The semio-logic of financial accounting: A non-essentialist conceptualisation of the IFRS balance sheet
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 4 October 2018
Issue publication date: 18 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on the non-essence of accounting by focusing on financial accounting’s distinct technology: financial statements. Complementing the genealogical perspective on accounting’s changing socio-historical settings, it proposes a semiotic perspective on the accounting statement.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes an interdisciplinary approach in the theoretical framing of IFRS recognition and measurement principles that underlie the statement of financial position. It mobilises Saussure and Barthes’ sign theory – semiology, as it provides a meaningful delineation of financial accounting, bringing out its distinct numerical-linguistic knowledge-construction operation.
Findings
In addition to the justification of employing semiology as a parent discipline for accounting, it is shown how IASB’s recognition and measurement procedures manifest the interrelated non-essentialist semiological principles of reciprocal articulation and value constellation. Accounting entries (“expression”) are not representations of pre-existing economic resources (“content”), but rather both are mutually constituted by delimiting the resource/asset from its broader category. Such judgment-based articulation results with value constellations, where asset value is merely a relational product of other values.
Originality/value
To the long-established critique that accounting has no essence, the paper adds a formulation of a non-essentialist semiotic logic: the financial statement’s semio-logic. It further sheds light on the role of such logic as an epistemological presupposition to the accounting – society reciprocity, where accounting is a malleable product of, and is used to exert power over, its social surroundings.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Paolo Quattrone and John Joseph for their continued support in the intellectual project underlying this paper. The author would also like to acknowledge those who have provided comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper: Marian Gatzweiler, Sebastian Hoffmann, Ingrid Jeacle, Yuval Millo and Matteo Ronzani, as well as the participants at the 2017 EAA Annual Conference in Valencia. Special thanks go to two anonymous referees who have been exceptionally knowledgeable in both accounting and semiology, and whose extensive and detailed suggestions have significantly advanced this paper. Finally, the author would like to thank the assigned Guest Editor, Lisa Evan, for her direction in facilitating a useful and efficient editorial process. All remaining errors are solely the author’s own.
Citation
Hayoun, S. (2018), "The semio-logic of financial accounting: A non-essentialist conceptualisation of the IFRS balance sheet", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 31 No. 7, pp. 2055-2082. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2017-2977
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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