The concept of an accounting regime

Abstract

This paper develops and illustrates the concept of an accounting regime. The concept is mobilized in order to explore the nature and power of accounting in totality and to identify its dimensions. Drawing on the work of Anthony Giddens, we portray an accounting regime as a set of social practices constructed through the disembedding and reembedding of accounting as an abstract system that interrelates institutions of modernity and modern forms of reflexivity. The regime simultaneously generates trust and scepticism, and displays recursive cycles of dissolution and reconstruction. Its power - although temporary, partial and fragile - depends on its ability to provide guarantees of expertise in the face of risk. We conclude that the concept of an accounting regime offers a useful framework for the study accounting as a totality, and thus to detect its power in the modern world.