Inclusive capitalism as accounting ideology: The case of integrated reporting

Abstract

From 2014 the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) joined global accounting and business leaders to advocate a more ‘inclusive capitalism’ and claim Integrating Reporting (IR) enables this goal. Yet what inclusive capitalism means, and how IR might help achieve this goal, remains unclear. This paper interrogates the IIRC’s inclusive capitalism campaign at two levels. First, qua reporting framework, the paper asks to what extent the IR Framework can enable more inclusive societies, thereby assessing a novel purpose for nonfinancial reporting. Second, qua accounting institution, the paper interrogates the IIRC’s ideology of inclusive capitalism as a distinctive case of a mainstream accounting organisation overtly criticising the present economic system and legitimating an alternative. The paper’s methodology is critical genealogy, which interrogates the IIRC’s inclusive capitalism ideal by reconstructing this concept’s history and which interests it serves. Drawing also on Boltanski and Chiapello, and Richard Sennett, the paper argues that the IR Framework and IIRC paradoxically mobilise precisely those reporting and normative principles inclusive capitalism purports to challenge. The findings extend nonfinancial reporting research by clarifying the political implications of core principles of the IR Framework. The paper also extends research into accounting’s ideological relation to capitalism by analysing how the IIRC adapts capitalism’s legitimating norms without proposing substantive reform. This more dynamic perspective highlights how critical scholars need to not only scrutinise accounting’s role in deep economic structures, but also in the more rapid transitions in capitalism’s ideologies that the IIRC’s inclusive capitalism campaign brings to light.