Research seminar by professor Helen TREGIDGA

Department : Accounting and Management Control

Speaker : Helen TREGIDGA (Royal Holloway University of London)

Room : building V Ramanantsoa

and by Zoom : https://hec-fr.zoom.us/j/91254199914

"Beyond the giving and demanding of accounts: Seeking alternative accountabilities in response to the climate crisis"

Abstract:

This study explores accountability within the climate crisis, introducing a new conception of accountability for the accounting literature. Our approach is informed through our engagement with the work of Audre Lorde (1978, 1980, 1984, 1988). Lorde’s writings offer insights into the systemic context of accountability while also addressing its individual and collective dimensions. She advocates for personal accountability by recognising one's privileges and responsibilities in dismantling oppressive systems and emphasises the importance of self-care and self-preservation when navigating spaces of activism, accountability, and advocacy for change. We illustrate how both aspects of her writing provide fruitful insights. Our understanding of accountability is also developed through a study of and with an organisation focused on climate activism as well as our own (varying levels of) participation in climate activism. Accountability here becomes not necessarily one of challenging (speaking truth to) power, but rather disrupting and subverting (speaking truth about) power. This involves reconfiguring power dynamics in a way that reduces the disproportionate influence of powerful institutions and renders them progressively irrelevant and redundant. This conception of accountability differs substantively from current conceptions that focus on account-giving and the demanding of accounts from those that have traditionally been conceptualised as accountable. Accountability becomes not only documenting the omissions and misleading aspects of powerful accounts, or of reporting on the damage caused by those in positions of power. Instead, and after identifying mythical norms and critique of current ways in which accountability is both demanded and given, we demonstrate three alternative understandings of accountability: accountability as an internalised commitment towards collective responsibility; accountability as a force for societal transformation; and, accountability for sustenance and self-preservation. In doing so we also highlight the tensions embedded in such forms of accountability as they relate to, and intersect with, other ways actors assume accountability for their response to the climate crisis.