Introduction to the Handbook of Accounting, Accountability and Governance Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier OVERVIEW This Introduction to the Edward Elgar Handbook of Accounting, Accountability and Governance puts the collection of chapters making up the Handbook into context. The general philosophy of the Handbook is that accounting, accountability and governance go beyond being technical practices to be learned, adopted and repeated, and must be studied as social and moral practices. The chapters making up the five parts of the Handbook are outlined. Part I considers past and present perspectives on accounting, accountability and governance. Part II examines various mechanisms for accounting, accountability and governance, including audit, assurance and different forms of accounting. Part III considers accounting, accountability and governance in diverse contexts and sectors, including junior stock markets, emerging economies, higher education, the public sector, hybrid organizations and Islamic financial institutions. Part IV reviews some new perspectives on accounting, accountability and governance, including counter accounts and spotlight accounting, as well as the application of ideas of governmentality to accounting, accountability and governance. Part V considers some future directions and notes how the recent COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped accounting, accountability and governance relationships and mechanisms. The Introduction finishes with some indications of how the Handbook may be used in teaching and research. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Accounting, accountability and governance are inter-related. Our statement above seeks to provide an appreciation of the fit of these three major elements of human life. Which of these elements started first? This question resembles the often-posed question in everyday life: “What came first – the chicken or the egg?” The rooster, however, barely gets a mention. According to Pilcher and Gilchrist (2019, p. 1), in their volume on accounting, accountability and governance in the public sector, “accounting is where it begins”. We are not willing to make a claim of this kind. What is important for us in editing this volume for an international audience is to instigate, assemble and provide a range of examinations of how accounting, accountability and governance inter-relate as the three sides of a triangle. Fundamentally, accounting performs accountability, accountability nurtures governance, governance presumes accounting. To elaborate on our one-sentence summary above, accounting is not just concerned with accountability, but accountability contributes to an understanding of the need for accounting in organizations and societies. On the other hand, governance is more than accounting can deliver alone but is designed to draw on accounting for governance to be enabled and sus1 Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account 2 Handbook of accounting, accountability and governance tained. Accounting provides the tools for accountability and governance to be operationalized in practice in specific organizational and social contexts. Accountability provides a foundation to stimulate the nurturing of governance in organizations and societies. The term “accountable governance”, used in the public accountability literature, such as in The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability (Bovens et al., 2014), however, seems to be linked to describing an ongoing, desirable process driven by good leadership and decision making. In our experience, this is not a widely deployed term in the accounting discipline; moreover, it has overtones of possessing public relations value. Effective or good governance are far more readily applied and understood terms in the accounting profession. We believe that there are at least two major interconnection points between accounting, accountability and governance. First, a need for accountability in organizations and societies shapes the design, implementation, operation and review of governance structures. Indeed, in the absence of a need to ensure accountability, there would be much less interest in governance. Second, accounting is called upon to play key roles within governance in seeking to ensure accountability and to promote and enhance performance. Accountability is both broad and complex. Further, there are many styles, forms and systems of accountability and, importantly, the literature on this element continues to address emerging or new issues (see, for instance, Roberts & Scapens, 1985; Roberts, 1991; Sinclair, 1995; Ahrens, 1996; Macintosh, 2002; Carnegie & West, 2005; Sargiacomo et al., 2012; Dillard & Vinnari, 2019; Vinnari & Vinnari, 2022). Over time, different conceptions of governance have emerged, one of the most important being corporate governance (see, for example, Napier, 1998; Shah & Napier, 2019). Supiot (2017) has proposed the idea of “governance by numbers”, which he sees as giving “immense power to those who construct the figures, because this is conceived as a technical exercise which need not be exposed to open debate” (p. 163). The carefully considered and well-articulated contributions in this Handbook are intended to provide understanding and clarify to readers the importance and interplay of accounting, accountability and governance. We are excited about this Handbook, and we are confident that it will be an important resource not just for researchers but also for educators and practitioners as well as for public policy makers and regulators in the accounting, accountability and governance arena. The Handbook’s unique feature is the way in which contributors have brought out links between accounting, accountability and governance, which helps to present a broader conception of accounting as a social and moral practice; it is not a mere neutral, benign technical practice (Carnegie et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b). In the next section of this Introduction, we outline the rationale for the structure and contents of the Handbook. We then provide an overview of each of the following chapters. These summaries are intended to lead readers comfortably to their topics of interest and to provide a condensed understanding of what this volume holds in store for its intended audience. There follows an outline of the approach we adopted to enlisting authors as contributors and the results of an international search for the appropriate scholars who were available to make contributions to this volume. Finally, we make some suggestions for using the Handbook for teaching and research. Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account Introduction 3 RATIONALE FOR THE STRUCTURE OF THE HANDBOOK This Handbook is divided into five distinctive key parts, addressed in the following order: I. II. III. IV. V. Past and present perspectives on accounting, accountability and governance. Mechanisms for accounting, accountability and governance. Accounting, accountability and governance in diverse contexts and sectors. New perspectives on accounting, accountability and governance. What lies ahead for accounting, accountability and governance? On a continuum, the Handbook is concerned with the past, present and future of accounting, accountability and governance. The present is premised upon, and informed by, the past, as that is the site where these elements emerged to the present-day in their existing form. This is the focus of Part I of the Handbook. The future of the elements is premised on the state of play today, in contemporary times, concerning these elements and their inter-relationships. The future or what lies ahead, therefore, is cast by reference to the present (on writing in late 2021 up to early September 2022) and what we know and understand of the past – our historical understanding – where history has been active in shaping our contemporary phenomena from earlier beginnings and later iterations in different contexts. What may lie ahead is the concern of Part V. According to Carnegie and Napier (2012, p. 329), “the importance of historical understanding applies to accounting, as much as to other fields of human endeavour”, to which we may add accountability and governance (also see Carnegie & Napier, 1996, 2017). Part II of the Handbook presents key mechanisms of accounting, accountability and governance. Traditional mechanisms of accountability include boards of directors, corporate legislation, external financial reporting and disclosure, external audit and mainstream institutional investors. In more recent decades, formal governance codes and audit committees have become commonplace (Brennan & Solomon, 2008). Accounting, accountability and governance are universal; these elements pervade all settings in all countries and regions as addressed in Part III (Christopher, 2010; Lai & Samkin, 2017; Parker, 2018; Lai et al., 2019; Abhayawansa et al., 2021; Florio et al., 2021). Part IV concentrates on new perspectives on accounting, accountability and governance that have arisen in recent years and, collectively, are likely to take these inter-related elements into new territory. These perspectives and related developments in practice will have implications for organizational and social functioning and development as well as ramifications for our natural environment and the planet, which indeed sustain all of us. Finally, Part V examines what may lie ahead for accounting, accountability and governance. Our future will continue to be shaped by the ongoing impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which, at the time of writing, is in its third year of persistence with implications for all realms of life. THE CONTENTS OF THE HANDBOOK Part I: Past and Present Perspectives on Accounting, Accountability and Governance Chapter 1 explores the interplay of accounting, accountability and governance. Each is an essential element of human life and orderly societies. Collectively, these elements are concerned with the adequate, effective or proper conduct of the affairs of individuals and Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account 4 Handbook of accounting, accountability and governance organizations in the pursuit of their aims and related endeavours. In short, these elements are intended to manifest in the creation and maintenance of orderly and sustainable relationships among individuals. A failure to create, maintain, review, improve and refine accounting, accountability and governance has the potential to result in disharmony, social disorder or even upheaval or disaster in society. The following three chapters in Part I respectively provide a historical overview of accounting, accountability and governance, address the importance of codes of governance, which have been developed during the past three decades, and examine the role and responsibilities of boards of directors and governing bodies, particularly concerning governance and accountability. Chapter 2 examines the history of governance and its relationship with accounting and accountability. The notion of governance dates to ancient times and has permeated various disciplines, beyond accounting, economics and finance. Taking the perspective of accounting as a moral practice (Carnegie et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b; Francis, 1990), the chapter explores, in historical perspective, the interconnections between governance, accounting and accountability and proposes a future research agenda to evidence their mutual inter-relations. Codes of governance are issued to materially influence the development of effective governance practices. Since the advent of the UK Corporate Governance Code in 1992, the successor of the governance code that was proposed by the Cadbury Committee on the financial aspects of corporate governance, there has been a proliferation of corporate governance codes issued for adherence around the globe. This has led to studies on the adoption and content of codes of governance. Accordingly, Chapter 3 analyses the literature on codes of effective governance to provide a broad understanding of key findings and to identify scope for future research. Chapter 4 delineates the role of boards of directors and governing bodies in governance and accountability. Boards and councils play a significant leadership role in overseeing the effective governance of companies and of other forms of organizations in society. The chapter examines challenges among boards, shareholders, other external parties, managers and external auditors that may result in governance failure. Finally, the chapter evaluates the contradictions and complexities arising from governance paradoxes and challenges traditional perspectives on board roles in regulated corporate financial reporting. Part II: Mechanisms for Accounting, Accountability and Governance Mechanisms of accounting, accountability and governance are the prime ways in which each element is operationalized in practice. Four key mechanisms are examined in Chapters 5 to 8. Before briefly outlining each of these mechanisms, an overview of these mechanisms is presented. Accounting mechanisms are the key accounting processes and outputs for entities of any kind and in any sector, and include systems of external financial reporting and communication in the form of general-purpose financial reports, managerial or management accounting control systems and internal controls such an internal auditing, all of which are aimed at producing information for stakeholders for use in decision making in resource allocation and reallocation, for the discharge of accountability and in providing effective governance focused on the proper conduct of the affairs of organizations. Accountability mechanisms, for instance, are the mechanisms that will be required to implement appropriate accountability expectations or standards of anticipated behaviour of an acceptable nature. These mechanisms can also be referred to as an accountability framework Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account Introduction 5 for adoption. Like mechanisms, accountability frameworks are intended to provide a comprehensive means of, or approach to, accountability. Governance is the policies and procedures an organization implements to control and protect the interests of internal and external stakeholders. Governance is implemented and improved by deploying a range of mechanisms, procedures, checks and balances. As always in addressing governance, effective, periodically reviewed actions speak louder than words alone. Governance mechanisms are commonly applied as organizations, including corporations, grow in their size, scope and complexity and are mandatory for public sector entities and publicly held corporations, where expectations of entities operating in the public interest are at a high level. We now turn our attention to outlining the chapters comprising this part of the Handbook. The historical origins of financial accounting are linked strongly to accountability. A turn in recent decades has seen standard-setters move from accountability (with a focus on managers’ stewardship of the entity’s resources) to emphasize a decision usefulness orientation, where providing information to inform the decisions of capital providers has become the primary objective of financial reporting. Chapter 5 traces the development from accountability to valuation usefulness, which is more readily manifest in the conceptual frameworks for financial reporting issued by standard-setters in the United States and at the international level. An evaluation of the reluctance of such standard-setters to depict accountability as a separate objective of regulated financial reporting is also provided. The chapter refers to a gap between the views of the International Accounting Standards Board and the body of academic evidence on the role that stewardship should play. Chapter 6 addresses the vital role of management accounting and control in accountability and governance, which has traditionally been dominated by a traditional emphasis on financial disclosure. The chapter explores the growing importance of “management accounting and control systems” (MACS) and the relationships and interconnections of systems of this type to accountability and governance. It also examines the movement of MACS beyond traditional contexts, extending to new fields and new organizations, such as hybrid, public sector and social organizations, as well as embracing social and environmental concerns. Chapter 7 examines the mechanisms of accountability and governance in the specific forms of audit, assurance and internal control practices. It identifies the relationship between auditing, assurance and internal control while pointing to the complex system of overlaps and intersections that exists in practice. Empirical studies are used in portraying how these mechanisms contribute to accountability and governance. A taxonomy is used to organize and evaluate audit, assurance and internal control practices. Social and environmental accountability is portrayed in Chapter 8 as the core to a holistic governance framework concerned with discharging accountability to the broadest range of stakeholders, humans and non-humans alike. Social and environmental accountability embraces a growing necessary concern for the state of the natural environment, which sustains all of us, with implications for the health of the planet. Social and environmental accountability, in essence, commands organizations to periodically account for their impacts on, usage of and reliance on a wide and diverse range of resources, and to recognize and account for the risks arising from a wide array of social and environmental issues. However, the chapter raises the question of how far social and environmental accountability has been a genuine paradigm shift as opposed to a shifting mirage. Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account 6 Handbook of accounting, accountability and governance Part III: Accounting, Accountability and Governance in Diverse Contexts and Sectors Accounting, accountability and governance operate in various contexts and sectors. The Handbook is not focused exclusively on these elements in Western democracies and securities markets. This part of the Handbook contains six chapters that examine a diversity of contexts and sectors: secondary markets, emerging economies, higher education in developing countries, the public sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the developing area of a diversity of multiplying numbers of hybrid organizations. Chapter 9 evaluates accounting, accountability and governance in the context of junior stock markets. The London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is examined for this purpose. Companies listed on these junior markets are typically small-sized growth companies that hope to eventually graduate to the main market. Next, Chapter 10 focuses on emerging economies and provides an analysis of the inter-relationships between accounting, accountability and governance in this context. Across the past 30–35 years or thereabouts, accounting has become more present and visible in many emerging economies, bringing an orientation towards market-based notions of accountability and the fostering of systems of effective governance, largely targeted at attracting private investment and implementing public sector reforms. Higher education (HE) institutions exist and operate in both the developed and developing world. Governance and accountability in HE in developing economies are specifically the focus of Chapter 11. In the developing world, governance systems and accountability processes may differ according to their varying regulatory, socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts. This chapter examines the HE governance and accountability processes in Sierra Leone, a former British colony on the west coast of Africa. Chapter 12 examines accountability developments in the public sector across the past four decades, which have been characterized by continuous change, particularly to accounting and accountability, and pressures to demonstrate increased accountability, including a strong tendency to focus on performance measurement and management. The chapter explores the relationship between the concepts of accountability, performance measurement and governance, highlighting the key achievements and providing proposals to address gaps in the literature and inform research and practice in future. Different approaches to accounting, accountability and governance in NGOs are considered in Chapter 13. One approach views accounting, accountability and governance in hierarchical terms, with an emphasis on procedures and processes. In this approach, accountability is seen as an objective phenomenon. Other approaches take a more subjective form and view accountability as a phenomenon that is perceived, and ascribed meaning to, by organizational participants. While hybrid organizations are not new, “demand has been generated for the founding of new hybrid organizations rather than the transformation of existing ones” (Kaiserfeld, 2013, p. 171). Chapter 14 explores the proliferation of organizations in recent decades that favour combining multiple institutional logics to address complex problems. These organizations are collectively classified as hybrids or hybrid organizations. In this chapter, a synthesis is provided of relevant research that has addressed the complex relations among accounting, accountability and governance in increasingly utilized hybrid organizations. Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account Introduction 7 Part IV: New Perspectives on Accounting, Accountability and Governance The four chapters in this part feature new or emerging perspectives on, or approaches to, accounting, accountability and governance. These developments emerge in global society’s quest for more or improved accountability from a diversity of entities in different contexts, including those affected by religion. This search for fresh or at least modified accountability is apace, especially in view of the array of “big questions” to be answered and “wicked problems” to be solved in specific countries and different regions and globally. The broad-scale harmful and damaging effects of climate change are just one example of a wicked problem facing all of us, humans and non-humans alike. Indeed, climate change on our planet is regarded as a “super-wicked problem” (Levin et al., 2012) and a “crisis multiplier” (United Nations, 2021). According to renowned naturalist David Attenborough, climate change is “the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced” (United Nations, 2021). The proper conduct of trade, commerce and business is one of the matters addressed by the religion of Islam. The core tenets of governance, such as accountability, transparency and trustworthiness, which are addressed in Chapter 15, can be derived from Islamic doctrine. The chapter considers how the accountability of humans to God that permeates the Qur’an influences the approach to governance of Islamic financial institutions, broadly termed “Islamic finance”. Chapter 16 explores how counter accounts are implicated in shaping accountability and governance. These accounts, grounded in the notion of a multi-voiced, plural society and taking a diversity of forms, are prepared to provide a counter-narrative to powerful representations, such as accounting representations, in the form of reported figures, known as results, and narratives. This chapter explores the counter accounting research literature from the perspective of accountability and governance. Examined in Chapter 17, Spotlight Accounting is an emerging framework and practice that redistributes the existing locus of control over accounting and reporting processes through the application of crowd-sourcing principles. It allows stakeholders to make their context-specific information, communication and engagement needs visible, thus potentially enabling companies to provide more appropriate accountability to less powerful stakeholders who are often poorly served by traditional models of corporate accountability. The chapter addresses the principles of Spotlight Accounting and explores how Spotlight Accounting may be adopted in different accountability and governance contexts. Chapter 18 examines the relationship of accounting, accountability and governmentality and, in doing so, extends Foucault’s “bottom-up” method of studying governmentality and the state. It is concerned with tracing the forms of “governmental reason” and views accounting as always having a constitutive, rather than purely secondary, significance in the construction of forms of both accountability and governmental reason. In closing, the chapter reflectively considers how and how far accounting remains integral to forms of accountability and governmental reason. Part V: What Lies Ahead for Accounting, Accountability and Governance? In the final part of the Handbook, the focus moves to addressing the future of accounting, accountability and governance and the anticipated interconnection between these elements in the coming years for due reflection and action. The future is not designed by any one of Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account 8 Handbook of accounting, accountability and governance us but collectively we can come together from any array of disciplines to neutralize forms of self-interest – stark or otherwise – to examine how accounting, accountability and governance, and the interconnections between these elements, can be better imagined, conceived, deployed and evaluated for the betterment of society, the natural environment and the health of all forms of life on the planet, humans and non-humans alike. There is no “Planet B”. Chapter 19 presents several investigative mechanisms and case scenarios to question the utility of “group” financial accounting, most adopted by means of the preparation and publication of consolidated financial statements, otherwise known as group accounts. Under existing International Financial Reporting Standards, consolidated financial reporting is argued to result in financial statements, for an artificial group, albeit subject to external audit, which provides little transparency into the workings or risks of individual legal entities within group conglomerations. The chapter concludes by questioning whether group accounting indeed provides effective accountability nowadays. Given the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the globe in early 2020, Chapter 20 addresses how traditional approaches to accounting, accountability and governance have been challenged by the rapid global spread and massive impacts of COVID-19 at the organizational, state or province, national and global levels. Further, the chapter reflects on the lessons learned, which surely will continue to be learned after the publication date of this Handbook, from the perspective of improving the preparedness of organizations and societies for future crises, whether predictable or not. This chapter highlights the necessity of questioning and evaluating our underlying accounting, accountability and governance approaches on a continuous basis as the present becomes the past. Finally, Chapter 21 draws together the various themes developed in the previous chapters to provide an overview of how accounting, accountability and governance, and the inter-relations between these, may develop in the future. The chapter sets out an agenda for possible future research directions, as well as considering practical and policy issues along with education issues. ENLISTING CONTRIBUTORS FOR THE HANDBOOK To help inform the selection of authors of this volume, we aimed for a combination of gender diversity and geographical diversity, as well as, where possible, combining author teams of established and emerging scholars. In terms of gender diversity, there are 45 contributors in all to this Handbook, including us as the editors. Of the other 43 contributors, there are 22 men and 21 women. Women feature as authors in 14 of the 21 chapters which follow. Of these 14 chapters, four chapters were written solely by women, all of which were jointly authored, and 10 were prepared by a combination of men and women. The volume’s 21 chapters have been prepared, on average, by two authors per chapter. Indeed, 12 chapters (57 per cent) were contributed by two authors. Of the other nine chapters, three were contributed by sole authors, all of whom were men, four were prepared by three authors, and the two remaining chapters were contributed by teams of four authors. The 45 authors engaged in this project are based in a total of 15 countries: Australia (10 contributors), Canada (1), England (13), Finland (1), Germany (1), Ireland (2), Italy (5), New Zealand (1), Northern Ireland (1), Portugal (2), Saudi Arabia (2), Scotland (1), Spain (2), the United States (2) and Wales (1). Many of the contributors residing and working in England Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account Introduction 9 derive from other countries and reflect a greater cultural and language diversity than these numbers suggest on the surface. Twelve of the 21 chapters have been prepared by authors based in two countries: Australia and England (3 chapters), Australia and New Zealand (1), Australia and Scotland (1), Canada and Finland (1), England and Italy (1), England and Northern Ireland (1), England and Wales (1), Italy and the United States (1), Portugal and Australia (1), and Spain and the United States (1). In commissioning the 19 chapters not prepared by us, we endeavoured to connect sets of authors to potentially inform and inspire readers of this Handbook with a freshness of approach and new or divergent mindsets. On occasions, this involved combining established and emerging scholars, including some in the latter category who had not previously collaborated. In one case, for instance, the authors had not known each other before our suggestion of collaboration on a chapter was made. Each invitation issued to prepare a chapter for the Handbook included a statement that the invited contributor could approach potential collaborators if they so wished. USING THE HANDBOOK IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH Our intention in compiling the Handbook has been to provide a comprehensive guide to the ways in which accounting, accountability and governance are interconnected. In the teaching of accounting, there is often an overemphasis by educators on technical procedures, and little attention is devoted to the importance and roles of accounting in the implementation and maintenance of effective systems of accountability and governance. This Handbook focuses on the nature, roles, uses and impacts of accounting in its organizational and social contexts where accountability should be discharged and where the governance of an organization is expected to be effective. The Handbook sets out to make it clear that accounting does not exist on an unpopulated, far-flung island or on another planet, tucked away from humans and non-humans and the natural environment. Accounting can only be understood in the organizational and social contexts in which it operates, and the proper discharge of accountability and the adoption of effective governance should not be presumed to be automatic or simply adequately regulated to automatically attain. Moreover, as outlined earlier, accounting is a multidimensional technical, social and moral practice and needs to be studied, undertaken and regulated in the organizational and social contexts in which it operates. The Handbook, therefore, could supplement the more technical aspects of an accounting module, and it could be used as a resource on more specialist modules focusing on governance and accountability. Many business and accounting degrees include either a compulsory or optional module on corporate governance, and accountability and governance are often considered as topics in business ethics or leadership and management modules. Various chapters could be selected to augment more general textbook readings, providing greater depth in areas covered by the module, or readers of the Handbook may prefer to adopt this volume as a form of textbook or reference book for others to explore, discuss and debate and to otherwise use in various ways, shapes and forms. Researchers in accounting, like accounting educators, are urged not to conceive accounting as technical practice alone. “Accounting is not a mere neutral, benign, technical practice” (Carnegie et al., 2021a, p. 72). According to these authors, “accounting is more influential Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account 10 Handbook of accounting, accountability and governance than many people may think” and they “contend that accounting has yet to reach its full potential” (Carnegie et al., 2021a, p. 72). While these perspectives will be addressed further in Chapter 1, accounting researchers with an understanding of the carefully chosen contents of this Handbook, prepared by experts in their respective fields, will not only gain a broad understanding of the nature of accounting but also deepen their understanding of everyday accounting practice in wider socio-economic and political contexts and of how accounting underpins accountability and governance. Authors of individual chapters have extensively reviewed the research literature in their fields, so the Handbook provides a valuable point of reference for a wide range of researchers. CONCLUDING COMMENTS As addressed in the opening remarks of this Introduction, we put the question: “What came first – the chicken or the egg?” This Handbook has not been premised on any inclination to try to answer this question. We prefer this statement to be part one of a three-part “take-home” by readers of this Handbook. Part two of this take-home is for readers to understand and inculcate the perspective that accounting, accountability and governance are all necessary essentials for contributing to the effective and proper conduct of the affairs of organizations of all kinds and for taking care of, and supporting, all humans and non-humans alike in the world, including the natural environment which sustains all of us, as well as the planet on which we are born, live and pass on to our children, grandchildren and so on. Part three – the final part of the take-home – relates to the importance of aspiring towards shaping a better world from tomorrow. For parts one and two to be met, accounting needs to be defined in multidimensional terms and understood and deployed as technical, social and moral practice to contribute to meeting its full potential, as introduced earlier and as further articulated in Chapter 1 and by other contributors to the Handbook. This will align accounting with the fundamentally moral nature of accountability and ensure that accounting’s place in processes of accountability and systems of governance transcends a passive role of recording and measurement of allegedly objective phenomena to become an instrument that helps humanity to work actively towards shaping a better world. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge the encouragement and support provided by the publishers, Edward Elgar, during the development, writing and publication of the Handbook. We particularly appreciate the support of Daniel Mather, Stephanie Mills, Christine Gowen, as well as Sally Evans-Darby, Emma Wiggin and Linda Haylock. A Handbook of this nature relies on the contributions of the authors, and we were delighted with the willingness of leading researchers to share their extensive knowledge and experience of accounting, accountability and governance through their chapters. Every chapter was independently peer-reviewed by distinguished academics, and we are glad to acknowledge their significant input to enhancing the quality of the chapters. Garry D. Carnegie and Christopher J. Napier - 9781800886544 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/21/2023 08:07:52AM via communal account Introduction 11 REFERENCES Abhayawansa, S., Adams, C.A. and Neesham, C. (2021), “Accountability and governance in pursuit of sustainable development goals: conceptualising how governments create value”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 923–945. Ahrens, T. (1996), “Styles of accountability”, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 21 No. 2/3, pp. 139–173. Bovens, M., Goodin, R. and Schillemans, T. 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