The Politics of Transcendence: Hermeneutic phenomenology and Accounting Policy

This paper offers a new foundation for investigating accounting policy in organizations. After recalling some characteristics illustrating the deficiency of Positive Accounting Theory (PAT) as a comprehensive, contextual and holistic analysis of accounting policy in organizations, positive research is blamed to fail to recognize the socially constitutive character of academic knowledge and its own underlying value predispositions. In devising an alternative, on the epistemological level, this paper introduces hermeneutic phenomenology as a new framework offering the possibility of exploring and constructing a new understanding of organization accounting policy in preserving its holistic and casuistic character.