Accounting Qualities in Practice: Rhizomatic stories of representational faithfulness, decision making and control

There is a tendency in accounting theory, both external reporting and management accounting, to express a representational ideal. This to be understood in the sense that accounting information, independent on whether it is reported externally or used for control purposes internally, ought to represent something underlying, whether this is revenue, costs, performance or other things inscribed in the accounting information. In some cases the underlying is not an object, but a procedure which is developed with the purpose of standardising the calculations as to become comparable (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 1980a). In the beginning of the 1970’s in the accounting information literature, simultaneously with the foundation of the American Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), an academic discussion regarding which qualitative characteristics accounting information ought to have, emerges (e.g. Ijiri, 1975, Hines, 1988 og Ingram and Rayburn, 1989). This was caused by FASB’s work on a conceptual framework Standard of Financial Accounting Concepts (SFAC), which was meant as a guide to the standard setters in the development of new accounting standards/principles. A new notion, representational faithfulness, was introduced in SFAC no. 2. The discussion about representational faithfulness is equivocal and no unambiguous definition of what representational faithfulness actually is. This has occasioned a range of dialogues about the representativity of accounting information, the accounting setters’ roles and effects of disclosure of accounting information...