The semio-logic of financial accounting: A non-essentialist conceptualisation of the IFRS balance sheet

• Published in: Accounting, auditing & accountability journal auditing & accountability journal, 2018-10, Vol.31 (7), p.2055-2082
• Main Author: Hayoun, Shaul
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accounting; Accounting policies; Acknowledgment; Articulation; Assets; Balance sheets; Constellations; Delineation; Economic resources; Exposure drafts; Financial reporting; Financial statements; Genealogy; Interdisciplinary aspects; International Financial Reporting Standards; Justification; Language; Measurement; Political power; Power; Principles; Reciprocity; Semiotics; Signs; Social power; Sociology; Technology; Theory; Value; Values
• ISSN: 0951-3574; 1758-4205
• DOI: 10.1108/AAAJ-06-2017-2977

PurposeThe 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/approachThe 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.FindingsIn 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/valueTo 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.