A critical perspective on the harmonisation of accounting in a globalising world

This article explores cosmopolitan implications associated with the accounting harmonisation project. It takes up Hopwood's [Europ. Acc. Rev. 3 (2) (1994) 241] invitation to explore accounting harmonisation effects. The article explores processes of globalisation by focusing on Kant's work on cosmopolitan governance. It uses Foucault's work on Kant's notion of a peaceful world and applies it to the accounting harmonisation project which has been approved by accounting standard-setting bodies around the world. It is claimed that international accounting harmonisation projects extend notions of accounting decision-usefulness and representational faithfulness, but this only reflects an instrumental stance toward how we account for corporate activity and its impacts on communities. A critical conception of 'accountability' is developed in this article by teasing out ideas for a critical accountability through a comparison with central post-modern and post-structural accounting models. The aim is to balance modernity's dominant and instrumental stance to global social and environmental impacts which harmonisation and international accounting perpetuate.