THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY
JOHN ROBERTS
JudgeInstitute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge
Abstract
The concern of this paper is to extend the critique of accounting through an exploration of the more
inclusive concept of accountability. The paper begins by stating the positive effects upon the individual of
being held accountable, and then goes on to explore how different forms of accountability produce
different senses of our self and our relationship to others. It is argued that hierarchical forms of
accountability, in which accounting currently plays a central role, serve to produce and reproduce an
individualized sense of self; a sense of the self as essentially solitary and singular, nervously preoccupied
with how one is seen. These effects are contrasted with what are described as socializing forms of
accountability which flourish in the informal spaces of organizations, and which confirm self in a way that
emphasizes the interdependence ofselfand others. The tensions and interdependencies between these two
forms of accountability are then explored. It is argued that contemporary organizational accountability is
constructed around an untenable and destructive split of ethical and strategic concerns to the detriment
of both. The search for the possibilities of accountability should be oriented to the reconciliation of this
divide
The enduring self-image of accounting is that it is
a neutral set of techniques which passively and
objectively record and represent the results of
organizational activity. This view is also at the
centre of accounting’s projected public image; it
is a view which serves to legitimate not only the
accountant as an impartial professional, but also
the role of accounting information as the neutral
arbiter of organizational truth.
An obvious route for the critique of accounting to take is to compare this-self-image with the
actual practice of accounting and the consequences that flow from it. In previous papers
(Roberts & Scapens, 1985; Roberts, 1990) an
attempt has been made to do this by exploring
the use of accounting information in the production and reproduction of systems of accountability in organizations. Here accounting appears
not as a mirror of organizational reality but as a
set of practices which helps create and shape organizational reality. At the very least such an
analysis offers a variety of alternative images of
accounting to set against the profession’s own
preferred self image and complicate its own
sense of truth. As a vehicle for hierarchical forms
of accountability, accounting information appears as just one means of negotiating and defining the significance of events, as a method for expressing and enforcing expectations, and as a resource in the enactment of particular power relations.
The analysis of the use of accounting in
systems of accountability also offers alternative
ways to conceive of the transformation of accounting. Whilst caught within its own image of
itself as objective mirror, accounting can think
only to improve the quality of the mirror image
– to polish and clarify its techniques. But if accounting is seen as a set of organizational practices, then one can look to transforming accounting by transforming the way it is used. Such
is the concern of this paper in exploring the possibilities of accountability within organizations.
As Hydebrand (1977) argues, critique can and
perhaps should have both a positive and negative moment. This paper begins by looking at the
355
356 JOHN ROBERTS
positive aspects of accountability, by exploring
the relationship of accountability to the constitution of the self. It is argued that to be held accountable for one’s actions serves to sharpen
one’s sense ofselfand one’s actions. The practice
of accountability focuses attention within the
flow of experiencing; it acknowledges and confirms self, and the fact that one’s actions make a
difference. Conversely in the absence of being
held accountable there is the possibility of a
weakening and blurring of one’s sense of self and
situation. Having acknowledged this generally
positive effect the paper then goes on to explore
the particular effects of different forms of accountability.
The second section of the paper explores the
production of what are described as the individualizing effects of hierarchical forms of accountability, and the role that accounting information plays in the production of these effects. It
is argued that hierarchical forms of accountability, whilst grounded in social practices, confirm
self in a way that emphasizes its solitary and isolated character. By way of a contrast the third
section of the paper seeks to explore what are
described as socializing forms of accountability.
It is argued that within the routines of organizational life there are alternative forms of accountability which confirm self but in a way which
acknowledges the interdependence of self and
other.
The third section of the paper explores the
tensions and interdependencies between these
two forms of accountability. It is argued that individuals often feel themselves torn between the
competing demands of the formal and informal.
These tensions however mask various interdependencies between the two realms. Socializing forms of accountability not only minimally
humanize the experience of work but also do
much to secure the routine interdependence of
action within organizations. In this respect the
formal depends upon the informal, even whilst
denying this dependence. Conversely, hierarchical forms of accountability offer some protection both to collective action and the individual
from abuses and divisions within the informal.
Finally it is argued that the apparently impersonal order of hierarchy, often masks a deep and
largely unconscious attachment to the order it
creates, in which conformity is traded for a comforting and childlike dependence, to the cost of
individual autonomy and responsibility.
The final section of the paper addresses the
possibilities of accountability. Whilst hierarchical forms of accountability, can be legitimately
criticized for their exclusion of ethical concerns
from the pursuit of strategic objectives, in the
fight of the preceding analysis it is argued that
there is little hope that the communicative and
moral potentials of the informal organization will
be able to supplant the overarching instrumentalism reproduced through the hierarchy. However, the individualizing effects of hierarchical
forms of accountability are currently under
attack from within instrumental reason itself. In
particular the new technologies of leadership
are seen as an attempt to redress the damaging
impact of a highly individualized workforce on
the effectiveness of the collective actor.
By way of a conclusion it is argued that accountability is a social practice that seeks to reflect symbolically upon the practical interdependence of action; an interdependence that
always has both moral and strategic dimensions.
Current forms of organizational accountability
embody a split that falsely seeks to separate
these dimensions, but only to the detriment of
both ethical and strategic concerns. The search
for the possibilities of accountability should be
concerned with the reconciliation of this destructive and untenable divide.
SELF, VISIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
There is an intimate and interior relationship between accountability and the constitution of the
“self” in which visibility plays a central role. This
relationship is perhaps most obvious in the
emergence of self-conciousness in childhood.
Merleau-Ponty gives the following aCCOUnt of
the significance of the visual image for the child.
For the child understanding the specular image consists
in recognising as his own his visual appearance in the mir
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY 357
ror. Until the moment when the specular image arises,
the child’s body is a strongly felt but confused reality. TO
recognise his image in the mirror is for him to learn that
there can be a viewpoint taken on him. Hitherto he has
never seen himself, or he has only caught a glimpse of
himself in looking at the parts of his body he can see. By
means of the image in the mirror he becomes capable of
being a spectator of himself Through the acquisition of
the specular image the child notices that he is visible for
himself and for others (Merleau-Panty, 1964, p. 136).
Here we have an account of the emergence of
“self” consciousness where the objective and
subjective as it were call each other out in the
moment of recognition of the identity of the
looker and his mirror image. Analogously, one
can suggest that accountability introduces a
clarifying focus into the lived reality of everyday
life -an external view which simultaneously reflects, addresses, and confirms self This analogy
becomes more concrete in Mead’s account of
the constitution of the “self”. The same importance is given to visibility and the mirror, but
here it is the attitudes of significant others that
are the basis of the constitution of the self. He
talks of two stages in the process of the
emergence of self.
At the first of these stages, the individual’s self is constituted simply by an organisation of the particular attitudes
of others towards himself and towards one another in the
specific social acts in which he participates with them.
But at the second stage in the full development of the individual’s self, that self is constituted not only by an organisation of these particular individual attitudes, but
also by an organisation of the social attitudes of the
generalised other, or the groupas a whole to which he
belongs (Mead, 1934, p. 158).
For Mead the child discovers himself first as a
“me”, as an object for others, and only then as “I”
– as active subject. Significant others, like a
series of mirrors offer the child images of himself
in the attitudes they adopt towards him. These
the child takes over, and his sense of self as subject emerges in the space implied by these attitudes. Again the emergence of the duality of
self as subject/object takes place in a field of visibility. The distinction between selfand other(s)
emerges out of a process of seeing and being
seen. In “taking over” the attitudes of others towards himself the child discovers not only himself but is introduced to the beliefs, values, rules
and injunctions that structure social life. Our
awareness of self develops simultaneously with
our awareness of the world and our relation to
others.
Mead’s account of the constitution of the self
suggests that our symbolic sense of self is irretrievably social. However, with the notion of
the “generalized other” and the process of “taking over” the attitudes of other, his account is
also suggestive of how we can lose sight of the
social origins of the “self”, so that the constitution of self creates the conditions for a sort of
alienation both from and by others. These possibilities are described by Merleau-Ponty in the
following way.
Narcissuss was the mythical being who after looking at
his image in the water was drawn as ifby vertigo to rejoin
his image in the water. At the same time that the image of
oneselfmakes possible the knowledge of oneself it makes
possible a sort of alienation. I am no longer what I felt myself immediately to be. I am that image of myself that is
offered by the mirror. To use Dr Lacan’s term, I am captured, caught up by my spatial image. Thereupon I leave
the reality of my lived “me” in order to refer constantly to
the ideal fictitious or imaginary me, of which the specular
image is the tirst outline ( Merleau-Panty,1964, p. 136).
The process of “taking over” the attitudes of
others or being captured by the reflection of self
that the mirror or others offer suggests the possibility of a kind of alienation both from self and
from others. The body as a medium of relation to
others in the world appears in the mirror as that
which encloses and separates me off from the
world. ‘Ihe clear recognition of self that the
image calls forth, offers the danger of a total identification with this image – an illusory belief in
the closure and independence of the self. On the
one hand there is the possibility of an egocentric
absorption with this self-image that loses sight of
and denies the irretrievably relational character
of selthood. On the other hand, there is the possibility of being captured and transfmed by the
image of self that others offer, so that their attitudes and expectations wholly define the possibilities of self
The “self’ is of course not achieved once and
358 JOHN ROBERTS
for all in childhood but instead is routinely reproduced throughout our lives ( GofiYnan, 197 1;
Laing, 1961; Berger & Luckman, 1967) and in
this reproduction accountability plays a central
role. Hence our sense of self is not independent
or exterior to the practices of accountability. Accountability represents the attitudes of others
towards us, and in this way both addresses and
immediately confirms us. To be held accountable
hence sharpens and clarifies our sense of self,
and provides focus within the stream of experiencing. Accountability does not, however,
depend upon the perpetual presence of others
for we can take over the attitudes of others towards us, so that accountability also becomes a
process internal to the “self” in the surveillance
of the “me” by “I”. Finallythe practice of accountability has open possibilities in terms of the
sense of self and our relation to others that it reflects and enacts. What follows will suggest that
different forms of accountability produce very
different senses of selfand our relation to others.
Albeit as a social practice accountability can reflect and enact a sense of self as solitary and singular with no necessary connection to others.
This possibility will be explored in the following
section on the individualizing effects of hierarchical accountability. By contrast the practice of
accountability can reflect and enact a sense of
self which whilst individually confirming simultaneously acknowledges and expresses the interdependence of self and other. These possibilities will be explored in a discussion of
socializing forms .of accountability.
INDMDUALIZING FORMS OF
ACCOUNTABILITY
The individual is no doubt the fictitious atom of an
ideological representation of society, but he is also a reality fabricated by the specitk technology of power that I
have called discipline (Foucault, 1979, p. 194).
An earlier paper (Roberts & Scapens, 1990)
drew upon Foucault’s account of disciplinary
power to develop an empirical account of the effects of accounting controls. Here the focus will
be on the way that accounting contributes to
making a reality of the fiction of the individual.
The forms of disciplinary power are pervasive
and various and are in no way limited to accounting and the world of work. Notably the experience of education typically socializes us into the
taken for granted mentality of discipline.
In the realm of work, it is perhaps in our experience of the labour market that discipline
first begins to make its effects felt. Despite the
legal framing of the employment contract as a
free exchange between equals, choice in most
labour markets is skewed firmly in favour of the
employer. For the representative of the employing organization, potential employees are seen
serially as “applicants”, and are judged and
ranked in terms of some idealized image of what
is required. The importance of the task will typically shape the range and depth of the examination of potential employees. For those subject to
the process, the asymmetry of power in the relationship is typically judged to preclude the
active negotiation of what is required, so that the
force of action is channelled back on the individual. Action is focused in the attempt to read
the set of ideal personal and professional qualities that are required, and then addressing and
presenting oneself in the light of these expectations. In doing so one encounters others as
potential competitors from whom one must distinguish oneself to be selected.
For those who inevitably fail in this competition there is the problem of suffering or
rationalizing away the image of self as failure
that is offered by the experience. Success
superficially carries with it the symbolism of
recognition and acceptance. Paradoxically however, the desire for recognition carries one
further and further onto the ground of others’
expectations. One is accepted not for one’s
uniqueness but for approximating most closely
to the employer’s idealized image of what is
required. Acceptance gives one a location in a
hierarchy which itself can be read as a reflection
of one’s relative value and worth. Moreover,
acceptance is transitory and conditional upon
performance; acceptance and recognition are not
achieved once and for ail but are constantly at
stake in the rituals of hierarchical accountability.
THE POSSlBILlTIES OF ACCOUNTABILI-IY 359
It is in these rituals that accounting information
currently plays such a central role.
The previous section sought to describe the
emergence of the self out of the interplay of the
dialectic of seeing and being seen. For Foucault,
disciplinary power arises from mechanisms
which disrupt this dialectic.
Disciplinary power is exercised through its invisibility; at
the same time it imposes on those it subjects a compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to
be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that
is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly
seen that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection (Foucault, 1979, p. 187).

thoritative and telling means whereby activity is
made visible. Before describing the immediate
effects of this visibility we will consider the various ways in which the source of accounting’s
power is rendered invisible. Part of this invisibility lies in accountings capacity to present information as if it were objective fact; the detail can
be contested but not its basic capacity to reflect
the truth. Like the scientific method it imitates,
the knowledge that accounting produces is presented as somehow independent of the interests
of those who produce and use it. Although its significance pervades and shapes our concrete
face-to-face relations with others it is used by

present to be addressed or identified. Hence accounting manages to impose its way of seeing,
without being able to be seen. Its presence is
pervasive but its origins and locus ambiguous.
What then is the effect of the visibility accounting imposes?
In general terms accounting is effective
through offering us a seemingly unavoidable, incontrovertible image of ourselves and our
activity. In this respect perhaps the most unnerving aspect of accounting information is that individuals scarcely appear in it at all. Hence within
accounts the self appears only tangentially in
figures such as added value per employee, or
peculiar accumulations of selves as elements of
cost. Accounting’s central values are those of
profit and rate of return on capital to which both
producers and the activity of production are
merely instrumental. But if we can find little or
no easily recognizable trace of ourselves in the
mirror of accounting information, this information is then used in the rituals of routine accountability to shape our sense of self and our relation
to others.
Foucault talks of discipline’s effects in terms of
the way it “compares, difFerentiates, hierarchizes,
homogenizes, excludes”. All these e&c@ can be
seen as the product of routine accountability. In
the context of this paper only a few suggestive
illustrations of these effects will be offered.
Exclusion is perhaps by definition an unusual
element of routine accountability. Its real
power, however, is not so much around the individual who is excluded -for here power dissolves itself in its very use – but in its impact on
those who witness the exclusion. For them, it is
an example of what might happen. It traces out a
possible future and thereby reinforces the
weight of the standards by which they are
judged. It reminds them of the conditional
nature of their membership. It reminds them
that their security depends upon their utility.
The fear of exclusion somehow leads to a sort
of self-absorption; it forces one back repeatedly
to a concern with one’s own singular survival
which depends upon meeting the standards that
are set and advertised through routine accountability. To secure self one must see oneself and
what one does in the terms in which one is
judged. In Foucault’s words:
He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows
it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power, he
makes them play upon himself. He inscribes in himself
the power relation in which he simultaneously plays
both roles (Foucault, 1979, pp. 202-203).
Here is the moment, the mental stance, in which
accountability can be seen to individualize; an
absorption with self, with how one will be seen,
which leads constantly to attempts to stand as
if outside oneself in order to anticipate the
360 JOHN ROBERTS
expectations of others. In adopting this stance,
the standards and values of accounting are internalized. In adopting this stance the self is discovered as solitary and singular.
One’s absorption with objective appearance
can be purely defensive or can be taken on more
positively as a series of projects for the enhancement of self Thus alongside the spectre of exclusion that accountability raises, lie the positive
possibilities of the immediate gratification of
praise, and the lure of future career opportunity.
The individualized self can aspire to an ever
more complete autonomy, and each level of the
hierarchy apparently offers a move towards this;
position in the hieracrchy serving as an objective confirmation of relative value and worth. In
practice of course one is drawn thereby further
and further into conformity with the standards
of utility upon which “success” depends.
Once in a management position one’s security
depends crucially on being able to secure
others’ conformity, and hence one is led
increasingly to view not only self but also
others in the light of the instrumental concerns
that accountability advertises.
Foucault describes the impersonal intention
embodied in discipline in the following way.
It [discipline] mustalsomaster~IIthe forcesthat are
formed fromtheveryconstitutionofanorganisedmultiplicity:it mustneutralisethe effectsof counterpower
chatspring from them and which form a resistance to the
power that wishes to dominate it; agitations, revolts,
spontaneous organisations, coalitions – anything that
may establish horizontal conjunctions. Hence the fact
that the disciplines useproceduresof partitioningand
verticality, thattheyintroducebetweenthediEerentelementsat thesamelevel,assolidseparationsaspossible,
thattheydefinecompacthierarchicalnetworks, inshort
thattheyopposeto theintrinsicadverseforceofmultiplicitythe techniqueof the continuous, individualising
pyramid. Theymusfalsoincreasetheparticularutilityof
each elementof the multiplicity(Foucault,1979, pp.
29-220).
The above has sought to suggest that the key to
this individualizing is a sort of anxious selfabsorption that is created and maintained
around hierarchical accountability.
The rituals of routine accountability impose
the instrumental interests in production and
producers that are embodied in accounting, so
that through the distorting mirror of accounting,
others discover you, and you discover yourself
and others as mere objects of use. To maintain
this usefulness requires a constant vigilance over
one’s self and a restless and endless comparison
and differentiation of self from others.
Foucault in the above quote suggests that
these individualizing effects are the very means
whereby disciplinary power is effective. In the
name of some distant external power, we come
to practice power upon ourselves and each
other. Yet the quote also recognizes “the adverse
force of multiplicity” which suggests at least the
latent possibility of a different experience of self
and our relation to others.
SOCIALIZING FORMS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
In order to explain the nature of socializing
forms of accountability and distinguish these
Tom individualizing forms, we will make use of
Habermas’ distinction between “work” and “interaction”. Habermas defines “work” in the following way:
by work of purposive rational action I understand either
instrumental action or rational choice or their conjunction. Instrumental action is governed by technical rules
based on empiricalknowledge(Habermas, 1971, pp.
91-92).
By “interaction” he means:
communicativeaction,symbolic interaction. It is governed by binding consensual norms which define reciprocal expectations about behaviour, and which must be
understood and recognised by at least two acting subjects (Habermas,1971, p. 92).
In more recent work this distinction has been recast into a distinction between “action-oriented
to success” and “action-oriented to achieving
understanding”. Although Habermas uses these
distinctions to explore the contemporary relationship between “subsystems of rational purposive action” and the encompassing “institutional
framework”, here the distinction will be used to
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY 361
explore the coexistence of “work” and “interaction” at work.
It can be suggested that accounting and the
systems of accountability that are mobilized
around accounting information embody and reproduce the mentality which Habermas defines
as “work”. The preceding section argued that accounting reflects an instrumental orientation
both to producers and production, and the
“compulsory visibility” that it imposes, and the
“factual” knowledge that it creates tends to reproduce in those subject to it a similarly instrumental orientation not only to one’s own and
others actions, but more completely to one’s self
and other selves.
A number of conditions maintain this system
of “work”. Although the use of accounting information could be said to be oriented to understanding, the understanding that accounting prescribes is typically an imposed understanding.
One can argue with its accuracy but not its
methods of production or its categories of relevance. This is partly because accounting information is usually produced at a distance from the
contexts which it purports to mirror and partly
because this distance is itself a hierarchical
distance. Thus accounting information is produced and used within a system of dominance.
Elsewhere (Roberts & Scapens, 1985) it was
argued that the primary merit of accounting information is its capacity to secure accountability
across physical distance. Here it both reflects
and in part resolves the problems of trust and divergent interests that distance and hierarchy
create (Fox, 1974; Luhman, 1979). But this distrust and dominance are then reintroduced into
face-to-face contexts where accountability is typically asymmetrical; the subordinate accounts
for himself to the superior rather than reciprocally. The result is a style of communication which
is potentially full of distortion and inhibition
both within and between particular face-to-face
contexts. Accounting imposes a definition of the
situation and action; the subordinate must explain his or her action in terms of this imposed understanding; individuals’ own understandings
are in principle irrelevant to this process. The
negative sanction of exclusion, and the positive
sanctions of financial reward and future career
opportunities reinforce individual instrumentality whilst securing conformity. The result is at
best an instrumental legitimation of the values
embodied in accounting, in which success at
controlling self and, for managers, others is constantly elevated above a concern for the quality
or adequacy of reciprocal understanding.
These conditions which underlie the proliferation of “work”, for Habermas stand in marked
contrast to those which underlie “interaction”.
These Habermas has elaborated in his concept of
“universal pragrnatics” through which he seeks
to explore both the desirability and practicality
of a rational consensus grounded in non-distorted communication. What follows will
merely suggest that alongside and around the instrumental individualism that hierarchical accountability produces, there are a variety of
other possible experiences of accountability
alive and nourishing, and that ifone explores the
conditions which encourage and allow these alternative forms then they tend towards those
which Habermas delineates as the basis for a
rationally grounded consensus.
As a researcher within organizations one can
interview people as functionaries, and not surprisingly receive accounts of their experience
which merely reflect their functional roles.
Alternatively one can talk to others as people
who are employed as functionaries, and this
tends to produce much more reflexive, and critical accounts of individuals’ experience at work.
In other words, a shift of attention uncovers an
active process of understanding not wholly confined by the logic of instrumental rationality encouraged by hierarchical accountability, Individuals are rediscovered as having at least a partial penetration and reflexive understanding of
the “real” conditions of their own and others’
work, and a capacity to conceive of and recognize others and their interests outside the purely
instrumental framework that work dictates.
Whilst discouraged and unrecognized by
hierarchical accountability, these understandings have an active presence within the flow of
organizational life. Thus a great deal of what
passes for talk in organizations involves the ac
362 JOHN ROBERTS
tive and open-ended process of making sense of
what is going on. In the most oppressive situations this is an individual process of seeking to
see through the presented reality to its underlying conditions, and even as an individual activity
it serves the purpose of retaining some sense of
being in control. Typically, however, the process is a social one. Those who one happens to
work with or alongside, become those with
whom one shares and builds a common intetpretation of ones world of work. Journeys too and
ftom work, lunches and after work drinks,
toilets, corridors, all the unsurveilled “back regions” of organizational life serve as locations for
such sense-making talk. Through such talk not
only is the official version of organizational reality penetrated and reinterpreted, but also it is
the basis for a diffuse set of loyalties and ties, of
enmity as well as Biendship, that humanize and
socialize the experience of work.
The conditions of such talk are worth noting.
It is easiest between individuals of equal status,
where hierarchy does not intervene. Foucault is
right to insist that we should see power not
merely as negative and constraining but as positive and productive of particular forms of subjectivity. Nevertheless hierarchy seems to powerfully inhibit talk, so that in this respect power
and talk seem fundamentally opposed. Hierarchical power seeks to resolve difference by
hierarchizing individuals’ relative value, and the
relative worth of their understanding. Whilst
practically this secures the public dominance of
some opinions over others, difference is not
thereby obliterated, but rather driven underground. In the absence of hierarchy, however,
talk is in a sense the only way of resolving difference or at least articulating it. Even between proximate levels of hierarchy it is difficult to maintain relationships to that which is functionally
prescribed, so that relationships frequently spill
over the instrumental boundaries that are set for
them.
Talk oriented to understanding also inevitably
flourishes where there is regular face-to-face
contact. In this respect the indifference of
heirarchical accountability to all but its instrumental interests is a double-edged sword. On the
one hand, in search of recognition we are more
easily drawn onto its ground. Conversely, our
concrete relations with others potentially offer a
much richer and fuller source of recognition and
identity, with the relatively unguarded flow of
talk drawing us into a much deeper form of
mutual engagement and reciprocal recognition
than a calculated conformity with others’ wishes
can ever secure. The very fact of others’ presence, and the relative absence of asymmetrical
power forces us to acknowledge others, and to
articulate what differenceswe discoverbetween
us through talk. Barely perhaps does such talk
explicitly aim at achieving consensus, but undoubtedly it is the basis of mututal understanding, and consensus, albeit fluid and transitory,
may be its unintended consequence.
It is these conditions – a relative absence of
asymmetries of power, and a context for the
face-to-face negotiation of the significance of
organizational events – that are the basis for
what will be characterized here as socializing
forms of accountability. At the heart of these is a
form of talk which whilst confirming of self, at
the same time openly acknowledges the interdependence of self and other. Again, to quote
Merleau-Ponty:
In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted
between the other person and myself a common ground:
my thought and his are interwoven in a single fabric, my
words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by
the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a
shared operation ofwhich neither of us is the creator. We
have here a dual being, where the other is for me no
longer a mere bit of behaviour in my transcendental field
nor I in his; we are collaborators with each other in a consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into each
other, and we coexist through a common world
(Merleau-Panty, 1962, p. 354).
The process of hierarchical accountability is
one in which we are kept anxiously preoccupied
with securing self in relation to the objective
standards of expected utility that accounting advertises and imposes. These standards are “taken
over” and become the lens through which we
judge ourselves, and compare ourselves with
others. By contrast, in writing of a socializing
form of accountability one can suggest the possi
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY 363
bility of a form of talk where others are encountered directly. Rather than treating others narcissistically as a mere mirror for self, or instrumentally merely as means or obstacles to my private projects, unrestrained talk draws me into
relation with others. In the process I am drawn
to a recognition of other as other beyond my instrumental interest in them – as a fellow subject. At the same time my own understanding is
engaged and elaborated only through and in relation to others, so that understanding takes the
form of a “shared operation” of which no one is
identifiably the author. In sum, one can suggest
the possibility of a form of organizational talk
which constantly threatens to dissolve the
preoccupation with the objective boundaries of
self which hierarchical accountability encourages, and instead offers a confirmation of self as
active subject, different from yet in a relation of
interdependence with others.
INDIVIDUALIZINGAND SOCIALIZING FORMS
OF ACCOUNTABILITY: TENSIONS AND
INTERDEPENDENCIES
The above has attempted to sketch the conditions and effects of two forms of accountaiblity
that are manifest within organizations. All accountability has the effect of acknowledging self,
and focusing attention within the stream of experience. Different forms of accountability however, build very different senses of self and our
relation to others. Hierarchical accountability,
in which accounting information typically plays
a central role, serves to individualize. Accounting information acts as a mirror through which
producers and their activity are made visible. Its
apparent objectivity, and the positive and negative sanctions that surround its use make it the
image of events that counts. It becomes the
mirror through which others must view, judge
and compare individual and group performance.
It becomes the mirror through which to secure
self, we must view ourselves and our relation to
others. It is in this way that the routines of hierarchical accountability individualize, for they produce a nervous preoccupation with the image of
self as an object of use, which is either indifferent
to others, or conceives of others only as competitors from whom one must differentiate oneself.
Such individualizing effects, however, do not
wholly define or confine the experience of self
in organizations. The discussion of socializing
forms of accountability suggested that there
exists the possibility of a different experience of
self and one’s relation to others. In the routines
of work others are perhaps inevitably encountered more directly, and relationships developed more fully than functional utility
demands or officially requires. A relative symmetry ofpower and face-to-face contact offer the
possibility of a more complete recognition of
self, the engagement of personal understanding
and the challenging of others’ views and expectations. Out of such relationships is built mutual
understanding and ties of friendship, loyalty and
reciprocal obligation; a sense both of individual
difference and mutual dependence. Self is confirmed but in a way that simultaneously acknowledges and articulates the interdependence of
self and other.
What then is the organizational relationship
between these two forms of accountability? The
suggestion implicit in the above analysis is that
different forms of accountability reflect and reproduce different ontologies. The earlier discussion of the genesis of self-consciousness made
clear that self-consciousness arises from an intersubjective ‘field of visibility; in Merleau-Ponty’s
words “we are compounded through and
through of relationship”. From this perspective
the individualising effects of hierarchical accountability appear as a kind of organizationally
induced blindness. It is the peculiar achievement of disciplinary power to depend upon
social practices which nevertheless construct a
form of subjectivity that constantly denies its
social character or discovers it only serially.
But if the atomistic conception of the individual is a “fiction”, Foucault is right to insist that
the mechanisms of disciplinary power makes a
reality of this fiction. Both orders offer individuals competing sources of identity between
which to some degree they are forced to choose;
364 JOHN ROBERTS
an identity grounded in the relatively unstructured yet egalitarian domain of the informal does
not coexist easily with an identity rooted in the
reflected relative status of hierarchy. The obligations that come with a commitment to the
hierarchy threaten the loyalties of informal,
whilst informal commitments risk compromising and subverting functional responsibilities. It
is as ifindividuals are constantly confronted with
a choice between ties of loyalty to colleagues
and their individual interests in the hierarchy.
There is a pressure to resist being drawn into a
relationship, to calculatedly maintain a distance
– a distance that is made more real as one is
drawn up the hierarchy. However, even if the
relationship between what have been described
as socializing and invididualizing forms of organizational accountability is often experienced
as a conflict or split within the individual, the apparent collision between these “competing” orders masks a variety of subtle interdependenties.
One can suggest that socializing forms of accountability serve to humanize the experience
of work – to cushion the individual from the impersonal harshness of hierarchy especially at
lower levels of the organization. However, as has
long been realized, the effects of the informal
organization have significance beyond the individual in so far as the lateral ties that are produced do much to secure the routine interdependence of action upon which effective
organization depends. In this respect the formal
depends upon the informal, even ifit denies this
dependence. However there is also a reverse
relationship involved here. Whatever the latent
possibilities of community within the informal
organization, it is also often the site of intense divisions and splits. One can think here of emotionally highly charged differences that preclude
talk, of the abuse of localized unsurveilled
power, of the vagaries of favouritism, and
nepotism and persecution, or of local collusion
that subverts or disregards wider responsibilities beyond the group. In this respect, as
Weber ( 1947) long ago recognized, the externally imposed order of hierarchical rules offers a
variety of forms of relief; it brackets off and
thereby to some extent protects collective
action from the intrusion of irreconcilable personal differences, and it realizes a presence in
local contexts that threatens to uncover and
thereby perhaps inhibits the personal abuse of
power or the fraudulent potentials of a local
group. In all these respects bureaucracy at the
least mitigates the destructive potentialities contamed within localized communities, to the
benefit either of those within or in the larger
group. (The paradox is that the abuses then reappear in the other sphere in the form of the apparently unintentional injuries of inequality and
disadvantage which are personally damaging but
whose origin, or causality is difficult to identify
or specify.)
Whilst the impersonal order of hierarchical
accountability, as Habermas argues, realizes a
form of system integration achieved by the
media of power and money that is uncoupled
from the demands and potentialities of a
lifeworld grounded in communication, it is also
an expression of the failure of that communicative order to reconcile the differences that it
contains within itself. Of course bypassing or
marginalizing the impact of personal difference
on organizational action allows such differences
to proliferate in an increasingly pluralistic
lifeworld.
There is one further interconnection to be described that reverses the direction of Habermas’s thesis of the “colonization” or “technicization” of the life world, and casts the apparent impersonality of the hierarchical order into doubt.
One can suggest that there is a transference from
the patriarchal order of the family that still dominates lifeworld experience into the apparently
impersonal order of the hierarchy. Thus in the
early works of Argyris, and more recently in the
psychoanalytically informed work of writers
such as Diamond ( 1986), Lyth ( 19SS), Kets de
Vries ( 1980) Bion ( 196 1), there is a clear recognition of the ways in which the hierarchical
order of organization is throughout embued
with the unacknowledged and often unresolved
symbolism of childhood dependence. If such a
thesis is accepted then it represents a deeper
challenge to the realization of rational consensus
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY 365
than that created by the purely external
demands of system integration in a market
economy. The enemy is also within in the unacknowledged desire for certainty and acceptance that finds expression in conformity to an
externally imposed discipline, whose attraction
is precisely that it relieves the individual of his or
her sense of personal responsibility both to self
and others, even at the price of personal
autonomy and creativity.
Having drawn a sharp dichotomy between individualizing and socializing forms of accountability, a dichotomy that is not simply theoretical
for it also appears in fissures in individual experience, one is nevertheless forced to acknowledge
the actual interdependence and interpenetration of these two forms of accountability in organizational activity. This unacknowledged interdependence is no doubt the source of the stability but also intractability of contemporary
organizational forms. By way of a conclusion we
will now look at the sources of instability in this
arrangement.
THE POSSIBILITIESOF ACCOUNTABILITY
It has been part of the argument above that
hierarchical forms of accountability foster a
belief in the reality of the objects that Accounting produces; the “individual” and his or her
“results”. Part of the potential merit of a shift of
attention horn accounts and accounting to processes of accountability is that the interdependence of action reappears in view. At the heart of
accountability is a social acknowledgement and
an insistence that one’s actions make a difference both to self and others. In exploring contemporary forms of organizational accountability, however, we have discovered practices that
seem peculiarly divided within themselves. The
relationship between what I have described as
individualizing and socializing forms of accountability for Habermas is the meeting point between different media of integration; system integration by means of the media of power and
money and social integration oriented to norms
realised in communicative interaction. The
result of the divide is to release strategic action,
both individual and collective, from any normative regulation. ASHabermas puts it:
communicative action forfeits its validity basis in the
interior oforganisutions. Members of organisations act
communicatively only with reservation.They know they
can have recourSe to formal regulations, not only in exceptional but in routine cases, there is no necessiw for
achieving consenws by communicative means .
(Habermas, 1989, pp. 310-311).
One set of motivating concerns which has informed this exploration of the possibilities of accountability lies in the exclusion of ethical considerations from the formal processes of hierarchical accountability. At first sight what have
been described as socializing forms of accountability seem to offer a model for how organizational accountability might be transformed, in a
way that might temper the pursuit of strategic
objectives with ethical concerns. In practice,
however, it is difficult to conceive of how the informal could become the basis for an alternative
organizational order, however morally desirable
this might be. Only rarely is enough energy and
solidarity generated within these social contexts
to create an overt challenge to the hierarchical
order – and even then resistance is often
framed within the instrumental terms that
hierarchy embodies and encourages. One is
pushed to the conclusion that socializing forms
of accountability will always be limited to local
contexts where there is a relative absence of
asymmetries of power and the possibility of faceto-face interaction. These local contexts, however, are repeatedly subordinated to systems of
hierarchical accountability sustained through
the sanctions of power and money, whose peculiar merit is their capacity to span physical distance, and create internal divisions within local
contexts.
If an emancipatory interest in the possibilities
of accountability can draw little solace from the
existence of socializing forms of accountability
within the informal organization, one can however point to the emergence of a critique of the
individualizing effects of hierarchical accountability from within instrumental reason itself.
366 JOHN ROBERTS
One can suggest that current concern with international competition, notably comparison
with the Japanese, is being used as a new source

the strategies can be read as an implicit critique

THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY 367
pouse without threatening their personal advantage.
CONCLUDING REMARKS- ACCOUNTING
FOR INTERDEPENDENCE?
It would appear that the individualizing effects of hierarchical forms of accountability can
be critiqued not only by those with an emancipatory interest in the possibilities of a rationally grounded consensus, but also strategically in
terms of the disintegrative effects of individualism on the capabilities of the collective
actor. The search for new integrative
mechanisms within the organisation that can
generate a more full hearted commitment, and
the search external to organizations for ways to
make them accountable for more than the realisation of their strategic goals -for the often unintended and unacknowledged moral, social and
environmental consequences that spill out from
the pursuit of strategic objectives – can both be
taken as evidence of the unsatisfactory consequences of contemporary forms of accountability. The current division and relation between
socializing and individualizing forms of accountability creates a split not only in people’s experience of themselves at work, but also in the
organizational capacity to realise strategic objectives. This split has real consequences both
morally and strategically. At a macro level these
appear in the form of social inequalities and environmental damage in pursuit of competitive
advantage, as well as in difficulties in integrating
collective action on the basis of a highly individualized workforce. At a personal level the
consequences of the split take the form of tensions between the roles of functionary, consumer, parent, and citizen which threaten the
felt unity of the person (Iasch, 1985).
Having set out to explore the possibilities of
accountability the above analysis has in practice
done little more than elaborate an understanding of how things are as they are. This, however,
was perhaps a necessary step to take on the path
of clarifying the direction in which the possibilities of accountability should be pursued.
The above analysis has revealed a morally and
strategically destructive split in contemporary
forms of organizational accountability. Moreover, in describing the subtle interdependencies
that actually exist between the two realms of accountability the maintenance of the split appears
as a form of reciprocal denial of what is an unavoidable interdependence of action both within
the organization and between the organization
and the communities in which it operates. The
search for the possibilities of accountability
should have as its aim the practical reconciliation of this moral and strategic split.
One of the principal problems of accounting
information is that if it is treated as a mirror, it
seems to reveal only independent entities. At
worst the practice of accountability is taken in
by this image, and uses information in a way that
seeks to locate responsibility and blame unequivocally. (Of course it must exclude consideration of the effects of its own practice to maintain such an illusion of separability.) Znpructice
accountability is a form of social relation
which reflectssymbolically upon the practical
interdependenceof action: an interdependence
that always has both a moral and strategicdimension. This reflection cannot confine itself to
an exclusive consideration of strategic effects
and consider itself adequate, and yet this is what
the impoverished language of contemporary Accounting believes itself to be. The practical task
is to recover accountability from the exclusive
and apparently mesmeric grip of Accounting,
and this is perhaps the point at which the new
technologies of leadership and the moral concerns of the individual employee might create a
new alliance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennis, W. andNanus, Leaders (Harper & Rowe, 1985).
368 JOHN ROBERTS