The Sociopolitical Paradigm in Financial AccountingResearch

The efficacy of the processes by which social reality is created and reproduced is largely attributable to the fact that these processes are screened from scrutiny by taken‐for‐granted assumptions which are embedded in language, thought and social practices such as accounting and accounting research. A number of taken‐for‐granted assumptions which are embedded in predominant modes of accounting research, commonsense reasoning, and accounting practice, which function to protect the processes of reality construction from scrutiny, are discussed. These assumptions result in a conceptualisation of the role of accounting information as communicating a reality which exists independently of financial accounting practices. As such, these assumptions obscure, or gloss over, accounting′s sociopolitical role in constructing social reality. As these assumptions are critiqued and set aside, it becomes clear that the social practices of accounting and accounting research both play an important part in the social construction of reality.