Lisa Jack - The Routledge Companion to Accounting Communication

Lisa Jack, Jane Davison and Russell Craig

[A]ccounting is as much about communication as it is to do with measurement. No matter how effective the process of accounting quantification, its resultant data will be less than useful unless they are communicated adequately.

(Lee, 1982: 152)

In compiling this companion volume the shared view we have of accounting communication is one that implies a broad-ranging process of creating and sharing meaning. Thus, it should be unsurprising that the following chapters are a diverse collection. They reflect growing interest in the processes and media that accountants use to communicate accountability information and to represent (and mis-represent) the financial positions of entities. The chapters contain many suggestions for making accounting communications more effective and less biased. They vary in tone and nature by including a mixture of reflective overview, stinging critique, technological exposition, clinical analysis and practical advice. The contributors assess accounting communication from a wide variety of perspectives, including those focusing on pedagogy, discourse analysis and argument theory. The views presented range from mainstream orthodoxy to radical critique.

Our chapter contributors are preponderantly accounting academics. However, we also have contributors from the practising arm of the accounting profession and from the academic wing of the communication studies discipline. The contributors canvass a wide variety of accounting communications research by drawing variously on aspects of accounting history, management accounting, financial reporting, accounting education, auditing and accountability discourse.

An important motivation for this companion volume is reflected in the observation by Hitchins and Taylor in that good communication, both internal and external, is critical to a companys success it is not just about the numbers (italics applied). Thus, a major purpose is to address the misconception among accounting practitioners, academics and students, and the public that accounting is a purely technical and number-based discipline. Accordingly, chapter contributors highlight the importance of words, language and rhetoric in accounting communication. They draw attention to the need for all who practise, research or otherwise engage with accounting to recognize the complexity and malleability of language; and to acknowledge the extent to which the accessibility and transparency of language as a conduit of objective truth is easy to compromise. Contributors emphasize the need for alertness to the potential for accounting messages to be moulded by language and communication media to make those messages incoherent and ambiguous.

explores clarity of meaning in audited financial reports, both from an academic and from a practitioner point of view. In particular, the final chapter offers a strong critique of the taken-for-granted socio-political context that shapes accounting communication.