization or accountability. As
Wittgenstein (1975, §217) puts it, there is a limit to justi-
fying a given practice, such that at one point, one will be
inclined to say: ‘‘This is just how I act”. Going even further,
phenomenologists and actor-network theorists have sug-
gested that what actors do can only partly be explained
by recourse to their intentions or will (Latour, 2005;
Rachel, 1994). To a considerable degree, action is moti-
vated by something that is external to the individual actor.
As Latour (2005, p. 50) says, ‘‘the most powerful insight of
social sciences is that other agencies over which we have
no control make us do things”. In other words, my own ini-
tiative ‘‘is in a certain way not my initiative” (Waldenfels,
1995, p. 121), and this foreignness at the heart of agency
raises doubts about the demand to account for one’s con-
duct as if this conduct were solely the product of one’s
own making.
5
Yet, the active component of agency, in the form of a
decision or a judgment, is likewise subject to limits of ratio-
nalization that challenge the possibilities of accountability.
A decision or judgment, Derrida (1992, 2007) argues, al-
ways happens when calculative logic comes to its end. A
decision is decisive insofar as it cannot be derived from
any knowledge. It may be based on knowledge (and often
should), but at one point, there will be the need to go be-
yond this knowledge and to take the risk of making a deci-
sion. A decision is like a leap into the dark in this respect. It
must ‘‘go through the ordeal of the undecidable”, for other-
wise ‘‘it would not be a free decision, it would only be the
programmable application or unfolding of a calculable pro-
cess” (Derrida, 1992, p. 24).
Whether an action is grounded in tacit knowledge, in an
incalculable decision, or in intuition and impulse,
6
the con-
sequences for accountability are similar. These forms of
opacity introduce a limit to what can be accounted for by
means of rational argumentation. If there is a gap between
‘‘life” and the account of this life, the practice of accounting
for one’s life cannot measure up to what is accounted for.
This, in turn, means that if one extends the sphere of
accountability beyond such limits, this will result in an
‘‘ethical burden” for the subject, insofar as the latter will
5
Of course, we must not confuse sensitivity towards this opacity with
the much stronger claim that nobody can be held accountable for what
he or she does. We are confronted here with the dif?cult but important
distinction between ‘causes’ and ‘conditions’ of action. In a very careful
re?ection on the public debate in the US after 9/11, Butler (2004) points
out that we must try to understand the conditions for terrorism without
simply justifying terrorist acts through these conditions. The insight that
people act under the in?uence of conditions does not free them from
their individual responsibilities; but inquiring into the conditions
remains the only way to in?uence individual behavior in a non-violent
way.
6
See Adorno (2001, p. 7) for the example of moral impulses. A moral
impulse, Adorno says, ‘‘introduces something alien into moral philosophy,
something that does not quite ?t” when measured against the ideal of
argumentative reasoning (Adorno, 2001, p. 8). These limits of theory are the
limits to justi?cation of one’s actions and decisions by means of rational
argumentation. Interestingly, the problem of theorizing is also re?ected in
the social accounting literature. As Gray (2002) has pointed out, there is a
relative absence of papers that report on practical engagements in the ?eld
and that offer theoretical underpinnings for particular types of accountings.
One explanation that Gray offers is the dif?culty of ?nding a substantial
justi?cation for new forms of accounting which are often deemed
important simply on the basis of a conviction or moral impulse. ‘‘How
might one write up such things? How can one provide some justi?cation
for ad hoc, pragmatic and, at times, entirely intuitive choices?” (Gray, 2002,
p. 702.)
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 925
be obliged to account for something that is dif?cult or
impossible to rationalize.
To be sure, there are procedures in organizations
through which decisions or judgments are linked to calcu-
lative practices and thereby become more amenable to
accountability. Burchell, Clubb, Hopwood, Hughes, and
Nahapiet (1980, p. 15) refer to this as the ‘‘extension of
computational practice into the realms of the judgemental
domain”:
‘‘To a large extent, computational practices have been
developed which can complement, if not replace, the
exercise of human judgement. Accounting has been
implicated in the design and implementation of many
of these changes in management practice. The increas-
ing formalization of investment appraisals and planning
processes has increased the sphere and extent of ?nan-
cial calculation. On occasions the ?nancial risks and
uncertainties which were important foci for managerial
judgement are now being quanti?ed, with the decisions
taking more of a computational form” (Burchell et al.,
1980, pp. 15–16).
But even the most ‘‘truthful” NPV analysis does not
free a manager from the responsibility to make a decision,
since ‘‘[t]he burden of decision making always exceeds in
complexity whatever guidelines we develop” (Schweiker,
1993, p. 249). Granted, such analysis can help a manager
defend her choices when being questioned, and having
estimated costs and bene?ts is certainly better in such a
case than not having them. But do we not also assume
that ‘‘exceptional managers” or ‘‘leaders” should not
blindly rely on such forms of calculation? To critically re-
?ect upon them and be prepared to question their valid-
ity? Or even to act contrary to what the calculations say?
In an interesting paper on the ethics of entrepreneurship,
Brenkert (2009) observes that entrepreneurs (and entre-
preneurial managers) are supposed to be ‘‘rule breakers”
that act contrary to conventional wisdom. At the same
time, he observes, they are often blamed for (moral) mis-
conduct if things go wrong. Brenkert suggests that since
rule breaking is a constitutive element of entrepreneur-
ship, there must be some ‘‘moral leeway” when judging
the behavior of entrepreneurs. He gives the example of
a manager not having her superior’s permission to con-
tinue working on a particular project, but nevertheless
does so, because she ‘‘thinks that the project has great va-
lue and that her supervisor simply does not see its
potential” (p. 7). In such a case, moral forgiveness may
be warranted, given that there is an expectation that
the manager behaves in an ‘‘entrepreneurial” manner.
Brenkert concludes that
‘‘one of the features of entrepreneurs that enables them
to become successful is their commitment to and
enthusiasm for their projects. This colors their judg-
ments with strongly positive, and often times exagger-
ated, representations of their businesses and projects.
Such representations frequently play an important role
in their persuasion of others to go along. Far from any
attempt to arrive at an objective, rational account of
their project, they are committed to and enthusiasti-
cally biased on behalf of their projects. In fact, these
projects may only succeed due to such commitment”
(p. 11).
‘‘Commitment” and ‘‘enthusiasm” are things that are
dif?cult to rationalize and thus cannot easily inform an
account that one has to give. At the same time, they seem
accepted or even demanded, even more so in a competitive
context in which ‘‘abnormal” or ‘‘excess” returns have be-
come the norm. Are not such excess returns only achiev-
able if one goes beyond the conventional mechanisms of
calculating and protecting against uncertainty? If one ‘‘?rst
breaks all the rules”, as Buckingham and Coffman (1999)
suggest in their bestselling book?
In this respect, it is noteworthy that there are differ-
ences in how opacity is taken into consideration in prac-
tice. Requirements as to how to account for one’s action
tend to differ according to whether the outcome of the
action is positive or negative. Managers of successful
organizations, for example, are often held in high esteem,
even if they cannot really account in detail for the actions
they took in order to steer their organizations along the
road to success. Quite regularly, notions such as ‘intui-
tion’ or ‘feeling’ are used to make sense of what the man-
ager herself cannot suf?ciently explain. In contrast, there
is usually less understanding of such opacity in cases of
failure. When things go wrong, somebody tends to be
made accountable and reference to one’s feelings or
intentions usually does not help justify the negative
outcome.
7
There are other contexts in which opacity arguably
plays a less dramatic but still relevant role. Anderson-
Gough, Grey, and Robson (2001) describe the socialization
of junior auditors in audit ?rms and, more speci?cally, the
way in which the auditors learn to become concerned
about using their time productively. Audit ?rms use time
sheets to record how employees spend their working
hours. The scholars explain that trainees and managers
in their case companies had to ‘‘account for every six
minutes of the day” and would spend some time each
morning ?lling in the minutes recorded for the previous
day (p. 113). Not surprisingly, trainees often had prob-
lems accounting for their time in such a detailed way.
Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) quote one junior auditor
as saying:
‘‘I usually do it every morning. I write my diary, what
I’ve done, it’s just automatic now, some days it just
doesn’t add up. I know I’ve been in from 8 o’clock until
7
This observation seems to be supported by ?ndings from experimental
and archival studies in decision-making and accounting, respectively. In an
experimental setting, Tan and Lipe (1997), for example, ?nd that experi-
enced subjects do not pay attention to controllability of outcomes in the
case of a positive outcome, while they do so in the case of a negative
outcome. In other words, when the outcome is positive, whether the
outcome was controllable is not viewed as important; in contrast, when the
outcome is negative, appropriate justi?cation becomes crucial. Bettman
and Weitz (1983), in their analysis of Letters to Shareholders, point in a
similar direction when they ?nd that causes for unfavorable company
performance are likely to be explained in more depth than causes for
favorable performance. Here, shareholder demands for justi?cation of
negative performance are anticipated by the management.
926 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
6 o’clock and I haven’t even got seven and a half hours
to charge and I don’t know where it’s gone” (p. 113).
If time ‘‘doesn’t add up” and one doesn’t ‘‘know where
it’s gone”, then there is a problem of accountability.
Granted, this is perhaps an extreme example in the sense
of a very detailed demand for accountability, and it is a
case where ‘‘making up” the records is probably, to some
extent, tolerated. However, extreme cases often serve well
to convey an idea that can be of broader relevance (see Fly-
vbjerg, 2001). The salient point here is that detailed de-
mands for accountability, which ignore the opaque
nature of the self, may easily induce ‘‘creative” forms of
accounting. They confront the subject with a dilemma:
either to suffer criticism for not meeting the demand for
accountability or to make up a story to provide an accept-
able account.
8
The way in which companies such as GE ex-
celled in the past at managing their earnings (see Macintosh,
2002, p. 71) is an example of the second option: trying to ap-
pear consistent and in full control of one’s business, even if
this actually means being very creative. From there, it is only
a small step to more manipulative, or even fraudulent, acts
(see Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2008). This is not
to say that such acts are always and necessarily linked to
an overbearing demand for accountability – in many cases
they are motivated simply by greed or other unethical atti-
tudes. Nonetheless, it remains important to acknowledge
that obliging someone to provide a consistent and convinc-
ing account may be unhelpful when seeking to induce more
responsible behavior.
4.3. Exposed selves
Opacity is grounded in what remains ‘‘foreign” to the
self and, as such, limits the ability of the self to provide a
full account of its being in the world. Another type of for-
eignness explains why the accountable self should also
be regarded as an exposed self. This kind of foreignness
originates in the part that the addressee plays in the
accountability relationship. It has often been pointed out
that, in narrating my story to someone else, I not only com-
municate information to this person, but the narration also
has a constitutive quality for me since it serves to construct
an intelligible identity as an accountable person (Hines,
1988; Schweiker, 1993). As Butler puts it:
‘‘I do not merely communicate something about my
past, though that is doubtless part of what I do. I also
enact the self I am trying to describe; the narrative ‘I’
is reconstituted at every moment it is invoked in the
narrative itself. That invocation is, paradoxically, a per-
formative and non-narrative act, even as it functions as
the fulcrum for narrative itself. I am, in other words,
doing something with that ‘I’ – elaborating and posi-
tioning it in relation to a real or imagined audience –
which is something other than telling a story about it,
even though ‘telling’ remains part of what I do” (Butler,
2005, p. 66).
The act of accounting for oneself thereby co-constitutes
the self, rather than merely communicating information
about the self. Such identity shaping begins from the mo-
ment a demand for accountability is formulated, a demand
to which the accountable self is expected to answer. As an
accountable self, I always ?nd myself already in a situation
in which a demand has been formulated. And once I start
to give an account, I have accepted the situation I am in
as a legitimate one and cannot reasonably question it as I
go on. I cannot claim to account and at the same time argue
that there is no need to account. Once I account, I have en-
tered the logic of accountability, implicitly agreeing that
there is a legitimate need to give an account. My narrative
performance builds upon an exposure to somebody else
and I cannot account for this exposure within my narra-
tion. My narration
‘‘is an action in the direction of an other, as well as an
action that requires an other, in which an other is pre-
supposed. The other is thus within the action of my tell-
ing; it is not simply a question of imparting information
to an other who is over there, beyond me, waiting to
know. On the contrary, the telling performs an action
that presupposes an Other, posits and elaborates the
other, is given to the other, or by virtue of the other,
prior to the giving of any information” (Butler, 2005,
pp. 81–82).
Of course, I can interrupt my narration and try to
negotiate the terms that de?ne my duties to account.
But I cannot go back behind my original exposure to the
situation. Even if I deny giving any account, my exposure
to the addressee means that my denial to give an account
may be interpreted as an account. In other words, I can-
not not account, once I am exposed to a situation in
which somebody demands that I account. The situation
confronts me with a demand ‘‘to which I cannot but
respond”. For even ‘‘[n]ot to respond is to respond”
(Waldenfels, 1995, p. 121).
In fact, this is precisely what Levinas has in mind when
arguing that ‘‘even if I deny my primordial responsibility
to the other by af?rming my own freedom as primary, I
can never escape the fact that the Other has demanded
a response from me before I af?rm my freedom not to re-
spond to this demand” (1986, p. 27; quoted in Shearer,
2002, p. 560). Like Butler, both Shearer (2002) and Roberts
(2003) build upon Levinas’ notion of a ‘‘passivity before
passivity” which re?ects the unintentional exposure of
the self to others. However, they draw a somewhat differ-
ent conclusion than what seems to be implied in Butler’s
arguments.
Shearer and Roberts focus on the idea that the primary
exposure to the other requires us to account to this person,
instead of accounting simply for ourselves. Accordingly,
our responsibility for-the-other goes beyond our contrac-
tual obligations, which are based upon our self-interest.
While Shearer (2002, p. 570) admits that ‘‘there clearly is
no form of accounting that can capture the unwilled re-
sponse to the other that forms the genuine ethical relation
to the other”, she still maintains that we can at least try to
improve our formal systems of accountability to better
measure up to our mutual responsibility.
8
A third option is to negotiate away the demand. I discuss this further in
a later section.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 927
Butler (2005) is in line with Shearer and Roberts when
she argues, ‘‘responsibility is not a matter of cultivating a
will, but of making use of an unwilled susceptibility as a
resource for becoming responsive to the Other” (p. 91).
However, she also argues that since the self is exposed to
the other, one cannot expect the self to account fully for
this exposure. While the self is responsible because of the
exposure, it cannot really account for this exposure. In a
sense, the responsibility that the self has to assume when
being confronted with the other is a ‘burden’ that the self
cannot negotiate away. If the self decides to account prop-
erly to the other, we therefore need to have in mind that it
was in some respect forced to do so.
For illustration, consider a meeting in which a manager
is supposed to comment on her performance. She is subject
to a situation in which she cannot ‘not’ give an account.
Even if she refuses to comment on her performance, she
would quite probably be judged on the basis of this
(non-)account. In this sense, not accounting for something
is also a form of accounting. As the manager is part of a
group to which she is expected to account, she cannot eas-
ily separate herself from this group. If she tries to do so
(e.g. by refusing to account), this behavior will be judged
from the situation of the meeting in which she is taking
part and cannot ‘escape’. In France, the suicide in 2003 of
Bernard Loiseau, a famous restaurant chef, led to a public
debate about the value of restaurant criticism. Loiseau
committed suicide shortly after his restaurant had been
downgraded in the latest GaultMillau guide, and there were
several voices in the public debate that claimed that the
two events were directly linked. The famous French chef
Paul Bocuse even openly attacked employees at GaultMil-
lau and accused them of being partly responsible for the
death of his colleague. Although the debate soon died
down, several restaurant chefs later declared publicly that
they were no longer willing to endure the pressure of being
evaluated by the gourmet guides. They announced that
they were going to return their ‘stars’ or ‘toques’ to those
who had awarded them. What is interesting, however, is
that one cannot simply return these awards and choose
not to be evaluated. In fact, the reaction of the Guide Mich-
elin to one such declaration is quite telling: ‘‘The stars are
meant to inform the readers of the guide and can only be-
long to the guide that presents them. Restaurateurs just
cannot return them like a gift”.
9
Restaurateurs are, in other
words, exposed to this type of evaluation without being able
to opt in or opt out. They become accountable without nec-
essarily being conscious of this accountability, since they are
subject to a form of judgment that is automatic and compul-
sory, quite similar to the law. To be sure, they are still able to
account for themselves, by justifying their particular style of
cooking and arguing as to why they think they have been
inappropriately evaluated in the guide, for instance. The
very fact of being judged in the ?rst place, however, is some-
thing that they cannot undo with their account. They are al-
ways already within a cycle of accountability that is imposed
on them by others such that any account they may give will
come ‘later’ with respect to this a priori visibility.
10
In this
sense, the exposure to a demand for accountability can be
seen as a limitation to account-ability. It shapes the way in
which the response to the demand is perceived, very much
like the question dictating whether the answer is appropri-
ate or not. But if the response is judged in light of the ques-
tion, then it is no longer an account on its own; it is a re-
action which is motivated, and shaped in terms of its per-
ception, by something other than itself.
One may contend, of course, that this is simply due to
accountability being a social phenomenon, rather than an
individual one, and that this is necessarily so, because
otherwise, the concept of accountability would loose its
substance (see Schweiker, 1993). This is certainly true.
But what I seek to emphasize here is that demands for
accountability can shape (the perception of) practice sim-
ply by virtue of being issued as demands. This is because
demands precede the account to be given and, as such,
are constitutive of the social situation even before any an-
swer is provided. A person may, of course, simply ignore all
demands for accountability – but this will hardly shed a
favorable light on that person. One may negotiate away
such demands or attempt to answer them truthfully –
but the more one is exposed to such demands, the more
one’s life and conduct become preoccupied with somehow
dealing with them.
As Roberts (1991) and Shearer (2002) have rightly
noted, accountability shapes identity. The way in which a
demand for accountability is framed impacts the individ-
ual’s self-understanding as an accountable subject.
Whereas Shearer focuses on bringing to light the particular
characteristics, and problematic consequences, of the eco-
nomic discourse of accountability, my intention here is to
broaden the argument to demands for accountability in
general. If a particular type of discourse assumes a domi-
nant position in the sense that it determines what kind
of accountability is available and/or acceptable, then this
discourse has power effects. But power operates not only
through the relative dominance of a particular type of dis-
course. It is also a function of the absolute extent to which
9
Quoted in Senderens Renounces Michelin Laurels (http://www.gay-
ot.com/restaurants/features/alainsenderens.html).
10
In this context, it is worth mentioning again Judith Butler’s re?ections
upon the situation in the US after 9/11. Butler (2004) refers to the ‘‘state of
alarm” that was repeatedly proclaimed by the US government after 9/11
and points to the abstract nature of these warnings which did not specify
any concrete danger but rather demanded people to exhibit increased
‘‘vigilance”. ‘‘This objectless panic translates too quickly into suspicion of all
dark-skinned peoples, especially those who are Arab, or appear to look so
[. . .]. Although ‘deeming’ someone dangerous is considered a state prerog-
ative in these discussions, it is also a potential license for prejudicial
perception and a virtual mandate to heighten racialized ways of looking
and judging in the name of national security [. . .]. What kind of public
culture is being created when a certain ‘inde?nite containment’ takes place
outside the prison walls, on the subway, in the airports, on the street, in the
workplace? A falafel restaurant run by Lebanese Christians that does not
exhibit the American ?ag becomes immediately suspect, as if the failure to
?y the ?ag in the months following September 11, 2001 were a sign of
sympathy with al-Qaeda, a deduction that has no justi?cation, but which
nevertheless ruled public culture – and business interests – at that time”
(Butler, 2004, p. 76-7). In other words, people are exposed to an
accountability that they cannot negotiate away. They become suspect
without doing anything, and even if they did account for themselves in an
appropriate way, their accounts would appear incomplete: they cannot
undo the general skepticism to which they have already been exposed.
928 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
demands for accountability shape practice, i.e. the extent
to which a practice is problematized in discourse and to
which this problematization feeds back into practice. Here,
the question is not so much what particular type of dis-
course an individual is subject to (although this always re-
mains important); rather, it is the absolute amount of
accountability, i.e. the extent to which demands for
accountability pervade practice, which is of concern.
11
While not explicitly framed in terms of an ‘‘exposure” to
accountability, evidence provided in existing accounting
research shows how demands for accountability can be-
come so dominant as to ‘‘invade” organizational practice
and individuals’ understanding of this practice. Hopwood
(1972), in his seminal study on budgeting, examines the ef-
fects of different management styles on job-related ten-
sion. He ?nds that a budget-constrained management
style is more likely to bring about job-related tension, anx-
iety and manipulative behavior than a pro?t-conscious or
non-accounting management style. While one may be in-
clined to interpret this as stemming from certain intrinsic
qualities of budgets as systems of accountability, it seems
more appropriate to link it to the ways in which budgets
tend to be enacted in accountability relationships (see also
Ahrens, 1996, p. 154). Indeed, Hopwood concludes that
‘‘the Budget Constrained style is one in which the eval-
uation of performance is of primary importance, in?u-
encing all aspects of the supervisor’s and the cost
center head’s behavior. Evaluation is not viewed as an
ongoing part of the managerial process, interrelated
with other important aspects of the job, and just one
aspect of the process of in?uence. Rather, it is seen as
a distinct and dominant activity, and the primary
source of in?uence and control, overshadowing other
vital elements of the process” (p. 175).
In other words, concern for accountability (evaluation)
may become so dominant that concern for the underlying
practice is moved to the back burner. Clearly, the degree
of such exposure to accountability is linked to the time-
horizon: if budgets are enacted in a short-term manner,
they create an almost permanent need to justify one’s ac-
tions. In a management style oriented towards the long-
er-term, such a continuous demand for accountability is
less pressing. However, the degree of exposure is not only
a function of time, but also of space. The more areas of
one’s life or conduct are subject to accountability, the more
pervasive the preoccupation with accountability becomes.
This is closely linked to the existence of opacity, as dis-
cussed above, but it addresses a somewhat different
dimension. For the opaque self, the burden is one of
accounting for something that is dif?cult to explain or jus-
tify. For the exposed self, it is the relative space that con-
cern for accountability occupies that constitutes a
burden. Insofar as the auditors described by Anderson-
Gough et al. (2001) are forced to account for parts of their
working day that remain opaque to them, they bear the
burden of the opaque self. In contrast, in their roles as ex-
posed selves, they internalize the demand for accountabil-
ity in such a way that it comes to shape their practice. As
Anderson-Gough et al. (2001) explain, the ‘‘trainees ac-
quired the practice of looking for tasks which are ‘charge-
able’” (p. 113) and, at any point in time, would try to
‘‘appear busy” doing something. They were, in other words,
constantly concerned with justifying that they were doing
something ‘‘valuable”. Note that this exposure to account-
ability, and the corresponding burden for the individual
auditor, does not primarily depend on what ‘‘doing some-
thing valuable” means in a concrete sense, or how it is mea-
sured. It is certainly true that being forced to account in a
particular way creates an additional burden, and I return
to this point below when discussing the burden of the
mediated self. Here, however, the focus is on the absolute
amount of demands and the extent to which these de-
mands pervade practice. Whether the formulation of these
demands relies on accounting concepts, bureaucratic rules,
moral standards, or other types of arguments, is another
issue.
The way in which organizational space is rendered
knowable and governable (see Miller & O’Leary, 1987),
and thus made subject to accountability, is nicely illus-
trated in Vaivio’s (2006) case study of meetings at ABB
Industry/Finland. Vaivio shows how dissatisfaction with
meetings leads to a transformation of these meetings, from
‘‘un-systematized, spontaneous and even messy” spaces
into spaces of accountability (p. 736). The message behind
this has broader relevance:
‘‘No longer can we presume that actors within ?uid
spaces remain at a short but safe, ‘arm’s length’ distance
fromthe aspirations that seek to make them susceptible
to formal monitoring, comparison and evaluation. And
no longer can we take for granted that such knowledge
is not being produced that pinpoints inef?ciency or sub-
standard performance within ?uid space” (p. 737).
It is through such rationalization of hitherto ‘‘unrationa-
lised local domains” (p. 756) or ‘‘almost private spaces of
organizational action” (p. 735) that the self becomes an ex-
posed self – exposed to visibility, ‘‘of?cial recognition and
mapping” (p. 737).
To be sure, such initiatives to increase accountability
are not necessarily perceived as a burden. Indeed, in the
case reported by Vaivio (2006), demands for more account-
ability were voiced unanimously and were democratically
decided upon. In cases where more accountability is wel-
comed, it seems dif?cult to maintain the argument that
exposure to accountability actually poses an ethical bur-
den. However, one should bear in mind that there is a ?ne
line between the ‘‘free decision” to create new accountabil-
ities for oneself, on the one hand, and the way in which
programmatic ideals suggest such accountabilities as
11
I use the notion of ‘‘problematization‘‘ here in the sense that Foucault
gives it in his genealogical analyses. Foucault looks at how, historically,
various types of practices and discourses (in the form of moral norms,
scienti?c knowledge, political analysis etc.) problematized such phenom-
ena as madness and illness, crime and delinquency, or sexuality. He is thus
critical of particular types of discourses and, consequently, their relative
dominance at a given point in time, as well as of the increasing amount of
problematization in modern society more generally, which he aptly
summarized with the notion of a ‘‘will to knowledge” (Foucault, 1998; see
also Deacon, 2000). In practice, these two power effects will often go hand
in hand and may thus be hard to distinguish. For a similar understanding of
problematization, see Miller and Rose (1990).
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 929
desirable and thereby render their realization more ‘‘prob-
able”. Foucault’s point about subjectivation being more
powerful if people subject themselves to a regime of truth,
rather than being forced to do so, is worth keeping in mind
here. Also, there is a difference between the decision to in-
crease accountability at one point, and the subsequent
power effects of its ongoing realization. Once a ‘‘sophisti-
cated” system is in place, it may be hard to see through
it. Or, it may be hard to change it, even if change were then
desired.
Accountability is often realized through accounting
technologies, but other technologies can bring about simi-
lar effects of exposure to demands of accountability. Orli-
kowski (2007) offers a good example of this when
discussing the introduction of BlackBerry mobile commu-
nication devices in a private equity ?rm. Orlikowski shows
how the particular functionalities of the BlackBerry hand-
sets signi?cantly changed the norms of communication
in the organization, ‘‘altering expectations of availability
and accountability, rede?ning the boundaries of the work-
day, and extending and intensifying interactions” (Orli-
kowski, 2007, p. 1444). Organizational actors experienced
‘‘a strong obligation to check incoming messages” (p.
1442) and would take a rather critical stance to this form
of accountability, as some of their remarks exemplify:
‘‘Once the audience that you interface with all the time
knows that you’re a [BlackBerry] junkie – they honestly
do this – if I don’t respond to an email in an hour people
start to wonder ‘What’s wrong with Gary?’ I mean it’s
that bad” (p. 1442).
‘‘You’re sort of constantly tied. (. . .) Yeah, it’s that sort of
addictive” (p. 1443).
‘‘That’s the worry part of it, that once you’ve created an
expectation that you’re always reachable, do you there-
fore then always have to be reachable?” (p. 1444).
If ‘‘individual desires to disconnect” from social pres-
sures enter into con?ict with the collective demands for
continuous accountability (Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1444),
then an ethical dilemma emerges. To what extent should
demands for accountability be accepted and to what extent
should the individual’s privacy and ‘‘freedom not to an-
swer” be protected? The examples in this section suggest
that when re?ecting upon the ethics of accountability,
one should not only focus on the responsibility inherent
in accounting for-the-other (Shearer, 2002), although this
focus remains important. It seems that there is also a
responsibility to be assumed by the one who is to be ac-
counted to, a responsibility that pertains to the ‘‘burden”
we place on someone when subjecting her to a situation
of accountability.
4.4. Mediated selves
Finally, the accountable self is limited in its accountabil-
ity, in so far as the scene of the address is mediated by a set
of norms that are not of the self’s own making. As has been
noted in symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934) or social
constructivism (Berger & Luckman, 1967), the identity as
a self emerges out of the relationship between the individ-
ual and various signi?cant others. The self only becomes a
self by taking over the perspective of others and subjecting
oneself to social categories or roles that are provided to it
externally. Similarly, Butler (2005, p. 115) speaks of an
‘‘ec-static movement, one that moves me outside of myself
into a sphere in which I am dispossessed of myself and
constituted as a subject at the same time”. She thereby re-
fers to the work of Foucault and to his main idea that ‘‘a
subject can recognize itself, and others, only within a spe-
ci?c regime of truth” (Butler, 2005, p. 116). Although quite
heterogeneous throughout its different stages, Foucault’s
works have clearly been shaped by the relationship be-
tween the subject and certain modes of rationality. His
overall objective ‘‘has been to create a history of the differ-
ent modes by which, in our culture, human beings are
made subjects” (Foucault, 1982, p. 208). What Foucault
most strikingly exposed in his writings is the contingency
of these regimes of truth. Discourses and practices assume
a central role in society as they enable individuals to regard
themselves, and be regarded, as subjects; but at the same
time, they also exclude certain possibilities for subject for-
mation. This is why Foucault keeps his distance from a
‘‘self-satis?ed form of constructivism” (Butler, 2005, p.
121) that settles for simply stating that everything could
be otherwise:
‘‘He is making clear that we are not simply the effects of
discourses, but that any discourse, any regime of intel-
ligibility, constitutes us at a cost. Our capacity to re?ect
upon ourselves, to tell the truth about ourselves, is cor-
respondingly limited by what the discourse, the regime,
cannot allow into speakability” (Butler, 2005).
The ‘‘forms of rationality by which we make ourselves
intelligible, by which we know ourselves and offer our-
selves to others, are established historically, and at a price”
(Butler, 2005). The price to pay is the unconditional accep-
tance of the modes of rationality that are offered to us.
These modes have to be accepted if someone wants to be-
come a rational and accountable member of society, a sub-
ject ‘that counts’ (see Rancière, 1998).
‘‘Insofar as we do tell the truth, we conform to a crite-
rion of truth, and we accept that criterion as binding
upon us. To accept that criterion as binding is to assume
as primary or unquestionable the form of rationality
within which one lives. So telling the truth about one-
self comes at a price, and the price of that telling is
the suspension of a critical relation to the truth regime
in which one lives” (Butler, 2005, pp. 121–122).
When a discourse de?nes ‘‘what can be said and what
cannot” (Foucault, 1981), then those who are subject to
this discourse are subject to power effects. Having to ac-
count in a particular way in order to be considered a legit-
imate member of a community means that other ways of
justifying one’s behavior are marginalized. This is what
Roberts and Shearer criticize in their analyses of ?nancial
and management accounting practices. Both point to the
contingency of the prevailing rules of accounting and argue
that the accountable self, who is subject to these rules of
accountability, adopts and internalizes the prescribed
930 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
mode of rationality, such that economic calculation and
the pursuit of self-interest become the dominating forces
in one’s relationship to others. For Shearer (2002), this
poses mainly a problem for those who demand different
types of accounts and for whom forms other than eco-
nomic accountability are relevant. In addition, Roberts re-
fers to the ethical burden that the accountable self has to
bear when it is forced to account in a particular way and
when other forms of justi?cation are not legitimate. The
solution suggested by both scholars is to extend the possi-
bilities of accountability towards a practice of accounting
that knows multiple accountabilities.
But what does a multiplicity of accountability imply for
the subject who is made accountable? Does it release the
accountable self from the ethical burden that the domi-
nance of a particular regime of truth would impose? I sup-
pose that this depends on how multiplicity is put into
practice. If multiplicity means that the accountable self
has several alternatives of how to give an account, then
the act of accountability will clearly be less ethically
demanding than in the case of there being only one avail-
able regime of truth. If, however, multiplicity translates
into multiple demands for accountability – legitimate de-
mands to which the accountable self is expected to con-
form – then the ethical burden will actually be greater
than if accounts have to be provided in one form and to
one audience alone. This is because the accountable self
will have to deal with possible con?icts between various
demands and, in a sense, will have to speak ‘‘several lan-
guages at the same time”.
The difference between these two conceptions of multi-
plicity can be illustrated with the example of stockholders’
demands, on the one hand, and social and environmental
concerns, on the other hand. If a company could justify a
particular course of action on the basis of either its
accountability to stockholders or its accountability for so-
cial and environmental sustainability, then it would face
less pressure than if its accounts only had to conform,
say, to the economic regime of truth. Such a case would,
however, require that the company be able to survive
and ?nd a sustainable identity within either of the regimes
of truth. It would need to have the possibility to compro-
mise one of the demands for accountability actively with-
out suffering in terms of its long-term viability as an
organization. But stockholders are hardly indifferent to a
company’s actions and are unlikely to approve actions that
are justi?ed only on the basis of social and environmental
concerns. This is why subjecting companies to additional
accountabilities places a burden on them that is dif?cult
to bear insofar as compromising their primary accountabil-
ity relationship would imply considerable costs and risks
for the company. Demanding an extension of accountabil-
ity is not without problems, because it means that the
accountable self would have to challenge or criticize a re-
gime of truth on which its identity and viability is built.
In broader terms, critique is a risky practice insofar as it
puts the critical subject in an ontologically insecure posi-
tion the moment this subject distances itself from the ac-
cepted regime of truth (Butler, 2002; Foucault, 1997b).
Evidence for con?icts between different forms of
accountability can also be found in the accounting litera-
ture. Cäker (2007) provides an interesting example of con-
?icting accountabilities within a business unit of a Swedish
manufacturing organization. The business unit acts as a
supplier for advanced technology to both external custom-
ers (‘‘new customers”) and to an internal customer within
the same division (the ‘‘old customer”), which was previ-
ously part of the same business unit. The managers of
the supplier business unit have a hierarchical accountabil-
ity for ?nancial results. But in addition to this, Cäker (2007)
observes that they also have a strong ‘‘lateral” accountabil-
ity relationship to the old customer. The latter would often
demand ‘‘special treatment”, such as preferential delivery
times or product speci?cations. And managers of the sup-
plier business unit would often feel the need to meet these
demands, not least because of the historical bonds be-
tween the two units. ‘‘When the one who asks is an old col-
league or someone that the operator meets in the common
lunchroom almost every day, it is considered hard to say
no” (Cäker, 2007, p. 156). As Cäker argues, con?icts arise
because the lateral accountability relationship is not inte-
grated in the formal accounting system, which re?ects
hierarchical accountability for ?nancial results. He there-
fore makes an interesting distinction between accounting
for the customer and accounting to the customer.
‘‘To account for customer-related aspects can be done
both to managers and to customers, and through hierar-
chical/formal channels and through informal channels,
that is, lateral accountability. To account for the cus-
tomer does not necessarily have anything to do with
to account to the customer” (Cäker, 2007, p. 149).
In other words, it makes a difference whether the needs
of the customer are recognized as part of one’s hierarchical
(?nancial) accountability relationship within the company
or whether they are recognized as ends in themselves, for
which one is accountable to the customer, above and be-
yond one’s internal accountability for the customer. Cäker’s
(2007) point is to argue that such a con?ict of accountabil-
ities is dysfunctional from a managerialist perspective and
should be resolved through appropriate systems of
accountability (see also Lillis, 2002). Such reconciliation
is possible in many cases, but it may prove more challeng-
ing or even impossible in others. If different accountabili-
ties refer to con?icting ends, managers are faced with the
question of how to prioritize these ends. This is not always
without its problems, as can be seen, for example, in the
?eld of educational institutions that are increasingly sub-
ject to market notions of accountability. As Ezzamel, Rob-
son, Stapleton, and McLean (2007) show in their study of
British schools, traditional forms of ‘‘folk accountability”
(which are de?ned around professional norms) can enter
into con?ict with new forms of accountability that are
championed as part of neo-liberal reforms in the public
sector. In their examination of school employees’ dis-
courses on accountability, the scholars observe consider-
able ‘‘tensions between new forms of regulatory ?nancial
accountability, imposed in the name of greater ef?ciency
and effectiveness, and folk accountability” (p. 168). The
way in which these tensions are dealt with appears to be
left to the staff responsible for bearing the burden of carry-
ing out these trade-offs.
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 931
One may, of course, contend that it is the very substance
of management to deal with such trade-offs, to ?nd a bal-
ance among different objectives, and ultimately to make
dif?cult decisions (which go beyond simple ‘‘calculations”,
as explained above). Although this is certainly true, my
point here is to argue that this challenge can easily turn
into a burden if different regimes of truth turn out to be dif-
?cult or impossible to reconcile while, at the same time,
such reconciliation is expected by relevant stakeholders.
In such a case, one must raise the question as to whether
expecting organizations and managers to meet different
demands for accountability is, after all, a fair and realistic
demand.
Johansen (2008) offers a good example of how employ-
ees can suffer from being expected to ‘‘self-manage” the
various problems and tensions that they face in their
everyday work. In his case study of a Danish Savings Bank,
Johansen describes the bank’s initiative of ‘‘self-manage-
ment” which is supposed to increase ‘‘leadership” and
‘‘entrepreneurial behavior” among employees. The com-
pany de?nes self-management in the following terms:
‘‘Self-management is about each employee being able
to manage themselves within the boundaries of his/
her ?eld of responsibility. This means that the employee
can make decisions at any time without asking for per-
mission” (p. 551).
Yet, what looks like an increase in employees’ discretion
turns out to be, at the same time, an additional burden.
Self-management, Johansen (2008, p. 558) observes, is
‘‘simultaneously more rewarding and more demanding”
(Knights & McCabe, 2003, p. 1614) because it makes the
employee feel responsible for autonomously managing all
tensions and dilemmas that arise within her ?eld of work.
Rather than asking for help or alleviation, employees as-
sume full responsibility for dealing with dif?cult situations
and blame themselves when they do not succeed. From the
perspective of ‘‘the others” (in Johansen’s case, upper man-
agement), self-management seems like an attractive idea,
since it assigns responsibility for dealing with tensions to
employees (or managers).
To be sure, managers at higher levels of the corporate
hierarchy can be expected to deal with such challenges
more ably than lower-level managers or employees (Si-
mons, 2005). But even for senior managers, con?icting re-
gimes of truth may be dif?cult to manage, especially if they
are linked to legitimate accountabilities. If con?icting de-
mands for accountability are raised vis-à-vis an organiza-
tion or its managers, asking managers to ‘‘self-manage”
these demands may be an attractive solution for politics
or society at large, but less so for the managers in question.
Indeed, it seems that discourses on business ethics or
stakeholder accountability are often rather silent on what
exactly businesses or managers are supposed to do in case
of a con?ict among different objectives. There seems to be
an expectation that businesses should be managed
‘‘responsibly” – paying attention to the interests not only
of capital providers, but also of other stakeholders. But
how this is actually achieved is hardly ever speci?ed.
In a sense, this can relate to the critique of stakeholder
theory as formulated from a managerialist perspective.
Jensen (2001), for example, criticizes stakeholder ap-
proaches for failing to specify how different objectives
should be traded off:
‘‘
mate contender to value maximization because it fails
to provide a complete speci?cation of the corporate pur-
pose or objective function. To put the matter more con-
cretely, whereas value maximization provides
corporate managers with a single objective, stakeholder
theory directs corporate managers to serve ‘‘many mas-
ters.” And, to paraphrase the old adage, when there are
many masters, all end up being shortchanged. Without
the clarity of mission provided by a single-valued objec-
tive function, companies embracing stakeholder theory
will experience managerial confusion, con?ict, inef?-
ciency, and perhaps even competitive failure” (Jensen,
2001, p. 9).
Caution is required when evaluating such statements
from an ethical perspective. On the one hand, it should
be rather obvious that completely releasing managers
from the task of making responsible decisions cannot be
a responsible solution in itself. Eliminating any need to
re?ect upon trade-offs and various stakeholders would
turn management into a purely ‘‘calculative practice”
and would suggest that there is no need to re?ect criti-
cally upon a prede?ned objective such as value maximi-
zation.
12
On the other hand, Jensen’s (2001) point can, to
some extent, also be defended from an ethical perspective.
Not specifying at all how different objectives and stake-
holders’ demands should be balanced is likely to put too
much responsibility into the hands of the manager –
responsibility that becomes an ethical burden. If society
at large does not know the extent to which shareholders’
goals should be traded off against social and environmental
commitments, why should we expect individual managers
to do so? Since the accountable self is mediated by a set
of norms, the possibilities of accountability are limited by
what these norms allow into speakability. Criticizing these
norms may be possible – but to put this burden entirely on
the individual organization or manager is to ignore the
need for a more comprehensive socio-political re?ection
upon con?icts of accountability.
5. Rethinking the possibilities of accountability
5.1. Synthesis
In the above discussion, I have argued that the account-
able self is subject to three main limitations that imply that
any account must remain imperfect in terms of its ability
to ‘ground’ the responsibility of the person.
There is, ?rst, one’s opacity to oneself, which implies
that the accountable self cannot fully recall the situations
in which she has been involved and she cannot fully justify
her decisions and judgments, which go beyond the realm
of the calculable. Extending accountability into what
12
See my elaboration in Section 5.3.
932 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
remains opaque can thus result in an ethical burden for the
subject insofar as she is obliged to account for something
that is dif?cult or impossible to rationalize.
Second, the accountable self is exposed to an addressee
to whom an account is provided. Here, the limit to one’s
authorship of an account arises from the exposure to a de-
mand that is, in a sense, always already there before an an-
swer is provided. Extending accountability can therefore
result in an ethical burden for the subject if the demands
become invasive, if they colonize the underlying practice,
such that a constant concern with accountability ulti-
mately dominates the concern with the underlying
practice.
Third, the accountable self is mediated by a set of social
norms that structure the scene of the address. The subject
becomes an accountable subject only when submitting to a
regime of truth that cannot be questioned if one wants to
give an account. Extending accountability into different re-
gimes of truth can result in an ethical burden for the sub-
ject if several of these accountabilities have to be met at
the same time, without knowing how they should be bal-
anced or traded off.
An ethics that acknowledges these limits to account-
ability should not embrace the ideal of an all-encompass-
ing accountability. For such an ideal can easily demand
too much of the individual who is expected to provide an
account. Given that the accountable self cannot be made
entirely accountable, an ‘‘imperfect” accountability may,
from an ethical perspective, actually be preferable to a
‘‘perfect” one. As Butler (2005, p. 42) puts it, ‘‘any effort
‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to
approach being true”. What this means is that one must
continue to demand and give accounts, but at the same
time be willing to accept that the accountable self may give
an answer that does not fully satisfy:
‘‘By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the ques-
tion remain open, even enduring, we let the other live,
since life might be understood as precisely that which
exceeds any account we may try to give of it. If letting
the other live is part of any ethical de?nition of recogni-
tion, then this version of recognition will be based less
on knowledge than on an apprehension of epistemic
limits” (Butler, 2005, p. 42).
This perspective on accountability acknowledges the
important arguments offered in the extant literature, such
as those put forward by Shearer (2002) and Roberts (1991,
1996, 2001, 2003). To explore new and more comprehen-
sive possibilities for accountability, as suggested by these
authors, is a pivotal task for critical accounting research.
This involves identifying stakeholders whose interests are
not given suf?cient attention in the existing systems of
accountability. It also involves identifying barriers to
accountability that prevent a transparent and open dia-
logue from taking place. However, it seems equally impor-
tant to recognize that human subjects are limited in their
capacity to give a comprehensive and satisfactory account
and that acknowledging these limits should be part of an
ethics of accountability. In this respect, the perspective of-
fered in this paper goes beyond the existing literature by
moving away from the latter’s one-sided focus on the giv-
ing of accounts and by also drawing attention to the ethical
dimension of demanding an account.
Accepting the idea that there are limits to accountabil-
ity raises two important questions. First, how can one
identify these limits in practice? In other words, when
does a demand for accountability become too burden-
some for the accountable self and when is it still accept-
able? Second, if one agrees that there are limits to
accountability, does this not imply that one must compro-
mise some of the demands for accountability? And would
this not be ethically problematic with respect to those
who regard themselves as legitimate stakeholders with
a right to obtain an account? Let me address these ques-
tions in turn.
5.2. A limit attitude
To speak of limits is to suggest that such limits are real
in the sense that they can be identi?ed. But how can one
decide whether a demand for accountability becomes too
great to be ethically warranted vis-à-vis the accountable
self? What signals that an ethical limit has been reached
when a particular demand for accountability is being
raised?
To start with, an ethical ‘‘limit” should not be viewed in
the same way as a spatial or temporal limit. It is not ?xed
in the sense of being located at exact coordinates and it
does not emerge as a single point in time or space. Rather,
it presents itself as a continuum, an extended space within
which a tension or dilemma can be experienced. In a sense,
it is less a limit than a ‘‘liminal space” (see Czarniawska &
Mazza, 2003), i.e. an area in which things appear problem-
atic, ambiguous, and laden with tensions. Accordingly, one
cannot identify a limit, but can only experience being with-
in a liminal space, in which the de?nition of what is right
or wrong has become problematic.
Experiencing this liminality is, as a consequence, not so
much a question of knowledge or evidence, but rather
more one of sensitivity. Individuals may be more or less
sensitized to recognizing ethical tensions and to acknowl-
edging that things do not always run smoothly. To be sure,
some knowledge is necessary for such sensitivity to
emerge in the ?rst place. I must be aware of different de-
mands for accountability, of the interests of particular
groups of stakeholders, and of the rights and duties of
the parties involved, if I am experiencing any dif?culties
with accountability. But this knowledge in itself does not
suf?ce to ground my experience of the limits of account-
ability. I must at the same time be willing to have this
knowledge challenged by an impulse that emerges in the
situation of giving or demanding an account. I must be sen-
sitive to the possibility that things are not as clear as I
thought they were when I initially raised my demand for
accountability or when I was about to meet such a
demand.
When Butler (2005, p. 42) states that ‘‘any effort ‘to give
an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to approach
being true”, she is alluding to this sensitivity. To see an ac-
count fail, to recognize its imperfection and to interpret
this imperfection as an indicator of some deeper and more
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 933
complex ‘‘truth” is to be sensitive for the ethical limits of
accountability.
13
Such a ‘‘limit attitude” (Healy, 2001) is,
in itself, a form of responsibility. It is tied to an experience
of the problematic nature of accountability. The examples
of opacity, exposure and mediation provided earlier were
designed to illustrate the singular character of such an expe-
rience. What the testimonies provided by Anderson-Gough
et al. (2001), Hopwood (1972), Cäker (2007), Johansen
(2008), and Orlikowski (2007) share is that they take an
emic perspective (Pike, 1967) on accountability, theorizing
on accountability on the basis of organizational actors’ expe-
riences with the giving and demanding of accounts. One can
look out for opacity, exposure and mediation in general; but
the extent to which a demand for accountability is problem-
atic cannot be determined theoretically or a priori. The
responsibility to be sensitive to these limits is something
that escapes theoretical determination (see Derrida, 1995,
p. 26). Whereas we can argue that responsibility with re-
spect to the limits of accountability is necessary, we cannot
specify in advance what this responsibility entails and what
form it takes. For what appears problematic, disturbing, or
ambiguous in the particular situation at hand can only be
grasped in that very situation.
At the same time, however, this very private, almost se-
cret form of responsibility (Derrida, 1995) is not entirely
foreign to generalization. There is something to be learned
from the individual experience of the limits of accountabil-
ity and it is part of one’s responsibility to allow such a
learning process to take place. This is why Butler contends
that ‘‘ethical deliberation is bound up with the operation of
critique” (2005, p. 8). She emphasizes that a disturbing
experience with a regime of truth in a given situation al-
lows us to ‘‘raise the question whether a good life can be
conducted within a bad one, and whether we might, in rec-
rafting ourselves with and for another, participate in the
remaking of social conditions” (Butler, 2005, pp. 134–
135). Thus, for example, when we experience a con?ict be-
tween different demands for accountability, one step is to
?nd a ‘‘local” solution to this problem, i.e. to acknowledge
the different demands, to deal with them responsibly, and
ultimately to make a decision in which some of the de-
mands are given more importance than others. Another
step, however, is to recognize that such a con?ict may
reappear in other, similar situations and that a responsible
reaction to the particular situation also involves a broader
re?ection upon the different demands of accountability per
se. Likewise, when there is a gap between the expectations
for accountability, on the one hand, and what is offered in
terms of providing accounts, on the other hand, a responsi-
ble solution includes more than just a re?ection upon the
possibilities and limits of accountability in the particular
case. Individual experiences and ‘‘anecdotal evidence”
should also contribute to a wider discussion of the validity
of the demands in question.
This latter point brings me to the question of how to
deal with a situation in which the demands for account-
ability obviously do not match the willingness or ability
of the accountable self to meet these demands – a situation
that may be described as an ‘‘ethical gap”.
5.3. The ethical gap
The idea that there are limits to accountability suggests
that escaping or resisting accountability is not necessarily
an unethical act. It may be an understandable reaction to
a situation in which demands for accountability have be-
come an ethical burden for the accountable self. One may
even argue that resistance to accountability is, to some ex-
tent, a normal feature of everyday organizational life. In-
deed, from time to time, discussions or debates have to
be avoided and critical questions have to be ignored in or-
der to move forward and to ‘‘get things done”. Of course,
often not everyone will share the same perspective in such
a situation, which ultimately raises the question of the rel-
ative importance of different demands and positions.
Although avoiding accountability may not be unethical
from the perspective of the accountable self, it can still
be unsatisfactory for those who expect to obtain an expla-
nation. In such a case, an ‘‘ethical gap” emerges and the
question of how such a gap can or should be dealt with
must be addressed. Different solutions seem possible in
this respect.
One solution to the problem of con?icting accountabili-
ties is to de?ne accountability in a narrow way. Ultimately,
this means reducing accountability to the demands of one
group of stakeholders alone. Such an approach to account-
ability is visible in accounting standards, which de?ne the
users of ?nancial reports and, by that, the addressees of
accountability. As Young (2006) has shown in great detail,
since the 1960s, standard setters in the U.S. have stressed
the signi?cance of ‘‘the user” and his decision making
needs for the design and interpretation of accounting stan-
dards. Until then, accounting had been seen as a practice in
its own sake, with no clearly de?ned target group. The ir-
ony of the new, user-centered approach, however, was that
‘‘little was known about the very users towards which
standard-setting efforts were now to be directed” (Young,
2006, p. 589). In an effort to learn more about actual user
needs, standard setters realized that there are different
types of users with potentially con?icting interests. These
con?icting demands would obviously make the standard-
setting process a much more challenging task. But:
‘‘Rather than attempting to reconcile these possibly
con?icting differences, each report chose a similar strat-
egy – to stress the presumed similarities of readers of
?nancial statements while suppressing their possible
differences (. . .). In effacing the differences between
these possible readers, the standard-setting process
was distanced from the unruly and con?icting readers
of ?nancial statements and became focused upon users
who were like investors and creditors and would
thereby require similar information” (Young, 2006, p.
590).
This approach to dealing with possibly con?icting
accountabilities has basically remained the same until to-
day, as can be seen from the recent exposure draft of the
13
Adorno (2001, p. 169) also makes a case for such a limit attitude by
suggesting that ethical convictions need to be problematized. ‘‘[T]rue
injustice is always to be found at the precise point where you put yourself
in the right and other people in the wrong”.
934 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
joint improved conceptual framework of the IASB and
FASB. In a section entitled ‘‘Primary user group”, the draft
reads:
‘‘Both the FASB’s and the IASB’s existing frameworks
identify a particular group of primary users. Informa-
tion that satis?es the needs of that particular group of
users is likely to meet most of the needs of other users”
(IASCF, 2008, chaps. 1 and 2, p. 27).
There is much to discuss about the pros and cons of
explicitly considering other users and their needs in
accounting standards, and it certainly goes beyond the
scope of this paper to make a balanced evaluation of this
issue. But what seems clear is that merging different users
into one seemingly homogeneous category is a way of
arguing away different types of accountability. It is not
that such demands are considered illegitimate or less
important – rather, they are not even recognized as distinct
demands in the ?rst place (see Rancière, 1998). In such a
case, an ‘‘ethical gap” does not emerge and so there is
seemingly nothing to be concerned about here.
In line with the approach taken by accounting standard
setters is the argumentation of advocates of shareholder
value-based management, who also argue for an unambig-
uous de?nition of managerial accountability. In this case,
the existence of potentially con?icting accountabilities is
often openly acknowledged and then used as an argument
in favor of a one-dimensional de?nition of accountability.
The earlier quoted text of Jensen (2001) is typical of such
a position. As seen above, Jensen (2001) criticizes stake-
holder approaches to management for not providing a sin-
gle objective to be maximized, thereby failing to provide
clarity for management. While I have stressed above that
such a position may be defended in view of the burden
on the ‘‘mediated self” to trade off different accountabili-
ties, such an interpretation must be supplemented by a
more critical reading: the argumentation of Jensen (2001)
and other advocates of this perspective ultimately does
not engage with the problem of con?icting accountabili-
ties, because such con?icts are argued away by the claim
that rational management is only possible if one goal is
singled out for maximization. For the individual manager,
this is clearly good news, as it relieves her from the respon-
sibility of trading off different objectives and stakeholder
interests. However, with respect to a broader socio-politi-
cal context, this position leads to a collective neglect of
con?icts of accountability that actually exist. Instead of
re?ecting upon different possible purposes of a business,
and the corresponding accountabilities (see, for example,
Handy, 2002), the ‘‘maximization argument” settles for a
normative model of how businesses should be managed.
Yet, what other possibilities are available that would
enable the ‘‘ethical gap” to be dealt with in such a way that
neither the interests of the accountable self are compro-
mised nor those of some of its stakeholders simply ig-
nored? How can responsible behavior be enabled without
subjecting the accountable self to a demand for account-
ability that would be too dif?cult to meet in practice?
One possibility of dealing with con?icting accountabili-
ties that differs from simply negotiating away the interests
of some stakeholders is to attempt to align these interests
in the ?rst place. In such a case, con?icts of accountability
could be reduced and, as a consequence, the accountable
self would be somewhat released from the burden of trad-
ing off different interests. The question of auditor indepen-
dence is a case in point. The spectacular cases of
accounting fraud that we have recently witnessed have in-
creased awareness of the close commercial ties between
auditing ?rms and their clients (e.g. Frankel, Johnson, &
Nelson, 2002; Myers, Myers, & Omer, 2003). The underly-
ing problem is one of con?icts of interest, as audit ?rms
have economic incentives that may entice them to avoid
negative audit opinions. Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, and Bazer-
man (2006) speak accordingly of a ‘‘moral seduction” of
auditors and point to the need for ?nding institutional
solutions through which such con?icts would be reduced:
‘‘[E]ven when institutional arrangements create con-
?icts of interest, we too often seek a corrupt person to
punish, rather than examine the ?aws in the system
or ?ght against those who lobby to keep the broken sys-
tem in place” (Moore et al., 2006, p. 19).
Examining the ‘‘?aws in the system” means looking for
ways to reduce con?icts of interest. Reducing such con?icts
of interest is to reduce con?icting accountabilities. And
this, in turn, would make it easier for the auditors to make
the ‘‘right decisions” when carrying out their work.
What is true for the case of con?icts in auditing is, in a
similar way, true for the relationship between corpora-
tions’ striving for ?nancial success, on the one hand, and
their social and environmental initiatives, on the other
hand. Often, these goals will con?ict and saying that, in
the end, the invisible hand of the market will enable sus-
tainable solutions to survive seems rather optimistic. In
most cases, there is a considerable ?rst mover disadvan-
tage when it comes to the adoption of social or environ-
mental policies that go beyond current industry
standards. This is why resolving such con?icts of interest
should be considered a political task. It will be easier for
?rms to act responsibly if such behavior does not con?ict
head-on with their economic interests.
A second way in which the problem of the ethical gap
can be approached relates to the distinction between the
accountable self and the addressees or stakeholders. As
Mulgan (2000, p. 555) explains, accountability denotes an
‘‘exchange, in that one side, that calling for the account,
seeks answers and recti?cation while the other side, that
being held accountable, responds and accepts sanctions”.
The need for accountability arises when there is a division
of labor whereby the actions and decisions of one group of
people affect those of others. The division of labor and the
resulting accountability relationships are, of course, the
building blocks of modern organizations and societies,
and there is little to suggest that any alternatives would
be more bene?cial. In some cases, however, these account-
ability relationships may be enacted in such a way that
they cause a heavy burden for the accountable self and,
ultimately, perhaps also a high cost for the organization.
As Johansen (2008) has shown, the burden of having to de-
cide for oneself can be heavy, and sharing this burden may
well be in the interests of both the accountable self and rel-
evant stakeholders. In such situations, one alternative to
M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938 935
accountability would be to involve the addressees of an
account in the process of decision making from the outset,
such that they do not have to rely on ex post accounts of
why certain courses of action where taken and others
not. Direct participation in decision making can reduce
the need for accountability, since the various actors are al-
ready heard as important decisions are being made. For the
case of accountability within organizations, Simons (2005)
suggests that, if responsibility for decision making is
shared among several people, not only is this likely to in-
crease the information content of the decision made, but
it also strengthens the commitment of each person to the
decided course of action. Shared responsibilities may, how-
ever, be dif?cult to implement if the culture of the organi-
zation is one of individual accountability and blame:
‘‘Some managers take pride in their ability to inject fear
of the consequences of poor performance. Such a shoot-
the-messenger environment makes it dangerous for
individuals to stick their necks out to become associ-
ated with any activities outside their span of control
and accountability (. . .). If senior executives are con-
stantly criticizing each other or creating a culture of rid-
icule and blame, employees in these units are unlikely
to take seriously any responsibility to step outside their
units to help others” (Simons, 2005, p. 184).
Although Simons’ perspective is managerial in nature
and does not explore the ethical dimension of shared
responsibilities, his critical stance towards an individualis-
tic culture resonates with Butler’s (2005) ethical concerns
about accountability. ‘‘Condemnation, denunciation, and
excoriation work as quick ways to posit an ontological dif-
ference between judge and judged, even to purge oneself of
another” (Butler, 2005, p. 46). In other words, making peo-
ple accountable may easily turn into a blame game that
can effectively impede us from assuming our collective
responsibility for problems that affect us all. I would say
that this holds not only for organizations internally, as Si-
mons argues, but also for issues that transcend organiza-
tional borders. The existing literature has pointed to the
importance of stakeholder dialogue in order to enact a
broader accountability relationship (e.g. Unerman & Ben-
nett, 2004). In light of the limits of accountability as devel-
oped in this paper, one should add that such dialogue
ideally does not turn into a one-way street, where the full
burden of making trade-offs between different interests
eventually rests on the focal organization. Rather, the po-
tential of dialogue is to include others in the decision mak-
ing process and to share the responsibility for outcomes. Of
course, matters are more complex in such a case than in
the intra-organizational setting, not only in terms of the
de?nition of ‘‘relevant stakeholders”, but also with respect
to the degree to which it is feasible and desirable to include
these stakeholders in decision making. It goes without say-
ing that not each and every decision can or should be made
on such a basis. However, in extraordinary circumstances,
where stakes are particularly high, an inclusion of stake-
holders may well be the best way forward. To some extent,
this was the case in the ?nancial crisis in late 2008 when
governments not only shared responsibility for collective
action across states, but also took an active stance towards
?rms’ decisions, such as in the case of the merger between
the British banks Lloyds and HBOS, in which both the Trea-
sury and the Financial Services Authority were heavily
involved.
Although the two paths outlined above, i.e. the reduc-
tion of con?icts of interest and the sharing of responsibil-
ity, will reduce the ‘‘ethical gap”, they cannot eliminate
it. There will always be cases in which interests collide
and in which the accountable self will be faced with a
tough decision for which it will eventually be made
accountable. Ultimately, the existence of such situations
is the very condition of responsibility: it is only when we
recognize that nothing is totally right or totally wrong, nei-
ther entirely justi?ed nor unjusti?ed, that we feel the need
to act responsibly, to do the right thing even if we know
that there is no one right thing to do. The question of
responsibility arises at the precise moment that knowledge
or mastery comes to an end (Derrida, 1995, p. 6).
‘‘[T]he responsibility of what remains to be decided (in
actuality) cannot consist in following, applying, or car-
rying out a norm or rule. Wherever I have at my dis-
posal a determinable rule, I know what must be done,
and as soon as such knowledge dictates the law, action
follows knowledge as a calculable consequence: one
knows what path to take, one no longer hesitates. The
decision then no longer decides anything but is made
in advance and is thus in advance annulled. It is simply
deployed, without delay, presently, with the automa-
tism attributed to machines. There is no longer any
place for justice or responsibility (whether juridical,
political, or ethical)” (Derrida, 2005, pp. 84–85).
Of course, this does not imply that less knowledge
makes people more responsible, but it does mean that rec-
ognition of the limits to one’s knowledge may do so. When
we do not attempt to master a situation completely, we
may be more willing to see contradictions, dilemmas and
con?icts that call for deliberation and dialogue. A third
path to dealing with the ethical gap is therefore to foster
sensitivity to con?icts and ambiguities and one way to do
this is to acknowledge that there are things that may not
be easily manageable. This, however, is easier said than
done. At least, it seems to be somewhat at odds with the
common understanding of management and with the
way in which future managers are taught in business
schools. Despite research that suggests otherwise, manage-
ment education tends to champion modernist ideas of con-
trol and masculine ideas of mastery (Czarniawska, 2003).
Managers are, after all, expected to ‘‘manage” (a synonym
for ‘‘master”) rather than to acknowledge the limits of their
managerial capabilities. Bringing more responsibility into
management, it seems to me, is thus also about de-limiting
management, about accepting the limits of what can be
managed, and about recognizing that there are things that
exceed calculation, knowledge, and mastery.
6. Conclusion
I have argued in this paper that a consideration of the
limits of accountability is crucial if we want to understand
936 M. Messner / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 918–938
the full ethical dimension of the practice of exchanging ac-
counts. Rather than taking the empirical route, I have cho-
sen to go for a theoretical inquiry into the limits of
accountability. Such an approach is necessarily formulated
in rather abstract terms and in a language that allows it to
be related to philosophical concepts that I consider critical
to build upon. And yet, as I have tried to show with exam-
ples borrowed from the accounting literature, such an ap-
proach is not foreign to empirical experience. Findings
from the existing literature can be positioned so as to illu-
minate the practical meaning of the theoretical concepts
developed in the paper. As outlined in the previous section,
there are practical implications that may be drawn from
my analysis. These are motivated by the theoretical discus-
sion of the limits of accountability and the ‘‘ethical gap”
that these limits create. Of course, they do not follow
deductively from this analysis. After all, this is part of the
message of my analysis: that a practical decision cannot
fully be deduced from any knowledge or theoretical analy-
sis. It must remain a question of judgment and responsibil-
ity. My intention in this paper has been to highlight the
problematic dimension of accountability; certainly not in
the sense that accountability is bad, but – borrowing from
Foucault (1997a, p. 256) – that it is dangerous. And if it is
dangerous, ‘‘then we always have something to do”
(p. 256).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well
as Thomas Ahrens, Albrecht Becker, David Bevan, Hans
Englund, Jonas Gerdin, Anthony Hopwood, Silvia Jordan,
Cédric Lesage, Bernadette Loacker, Nicolas Mangin and Jef-
frey Unerman for their helpful comments on previous
drafts of this paper. Matthew Langsley provided help with
the language. They are, of course, not accountable for the
contents of the paper.
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