Accounting, boundary-making and organizational permeability

Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption which shapes the way it recognises and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby constructs boundaries and frames permeability in terms of what counts, is accounted for, as being inside and outside of the organization. Yet there are different possible entity concepts reflecting different values about the relationship between the organizational entity and society. This essay considers four problem areas in which these values and the entity-society relationship are at stake within financial accounting: the problem of control within group accounting; accounting for externalities; the economization of public organizations; and the construction of organizational actorhood. These four problematics suggest that financial accounting, its boundary determining assumptions and the forms of organizational permeability it permits, are deeply intertwined and subject to continuous pressure for change.