Accounting for non-financial values under conditions of financialisation: the evolution of impact accounting practices at Finnfund 2001–2023

As accounting expands into the terrain of social and environmental impact, it must mediate between multiple and often competing evaluative principles. Although prior research shows that accounting plays an essential role in organising multiple values, less is known about how such reconciliation unfolds within a financialising setting. Hence, this paper asks: How does impact accounting organise multiple modes of evaluation as it evolves in a financialising setting? Conceptualising financialisation as a shift in socio-technical valuation processes, the study examines Finnfund, a Finnish Development Finance Institution and impact investor, as its empirical case. Based on a longitudinal analysis of Finnfund’s public documents 2001–2023, the paper shows that financialisation can occur in impact accounting by reshaping the formats, devices and modalities through which evaluation takes place, without turning the objects of valuation into monetary units or financial assets. The findings further show that impact accounting practices can provide combinations of, rather than compromises, between financial and impact modes of (e)valuation. While such combinations are seen as enabling value pluralism, they may also facilitate a strategic separation of financial and impact considerations, troubling the extent to which impact accounting practices changes the existing rationales and goals of impact investors and other organisations.