A ‘Utopia of the present’: MacIntyrean thought as critical accounting theory

This paper develops a critical accounting theory based on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, that goes beyond his well-known scheme of practices, institutions, internal goods and virtues to incorporate his hostility towards managerial capitalism and his ‘revolutionary Aristotelianism’. It proposes that two distinctive aspects of MacIntyrean thought provide the conceptual apparatus for a critical accounting that can move beyond critique of the status quo and the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, towards flourishing human communities. These aspects include, firstly, his support for a politics of local communities characterised by Aristotelian questioning and secondly, his commitment to an objective morality associated with human flourishing, that finds expression within well-ordered practices. The paper develops these by asking what the goods of accounting are, and what we can expect from good accountants. Postulating the common good of accounting as ‘transparency aiding understanding’, the paper explores how accounting can contribute by, for example, supporting a distributist political economy and serving the internal goods of other practices. It also draws attention to the very real possibility that our desires may be misdirected and that this may underpin many problematic contemporary accounting practices. The deleterious effects of contemporary compartmentalisation are also considered as a hindrance to the development of accountants as capable moral agents. The paper highlights ways in which these possibilities can be developed through further research.