From The Accounting of War to the Accounting of Peace: Putting Bricks for a New Environmental Accounting. A Critical Analysis

Paul Diaconu ()
Additional contact information
Paul Diaconu: Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania

Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems, 2017, vol. 16, issue 1, 107-131

Abstract: This paper critically examines the potential movement from accounting of war to accounting of peace. The 20th century capitalist economy developed in the war, and also stimulated the war. In contradiction with the current state of facts, some economists such as Vandana Shiva promote the idea of creating an earth democracy, which is intended to accept equality of rights between the humans and other species, and to organize life so that to protect the environment against any human aggression. Accounting, as a tool of evaluation and presentation of economic information, was involved directly in the manifestation of human aggression, under its various forms, in the capitalist society. By considering as main value the concept of profit, a whole range of issues related to the environmental preservation and the limitation of natural resource were neglected. Thus, the accounting presented the resources under the form of operating costs, and not as capital. Nature was considered as an unlimited resource, and not as a value that should be kept and maintained in the future. The new paradigm might be called accounting of peace. The paper discusses how accounting has to redefine its concepts to support earth democracy and the proposed natural sustainable economy. Accounting, as a tool of force for war, did nothing but stimulate the aggressive behaviour of the world leaders, and also of the multinational corporations.

Keywords: accounting of war; accounting of peace; earth democracy; globalization; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M41 Q01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://online-cig.ase.ro/RePEc/ami/articles/16_1_5.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ami:journl:v:16:y:2017:i:1:p:107-131

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems from Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cristina Tartavulea ().