Emancipatory Accounting and Sustainable Development: A Gandhian-Vedic Theorization of Experimenting with Truth

Abstract

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan implemented Hayek's market economics by manipulating macro-structural forces. It is argued here that the culture of sustainable development appears to be disseminating in the opposite way: it is gradually permeating through from concentrated pockets of practices to its surrounding communities. The difference in diffusion patterns should be reflected in proposed formulations of emancipatory accounting frameworks: emancipatory accounting should allow for moral development of the individual (by caring for the needs of the other). It becomes another vehicle for engaging in stakeholder dialogue about the meaning and implications of sustainable development. The defining characteristics of this emancipatory accounting framework are as follows: its definition of sustainability should transcend the narrow interpretation of individual property rights (that restricts responsibility for the other); it should engender moral development because of ambiguity over terminology; it should socialize the process of risk management as an integral part of balancing resource and economic sustainability.