Tapping accounting with a hammer : a radical examination of accounting in the light of Nietzsche

This thesis argues that Accounting can never hope to be a value-free communicative medium grounded in and reflecting an external and knowable reality. Friedrich Nietzsche showed that we can only grasp the "real world" by means of useful fictions conditioned by our own perspective on the world. Any attempt to describe the world will always be distorted by the various contingent social, economic and political circumstances which influence our perspectives. Nietzsche's views on language are referred to, in seeking to demonstrate the inability of any language to communicate without communicating preconceived notions about reality. The thesis explores the assumptions upon which the mainstream perspective of accounting has based its world-view and attempts to show its limitations, both as a theory of Accounting and as a method of research, and shows the ideological bias inherent in it. Alternatives are suggested to replace or complement those of the mainstream in an attempt to create an awareness of the fact that the mainstream's way of seeing the world can never be privileged over other ways.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

College of Accounting

Year dc:date.issued

1991

Author dc:creator

• Molteno, Donald Barkly Leatham

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Everingham, Geoff

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15972

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/15972