Accounting for Sustainability: Episteme Change and Ontological Plurality

Abstract

Recent research reveals accounting for sustainable development to be both problematic and essential. This paper considers that the problems arising may be intrinsic to the concepts and structures of Modern accounting and that their resolution lies ultimately in the development of the consequences of a new possibility of knowledge or episteme. After a brief presentation of the nature and historic impacts of episteme change, this paper explores the epistemic origins of Modern accounting. Evidence for a new, other than Modern, episteme is then presented and its consequences for accounting for sustainable accounting are explored. Significant evidence in this regard is the work of Bruno Latour from Actor-Network Theory to the plurality of ontologies. Refs 93.